Page 58 of Mafia Scars

“Yes.”

I always assumed it was him. I heard arguing sometimes and words being thrown around. It seemed then that it was him.

“I thought you… I thought you had an affair at one point.”

“My dear girl, your mother was the love of my life. To me the sun revolved around her. But that wasn’t enough for her. I didn’t know the extent of the affair until that time. I foolishly didn’t think it was an affair. It enraged me when I found out. I caught them, but they did not see me.” He paused mid-sentence, thinking.

I remembered when I found Jordan cheating on me, right in the act too. If you love the person, it hurts like hell.

I loved Jordan, and it did hurt, but I didn’t behave in the distressed way that I imagined. Not the way I did when I thought I’d lost Luc.

Dad sighed and continued. “At the time, Tag and I were planning a heist on a shipment of diamonds worth billions coming from South Africa. We got a tip from a senator there, who wanted in on the fortune but didn’t have the means to get such an operation off the ground. We were offered a billion dollars each if we could secure it.”

“What kind of diamonds were they?” Luc chimed in.

That was the very thing I wanted to know. I knew some diamonds were worth a lot, but billions? And to be paid a billion each? God.

“They call them Celestial Diamonds because they look like stars and are a pure white color. They are very rare.”

Luc tensed. Since I’d never heard of them, hearing the name was lost on me. Sounded amazing though, like something from a fairy tale.

“Celestial Diamonds? I thought those were a myth.” Luc cocked his head to the side.

“They were until they were found in one of the old mines in the Limpopo Province. Found by accident. Hidden. And we wanted to keep it that way, so they were smuggled here.”

It was crazy, and too much. And I was pushing thoughts of Mom having an affair out of my mind, so I could focus on what he was saying to us, but my attention was scrambled. I couldn’t believe she would do something like that to Dad,to us.

“How much are they worth?” I had to ask.

“Now, twenty billion easily. There were ten cuts,” Dad continued, and I hung on to every word. “The plan was to pick up the diamonds on the shipment, which to everyone else was supposed to be art work coming in to the museum. Donated by one of the families the senator worked with. That was of course a cover for what was really going on. The crew going in was Tag, his three sons, myself and a few of our trusted guys. When I found out about his betrayal with Eloise, I lost my mind. Agent Peterson was one of my contacts in the feds. He made things disappear. I tipped him off about the heist, telling him Tag and his sons were going to steal the art work. But Peterson messed up. He took his crew in and killed Tag’s three sons. Then your mother ended up there because she found out that I’d tipped off the feds and wanted to warn Tag. She got caught in the crossfire.”

He looked at me.

That was it, the missing piece.

The reason why my mother was at the docks. A place she shouldn’t have been.

Numbness took over my body. I didn’t know what I’d expected to feel when I learned the truth, but it wasn’t this.

It was the affair. The knowledge that Mom had an affair with this person and ended up dying for him.

I stood up, hands shaking. At least it was a feeling other than numb.

“Amelia…” Dad gazed at me with pure concern. It was a look I remembered seeing on him often. It reflected his love for me.

I shook my head. “It’s too much. Why couldn’t you have told me this before? Why wait until now?”

“No. Amelia, this man is the vilest person I’ve ever known. Dangerous in every sense. You see the people he hired. Victor, who returned from the dead, and Demarco. My association with him is one thing I can’t take back because at one point I was vile too. Never like him though. With him, it’s all about revenge. Blood for blood. That day, he lost his three sons and your mother. The fact that she was there and I wasn’t was a near giveaway that I had something to do with tipping off the feds. I was able to come up with the excuse that I was delayed in getting to them and she must have come to warn both of us. I knew he would come for you if he ever found out the truth.”

“How did he find out?”

Dad shook his head and shrugged. “I have no idea. The only person who knew the truth was Agent Peterson.”

He looked away from me as he said that.

I understood it now. Agent Peterson came here that night when Dad shot him to ask him to come clean because his job was on the line, because of my mother’s death. Dad knew what would have happened if he’d come clean.

I understood it now. But it didn’t make me feel any better.