Page 196 of The Enslaved Duet

Or so I’d thought.

Sitting across from him now, his long body leaning against the expensive leather interior as if he’d been born to riches, his lips half-smiling as he sipped from a glass of champagne, I had to wonder if he’d come back to ruin my life all over again.

“Celebrating something?” I asked before I could help myself.

I’d taken my knife from his neck, but that didn’t mean I was eager for a chummy father/daughter catch up.

“I’m reuniting with my long-lost daughter. I would say that’s reason to celebrate,” he proclaimed with the same level of showmanship he always had, as if everything in his life was happening just as he wished it to.

“I believe I told you I never wanted to see you again,” I reminded him, proud of my composure when my insides roiled like a washing machine filled with rocks.

“As a matter of fact, you told me never to see the rest of our family again,” he corrected with that smug mischievous twinkle in his dark grey eyes. “A promise I’ve upheld.”

“Am I supposed to commend you for that? It’s the first promise you’ve ever kept and the only kind thing you’ve ever done for our family.”

I felt physically ill with resentment as I stared at his creased, handsome face arranged in his coy, carefree smirk.

Did nothing matter to this man?

Was he just as sociopathic as Noel, but cut into a different shape by his emotional impotence?

“You should.” He cocked his head, a thick hank of ginger hair falling into eyes the very same dark grey as Elena’s. “Do you think it is easy for a father to abandon his family?”

“Do you think it’s easy to be abandoned?” I shot back, leaning forward to bare my teeth at him. “And don’t give me anycazzateabout me forcing you to leave. You abandoned your responsibilities to our family long before you actually left Napoli.”

For the first time, he frowned at me, obviously put out by my attitude. “Cosi, I would think you are old enough to know I did the best I could, given the circumstances.”

“I would think you’d know I’m old enough not to buy wholesale into your lies. You fucked us over all our lives, and now you’re back, to what?”

“I wasn’t in a good…position to help you much before now, but I have the means to make a difference to your life and I want to help. Especially with the situation you’ve embroiled yourself in. Honestly,carina, I taught you to be shrewder than all this.”

“All this?” The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end in the suddenly electric air. “What do you know about my life?”

“More than you might think,” he said with this sly, trickster smile.

“Don’t be a smugbastardo. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Oh, but I do,” he said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his thighs, the expensive material of his suit gleaming in the low light. I noted the luxury David Yurman watch on his wrists and wondered how my terminally poor father could have afforded it. “I’ve been watching you for years, since I had to hand you over to that British swine.”

“What?” I asked, mouthing the words because my voice had fled.

“It wasn’t always easy,” he confided, both casually and conspiratorially, the contrast so Seamus that I had to blink away the feeling of déjà vu. “Those Davenports have some good security, but a cousin of mine lives in Manchester. Wasn’t too inconvenient to drive down to Thornton and get the village gossip about the big bad Davenports up in the grand house.” He paused, sliding his eyes out the window just as pain flashed through them. “Heard you lost the baby. I’m so sorry,carina.”

Something about the way he said that abraded my flesh like nails over a chalkboard. I shuddered, biting my tongue in the process so that when I spoke, it was with blood on my teeth. “How did you know about the baby?”

My dad flashed me a sharp-toothed grin, shark-like but cartoonish as though he’d studied it. “Who do you think paid the good ole doctor to switch out your birth control?”

Thundered rumbled through my head, the rush of blood so fierce I thought I would pass out. I couldn’t comprehend his words, and my body went numb with shock.

“Why would you do something like that?” I breathed, sucker punched.

Seamus finally shed the act, scooting forward on his seat to take my limp hands in his, chafing my cold skin between his rough palms. His fingernails were short and misshapen, never having healed from when Tossi pulled them out with pliers. The physical contact seeped through my astonishment and brought my riotous emotions to the surface. First, unexpectedly, was nostalgia. I’d forgotten that my dad could be affectionate when he was around to be so. I’d missed it without even realizing it, and I felt some shame at taking comfort from the very man who had set me up to need it in the first place.

“I put you in an…impossible situation, Cosi. I know it. I own it. You made the ultimate sacrifice for your family. I knew leaving was best for everyone, but how could I leave you all alone with those beasts? I did what I could from afar. Figured if you had the creep’s baby, it would give you some measure of power.”

The creep’s baby.

I squeezed my eyes shut as molten tears swamped my ducts and scorched trails down my cheeks.