Page 25 of Thorns of Desire

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about that.

It never ended well when I lowered my defenses. That day was shoved into a dark vault in my mind and sealed shut. It had to stay there.

“Because of the attack,” I murmured, terror from long ago pinching my chest.

One corner of her mouth turned up.

“That attack was the result of my stupidity.” Her gaze roamed over the room until it settled on the large window where the city of Seville bathed in the midday sun. “Our parents were part of the Greek mafia, running things for the Costello family in the States. Shortly after my sister, Amara, married Lykos, our parents died, and she brought me to Greece to live with her and my new brother-in-law. I was sixteen, naive, and stupid, and Lykos’s world was so different from the way we’d grownup. Men were harsher but had such charisma and appeal, it was impossible to resist them.”

My mom had told me many tales of my grandparents—both first-generation Greeks in the United States, making a life for themselves. However, she had never admitted to their involvement in the mafia. I started to wonder what else she was keeping from me.

“Is that when you met—” I swallowed a lump in my throat. She hated talking about my father, and while I couldn’t blame her, I wanted to know some of my history.

“Yes, that’s how I met your father, Atticus, about a year later.”

“How much older was he than you, Mom?”

A heartbeat passed before she answered, “Twenty years older.”

“A significant age gap,” I muttered, knowing full well it made me somewhat of a hypocrite. But there was one major difference between her scenario and mine—she was barely of age, and I was a grown woman.

“I was mature for my age,” she stated, confidence shimmering in her eyes. “I knew what I wanted, and I went after it.”

“So my father was… is… was”—I had no idea if he was alive or dead—“in the mafia?”

She smiled gently. The subject of my father had been off-limits for so long, it made me apprehensive to hear her talking so freely about it now. In fact, his first name was all I knew about him.

She gave a terse nod. “Sort of. He’s built himself quite an empire by now.” The present tense didn’t escape me. “He was making his way up the ranks then, and he sure as hell didn’t mind being ruthless if it meant coming out on top. I let myselfget swept up in his charms, too blind to see that he was trying to use me to get to my brother-in-law.”

I took her cool hands between mine and squeezed in comfort. “You couldn’t have known.”

She smiled sadly. “But I think I did. He had a wife and children.” I stiffened, learning that I had half-siblings hurting more than it should. “He hinted at his unhappiness with them, but he never really said he’d leave them for me. I conjured it all up in my mind. Anyhow, Atticus wanted information on Lykos’s routes to smuggle his product. I was so stupid and in love, I got that information for him. I went behind Lykos and my sister’s backs, not knowing Atticus was involved in human trafficking.”

I gasped at all the revelations slamming into me. Everything my mother had shared seemed like it was too far-fetched to be true, but a father who was involved in human trafficking trumped it all.

“Needless to say, my brother-in-law was furious and kicked me out. That same day, I learned I was pregnant with you.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I was at a crossroads, and I knew, unless I did something drastic, we’d end up dead or worse.”

“What did you do?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“I knew Atticus stored large amounts of cash in his home in Athens. While he was away, tending to hisfamily, I went to it. I found the cash and…”

“And?” I breathed in suspense.

She released a heavy sigh, then waved her hand. “Nothing. At the end of it all, I took enough cash to get me passage to America, and then I set fire to Atticus’s house. I burned it all to ash.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, like I said, it was dumb. Who knew what he had stored at his Athens property, and I certainly wasn’t thinking too far ahead when I set it alight. Luckily, he had no photos of me—yetanother red flag I should have seen—and he didn’t know about you, so I got us away safely.”

“Until we weren’t,” I whispered. “Safe,” I added, remembering that horrible night.

“Until we weren’t.”

TEN

MANUEL

Ithrew my jacket onto one of the tufted upholstered lounge chairs in my room and sat down on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, listening to Giovanni Agosti drone on about some issue with a supplier. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with more fuckups.