Page 35

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Stella

H e knew. Andre knew what happened to Izaiah and my father this whole time and didn’t tell me.

I thought he cared about me, that he loved me, but he chose his family over me.

Now my family, my innocent sister, is in danger because of him and his boss.

Creed Ferraro is about to be a dead man.

I’m not sure how I’ll kill him, but I’ll figure that out. It won’t be the first time I took out a capo dei capi.

I’m too enraged to head all the way back to my family’s house in Brooklyn to grab a gun, though.

I get a ride from Queens to Manhattan first. Because of the snow I once loved causing accidents, it takes fucking forever.

The doorman and guards at the entrance of the Park Avenue luxury building see my tears and are easily manipulated into letting me go in and up to the penthouse.

Two more guards wait there and happily open the door for me when I flash them a fake smile and dry my face with the sleeve of my coat. I force my rage down until I’m inside.

“Stella?” Zara appears in the foyer in pale pink fleece pajamas, her baby bump even more obvious in the snug material than it was at the cemetery. The sight is a jarring reminder of the family I thought I might have with Andre. It also takes a moment for me to remind myself I can still yell at her, even if she’s physically vulnerable.

“Where is he? Where is your piece of shit, murdering husband?” I demand.

The guards stiffen behind me in the open doorway .

Zara barely looks surprised by my outburst or the insult. “Stella, you need to calm down before one of these men choke your ass out,” she warns me with her palm resting on her bump. “Creed is very protective of me and the baby, so if you make one wrong move…”

“Oh, shut the hell up. You’re just as guilty as he is!” I tell her and her face blanches. “That’s right, I know everything . Andre told me all your little secrets. I know you were fucking my brother before Creed killed him.”

“You don’t know anything,” she replies quietly. “Your brother was an idiot who tried to kill Creed and Carmine so your family could take their place.”

Okay, Bowen was sort of right. Izaiah was behind the club raid and missed Creed. My brother was such a fuckup.

“And my father? Did he try to kill them too? That’s why he’s dead, isn’t it?”

“ Mommy ?” a soft voice calls out. A curly head, identical to Zara’s, peeks around the corner. She hugs the wall, her eyes wide and wary.

“Go back to bed, sweetheart. I’ll come read you another story after I talk to Aunt Stella.”

“Okay!” the girl exclaims before she runs off.

“Aunt Stella?” I scoff.

“Trust me, aunt is better than the truth.”

“What truth?”

Zara holds my gaze and lifts her chin. “Trying to explain to my three-year-old daughter you’re her really, really big sister.”

“Her what?” I must have misunderstood.

“Sister,” Zara repeats clearly, then nearly whispers, “Your brother wasn’t the only Rovina I had to fuck.”

No.

Zara and…my father? Behind my mother’s back?

I shake my head, certain she’s lying. My father may not have always been faithful to my mother. Hell, Mom probably knew as well. But to have a child with some other woman, someone younger than me…

“Stella can wait in the living room if she wants,” Zara tells the guards. “I’ll come back after I get Oriana tucked into bed.”

“You’re lying,” I blurt out when she turns to walk away.

“God, I wish I was,” she says without facing me again before she disappears.

“We’ll show you to the living room,” one of the guards says as another blocks the door as if I’m not allowed to leave the penthouse until Zara says so.

My steps are steady in my boots even though it feels like the world has tilted sideways.

I take a seat on the edge of the white sofa, my mind racing as I recall every word Zara said to me.

I barely even notice the guards lurking at the entryway.

After five or fifty minutes, I’m not sure how long I sit there, trying to wrap my head around the idea of my father impregnating this woman…a woman my brother was also screwing. It doesn’t make sense. My father may have been a ruthless mob boss, but he loved my mother. Any affairs he had, he would’ve covered his tracks.

“Sorry for the wait.” Zara returns and sits, curling her legs underneath her on the other side of the sofa, out of reach, a palm resting on her rounded belly. “One book turned into three. So, where were we? Oh, right. You just met your little sister for the first time.”

“I don’t…how?” I ask.

“Well, I would hazard a guess your father was a different man when I saw him compared to the one who raised you.”

“How did you know him?”

