Page 57 of Free to Judge

“You don’t either. We’re smarter than you give us credit for, Dad. You think you’re keeping us safe, but what you’re doing by lying to us every single day is not giving us the tools to protect ourselves. What would Jack Marshall walking into Amaryllis Events do to Aunt Cass? To Mama knowing you knew?” I meet his fury head on before his brain catches up to his emotions.

He opens his mouth and snaps it shut. “She’d castrate me.”

“She would,” I agree. “If it’s about one of her children or her family, she demands to know everything you’re doing behind closed doors. It would be an all-out war in our family. Do you want to be responsible for it?”

“You don’t know the kind of emotional turmoil you’re about to stir up,” he warns me.

“No, I don’t. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that we’re stronger together.” Lifting my chin, I challenge him. “Isn’t that what you all raised us to believe?”

“Fair response, counselor. We are.”

My father looks away, out the window at the street traffic beyond. For a moment, he looks older than I’ve ever seen him. Maybe it’s because the weight he’s been carrying finally has a name and it’s the same as ours.

“Do you think your mother will forgive me?” he asks, almost too softly to hear.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “That depends. Are you going to tell her the truth? Or wait for it to come out in trickles?”

He accepts the challenge in my voice. Despite the worry in his eyes, the resolution in them makes me sigh inside. “I’ll tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“Tonight.”

“Determined little thing, aren’t you? Tonight.” He releases a heavy sigh. “This was much easier when you were nine.”

“When all you had to do to appease me was wear a tutu?” My lips quirk fondly, thinking of the laughter Declan enjoyed at his expense.

“Yes,” he grumbles. He takes my hand, gripping it in between his own. “I just want to say something, Kalie.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m proud of the woman you’ve become—someone who would stand up for her family regardless of the circumstance.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

For the rest of the meal, I let him know my opinions about Declan with him without breaking our attorney-client privilege. “Dad, he needs some sense of normalcy. No one can be undercover as long as he has without it.”

His face is thoughtful before he nods. “Let me think about it.”

Point made, I return to my food and embrace having my father back in my life where he belongs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Today,while I know Kalie’s protected by the best—her father—I decide to snoop around to locate some more dirt tying the Italian and Irish marriage made in hell. With that in mind, I hit the chop shop, assuming no one would be around on a Sunday.

It’s far from my lucky day when I walk in and find one of the newer members of the Tiberi outfit stripping down a BMW. Cirojumps when the metal door clangs shut behind me, echoing through the stripped-down garage like a warning. The BMW on jacks in the center of the room is picked clean—headlights out, guts exposed, doors pried off like ribs.

A sneer rushes across his face. He straightens from where he was leaning against a workbench, cigarette dangling from his lip. Next to him is Vin—a young, nervous kid strapped to a plastic chair. Even from this distance, I can see his lip is bloodied and his hands zip-tied so he can’t fight back.

Ciro looks up and grins. “Sure you want to be here, Mr. Law and Order?”

Despite the churning in my gut, I manage, “What have you got?”

“Caught the kid stealing from us.” He cracks his knuckles and Vin pales even more, if that’s possible. “Now it’s time to get even. But this isn’t something you want to know about. Right?”

I roll my shoulders and step further into the room to get a good look at the kid, mind whirling. Is there any way I can get him out of his certain death sentence? “Something like that.”

“What are you doing here anyway?”

“I bailed early the other day. Have to catch up on some paperwork,” I gesture vaguely to the back office.