“She was at the party I was at. Wasn’t she?”
I had to think about the timing. “You’re right, Maya was there. I’d forgotten about that myself. She was so excited. Rafael Torres had invited the kids of a few high-ranking soldiers to the birthday party.” Since touching the scar, so many memories had surfaced, most of which I had never wanted to think about again.
“What angers me the most is that a fucking party had changed everything. It had been an alliance meeting of the two most powerful men in Spain. They’d been friends with plans of expanding into other countries, basking in their wealth and political status. Yet it had been nothing but a lie. A fucking game being played by two savages who’d been playing each other, discovering their weaknesses.”
“That’s terrible.”
Four fucking days after that party the nightmare had begun.
“It was tragic. So is what’s happening with your sister.”
“I remember Maya as being so pretty. I remember thinking that I loved her hair. She also had a great laugh. Just like you do.”Fallon pulled her glass into her hand, staring at the liquid. “Do you know what she said to me?”
“I didn’t know you two spoke.”
“You were busy,” she said, laughing in a stilted way. “I guess that’s when you were bashing in the brain of the man who hurt me.”
The asshole hadn’t just hurt her. She’d been too young to understand, but I’d seen what the fucker had done and had tried to do. A goddamn soldier working with Valentino Aldero, a vicious mafia Don who’d ordered my brother’s abduction.
And later his death.
Her uncle. Her father’s brother. The soldier had been assigned to protect the family, but had wandered off, finding Fallon, then a nine-year-old named Gabriella who’d wandered off after a fucking rabbit. He’d stalked her, and after she’d tripped while running away, he’d attempted to rape her. If I hadn’t heard her screams and found them, I couldn’t imagine what she’d have been forced to do. At that point, the little girl had been half conscious. You bet I’d fucking bashed his head in, pulverizing his skull with a rock. Hit after hit, blood fucking everywhere.
I’d carried her like a baby in my arms to Rafael’s office through the back door. I’d dressed her wounds, ensuring she was alright before disappearing so she could be brought to her mother without questions being asked.
I’d done the right thing, but what if my actions of killing one of Aldero’s personal guards had set the stage for several massacres?
I rubbed my eyes as myriad thoughts clouded not only my memory, but my ability to make any decent goddamn decisions.
“What did your father tell you about what happened to your mother?” I asked, trying to broach the difficult, life-altering subject as gently as I was capable of doing.
“Only that she’d gone to heaven to be with the angels. I didn’t find out until later she’d died in a car accident. It took me several additional years to ask questions about her and why we’d suddenly moved from our home and to another country. Up to that point, he’d pretended nothing had happened. With Brooke being so young, I didn’t know what to do so I went along with it.”
I slowly turned my head in her direction. “What did he say when you finally confronted him?”
“Trust me, my father was well versed in hundreds of subjects yet refused to talk about our family. I learned not to ask if I wanted to keep the peace in the house.”
“But you suspected something wasn’t right even while living an entirely different life in California.”
Fallon finally lifted her head, her eyes burning with the same heated defiance and anger that I’d first seen inside the club. “I’m not a fool, Navarro, nor was I completely a Daddy’s girl. We had few friends, no relatives, and my father insisted we speak English from day one, even though I overheard him from time to time speaking fluent Spanish.”
The flash in her rebellious eyes told me she was holding something back. “What else?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Her sigh was heavy and I noticed she was twisting her fingers around her glass. “He had a locked room.We were never allowed inside. When we moved to a larger house, he handled moving the items, whatever they were, to another locked room. That I broke into when I visited my father’s house ten days ago.”
“You broke in.”
She shook her head several times as if in disbelief. “When I suspected he’d disappeared after Brooke was taken, you bet I did. I used a fucking crowbar and snapped the goddamn lock.”
“That’s when you learned the truth.” Now I made a statement.
“Yes. He had notebooks, details about his past. I have no clue why he kept them, but I realized just how different life had been in Spain. It took me hours of going through everything, including his bank accounts. I just didn’t understand how ruthless my father had been or my uncle for that matter. I’d remembered him reading me stories as a kid, not as the head of some powerful cartel.”
“You finally put the pieces together.”
Her hand was shaking as she brushed it through her still damp hair. “Enough to remember a boy in a forest who’d saved me. I could barely believe it was the same young man I’d dreamt about from time to time over the years. What I do know is my father blamed you and the Torres Cartel for killing my mother, my uncle, and his family.”
I chuckled and took a sip of my drink while she glared at me as if I was making light of the freak show we’d both lived through. “Did he happen to mention his part in the war fought on the streets of Barcelona?”