“My parents, they had a brewery in Pearl River. They needed a loan from your father to keep their business, and I was the trade they made for it,” Zara says. “He brought me to the city. I lived in an apartment he owned for three years. It was obvious what he wanted from me from the first time I visited on weekends and that…relationship continued once I moved here.”

“My mother…”

Zara nods. “She was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, right around then. I thought maybe I was a distraction he needed. But whatever I was, he didn’t exactly give me a choice. I knew better than to refuse him anything.”

“And you got pregnant…by my father?”

“Yes. Four years ago, I got pregnant. When I told Emilio, he introduced me to your brother. I was with Izaiah for several weeks before your father rigged the DNA results to make Izaiah think he was Oriana’s father. He never knew the truth. No one knew. After I gave birth to her, the very next day your father took her from me.”

“Why would he do that?” I can’t tell if she’s a great liar or if she’s telling the truth. There seems to be a lot of little details for some made-up lie.

“Because Emilio didn’t think I was cut out to be a mother. There was…I was regularly using any and all drugs I could get my hands on back then to get through the day, until I found out I was pregnant. I never touched anything after the positive pregnancy test. But during the first doctor’s office visit, they did a blood test, and it was still positive from before. Your father used that to prevent me from trying to get custody, even if I could afford an attorney…”

“Where was he keeping her all this time?”

“An apartment on Park Avenue, not far from here. Oriana had two nannies and four guards with her at all times. Your father visited her often. Your brother rarely saw her. After Creed and I got married, I told him the truth about her, and he got her back for me.”

“He killed my father’s guards and the nannies?”

“The guards, yes. But the nannies live in this building. They still help with Oriana whenever I need them.”

“And my mom has no idea?”

Zara shakes her head. “Not that I know of. And I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her or you and your siblings. I didn’t want any of you to try to take her from me, and I didn’t think there was any point in hurting you with the truth.”

“I want a DNA test done.”

“I don’t give a shit what you want,” she snaps at me. “You’re not going anywhere near my daughter. It took me three years to get her back. I won’t let anyone take her from me again.”

The venom in her voice surprises me.

But for a second, I consider what I would do in her place, if I’d gotten pregnant twelve years ago, and then my son or daughter had been taken from me.

Pushing those awful thoughts aside, I gather my anger, remembering the reason I’m here. “Your sob story doesn’t have anything to do with Creed fucking Ferraro killing my brother and father,” I say even though I’m beginning to have my own doubts.

“Doesn’t it, though?” Zara replies. “Stella, do you actually want the truth or are you going to keep pretending like your brother and father were saints?”

“You can tell me your side of things, but it won’t change the fact Creed took my family members from me, from my sick mother, and now my sister…”

“Your sister?”

“She’s missing...”

“Oh shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” she tells me softly. “And no, nothing I say will change any of what’s happened, but the night Izaiah came to my apartment, the night he…died, he was going to kill me.”

“Bullshit.”

Zara’s jaw clenches and she grits out, “He pressed a knife to my throat. He would’ve slit it if Creed hadn’t been listening to his confession about the raid that killed his brother Carmine from my bathroom.”

“How convenient he was there.”

“I didn’t know Creed then. In fact, when I came out of my bathroom that night, I was terrified to see him sitting on my sofa because I knew he wanted to kill me. I’m the one who told the nightclub manager about the threat on his life, the one who convinced him to come down to the club that night with his family, his brother. I didn’t know what Izaiah was planning. I actually thought he was trying to warn Creed about a potential threat. If I’d known Izaiah had orchestrated the entire thing, I never would’ve been a part of it.”

“Why would my brother ask you to deliver the message?”

“He couldn’t do it himself. And he knew I’d do anything, absolutely anything, for a chance to see Oriana. She was always what he and your father used to get what they wanted from me.”

Oh god. “Sex? That’s what…”

“Sex was usually their asking price. I hated them both, but for Oriana, I got on my knees. I let them use me however they wanted. Like I said, one of your brothers may be named Saint, but it sure as hell wasn’t a fitting label for Izaiah or Emilio. I was their whore. A free whore. And after they took Oriana, I was thrown out on the streets, left to fend for myself without a degree or job experience other than a few disgusting modeling gigs. That’s how I ended up working the past three years at a discount store in Queens until Creed came along.”

