Page 98 of The Enslaved Duet

“Don’t speak about something you know nothing about, girl. If you want to cast stones before you know the true story, I’ll send you back to your mother and you can return to England empty-handed.”

I felt like a chastened child as I sat there struggling not to pout and glare in equal turn. Finally, I crossed my arms tightly over my anxious chest and tilted my chin at him to go on.

Dante chuckled. “She looks just like you doing that.”

We both shot him glares that made him hold up his hands in surrender even though his eyes danced.

Salvatore turned back to me, his eyes scouring my face like an artist ready to commit me to paper.

“I won’t get into the backstory with Caprice. Your mother and I met when we were both very young. She already had two children by your father, but I was infatuated with her beauty and her mind. I wanted to take her and the girls away with me, but for many reasons, that wasn’t to be. I didn’t even know you and Seb were born until years after our tryst. I’d moved to Venice to join an outfit there, and I was moving up in the ranks when an old friend sent me a picture of you and Sebastian. You must have been only three years old, but you looked so much like me, I knew it the moment I set eyes on you.”

“I can’t believe Mama wouldn’t have told you,” I protested because the woman I knew was not duplicitous or immoral.

She went to church every Sunday and prayed before bed each night, sometimes so fervently I wondered what kind of conversations she held daily with her God.

“She didn’t tell me because she knew what kind of man I was,” Salvatore said, his voice raised with passion. “If I had known she was pregnant, I would have spirited her away where Seamus could never find us.”

His fist hit the table with a clatter as he dislodged a plate filled with cheeses and bowl of olives shattered on the flagstones below us.

“When I found out, I flew back to Napoli, but Caprice refused to acknowledge my paternity, and it was obvious even Seamus had no idea. I moved back and tried to become as much a part of your lives as she and my job would let me.”

“It wasn’t enough,” I said quietly.

I could read the tragedy in the set of his shoulder and the opaque helplessness in his eyes, but I only had so much sympathy for an adulterer, a mafia man, and the person who sold me.

“Caprice would only accept money when she didn’t have enough to put food on the table for you kids.” He shook his head in frustration, but there was a glimmer of pride in his smile. “She was always so stubborn. And I kept Seamus from being murdered time after time, so often that uncomfortable questions were raised about why I cared so much for him and his fate.”

“Another black mark against you,” I said. “We would have been better off if he was dead.”

“That’s not true. It was the only time your mother begged me for anything; the first time Seamus was brought before me to be killed. She showed up at my compound with your little hand in hers, and she promised I could visit sometimes if I promised to save her husband’s life.” His smile was self-deprecating. “I agreed on the spot.”

“That doesn’t explain why you allowed me to be sold for his gambling debts,” I retorted.

I needed to latch on to something concrete as the world shifted beneath my feet like quicksand.

Dante grinned. “I think I can help with that one. You see, Alexander has been convinced that Tore killed Mum for years because Noel told him so. He’s set Interpol, MI6, andPolizia di Statoon us like fucking leeches, and he’s even tried to get people in our organization. For years, we’ve had an alert set up in case anyone searches your name or Sebastian’s, and when he found out who you were last August, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“I don’t understand,” I breathed, my lungs two wrung out dishtowels in my chest.

Because I thought I did understand.

Alexander had bought me to infiltrate the Camorra.

But the Camorra had sold me to infiltrate Pearl Hall.

My mind spun, filled with dirty water circling a clogged drain.

“We sold you to Alexander so you could find out the Davenport secrets, and we could finally prove that Noel was the one to kill Chiara,” Dante explained, so excited about his mastermind plan that he failed to note how pale I was.

“And what about Alexander? Do you want to implicate him in any crimes as well?”

“The entire fucked-up Order of Dionysus needs to be dismantled. They covered up Chiara’s death, and the deaths of all the other poor women Noel and the brothers used as slaves.” Finally, Dante hesitated, his eyes sharpening on my face. “Alexander is my brother, so I can understand your recalcitrance, but he might just have to go down with the ship.”

“That’s why you helped me in The Hunt and tried to step in at Pearl Hall,” I said as the domino pieces began to fall into place. “You were protecting me even as you were using me.”

“Exactly,” Dante said with a bright smile before looking at Salvatore. “She’s too smart to be your kid.”

I ignored him.