Page 26 of Nocturnal Sins

“You know I’d never lie to you,” I frowned, folding my arms. Roaring silence continued to pump through the house as Pop tried to find his words.

“Santana, why the hell did you do that? You stirred the pot for no good fucking reason.” Pop paced the floor and ran his hand through his hair about a dozen times. I didn’t care. I felt lighter without the burden of keeping secrets on my chest. It was out in the open now. She knew.

“I did it because she needed to know. She’s not a little kid and neither am I.”

“Papa, you’ve been a drug dealer all this time?” Sammie asked, rubbing her forehead and walking over to Pop.

“Your brother shouldn’t have told you. Not like he did. That wasn’t the right…”

“I don’t care about how Santana told me. I only care that at least he thought enough of me to tell me.” She shot me a glance full of gratitude and for a moment her features softened. Her tawny brows relaxed and her pink mouth went soft. She was insanely beautiful with every emotion that flickered across her face.

“You’re blaming everything on him as if Santana was the one keeping a huge secret from me most of my life. Like he was letting me walk around thinking my life was normal when in reality I’m the daughter of a fucking kingpin! That wasyou.Youdid that. Not Santana.

Now tell me up front…are you a kingpin?” Her lips trembled along with her words but she stood toe to toe with our father, demanding an answer from him. The girl was brave as fuck because there wasn’t a man in Pop’s ring that would do what she was doing right then. There probably wasn’t a man in Rhode Island that would stand up to him that way.

I realized that to me, Pop was intimidating as a father but to everyone, else he was intimidating as a ruthless monster. The dichotomy was difficult to grasp still.

Pop’s heavy brows fell low on his forehead and his breathing became easier as if he’d accepted that everything was in the atmosphere now and couldn’t be taken back. Sammie and Pop looked at each other, jade on emerald.

“Yes, mija. It’s true.” His words were simple and clear and if he’d said them years ago, we wouldn’t be standing there tangled in a web of anger and confusion.

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