“My brother…I know he wasn’t a good man, that he was an addict.”

“Yes, he was. Your father was also my supplier until….”

Shaking my head, I say, “I find it hard to believe my father would do anything like that…”

My words trail off when Zara suddenly whips her pajama top up and over her head, revealing the skin stretched tightly over her belly as well as her braless chest…and the scarred marks across it.

“Your father carved and burned Izaiah’s name into my fucking skin,” Zara says. “Do you think I’m lying about this? That I’d do this to myself?”

Bile starts to make its way up my throat, but I swallow it down.

“Why…”

“Why did he disfigure me? Break my fingers and toes and suffocate me until I thought I would die? Because he figured out Creed killed your brother and wanted me to confess. I refused. And when Creed found me, when they outnumbered your father in one of the construction offices in Brooklyn, Creed gave your father a choice. Either he would put a bullet in his head right then and there and claim the kill shot, along with all the reasons for it, or your father could slit his own wrists and let the truth about Oriana remain a secret from your mother and family.”

Oh god. That’s exactly what Andre said too.

“I knew my father wouldn’t have killed himself,” I say confidently.

“No, he wouldn’t have. But he agreed to make it look like he did.”

“Who slit his wrists? Creed?”

“No.”

“You?”

She shakes her head again just as I hear the apartment door open.

“Who killed him?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it fucking matters! Who slit my father’s wrists?”

“I did.”

I look over and find Andre and Creed standing in the living room, both of them panting as if they ran up the ninety-whatever floors to get here as fast as possible.

“I typed the email,” Andre says. “And then I held your father’s hands while making him slit his wrists.”

“How fucking could you?” I ask, voice shaking as I get to my feet, despite my wobbling knees. “How could you touch me after that ?”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

“You’re a selfish fucking liar.”

“Hell yes, I’m selfish when you give me the chance to touch you. I’ve been in love with you, waited for you, for years.”

“Was my knife at your balls and throat not clear enough? I want a divorce. I don’t ever want to see you again. Do you hear me? Never. Don’t call me. Don’t speak to me. Don’t even fucking think about me!” I shout at my husband. “And you…” I point my finger at Creed Ferraro. “This isn’t over. I don’t give a shit about your reasons; you don’t get to kill my brother and father and get away with it.”

“If you tell Saint,” Creed starts. “There will be a worse war. I’ll kill him, too, because he’s a goddamn pussy just like Izaiah and Emilio.”

“Fuck you!”

“Stella…please.” Zara gets to her feet and stands between me and her husband, still ten feet away. “Just think this through before you say or do anything. Enough blood has been spilled. Saint believes it was the Sannas who killed Izaiah and Emilio. The last thing your mom needs right now is to have to bury another child.”

“Aiden Sanna kidnapped my sister!” I tell them. “She could already be dead!”

“What?” Zara exclaims.

“Camilla is probably still alive. Sanna wants a confession, not her death on his hands. We will get your sister back safe and sound,” Creed says with the same confidence as Andre.

Dammit. Damn all of them.

Zara is right, though. I can’t tell my mom the truth, if anything that has come out of the woman’s mouth is the truth. And I don’t want to be responsible for Saint’s death so soon after my father and brother’s, while Cami’s life hangs in the balance.

“Fine,” I grit out. “I’ll keep your secret for now. But my mother’s days are numbered, just like yours. I don’t have to tell my brother shit if I take you out myself.”

“Stella…” Andre pleads.

I march up to him. “Here are the last words I’ll ever say to you — we are through, and you will give me a divorce. I want a fucking annulment because if I’d known it was you who killed my father, I never would’ve married you.”

As if the world doesn’t think I have enough shit to deal with at the moment, the apartment door flies open, and Lorenzo barges in.

I don’t hesitate as I walk up to him and plow my clenched fist into his fucking face. When he stumbles back against the foyer wall, I follow him. Lifting my knee, I slam it up between his legs so hard, he instantly drops to the floor. Since his face is at knee-level, I raise it again and smash it into his nose.

“What the fuck?” Creed exclaims.

“My family isn’t the only one with dirty little secrets. Ask your oh-so-wise concierge what happened on New Year’s Eve twelve years ago,” I say before I yank the door open and storm out.