Page 147 of Thorns of Silence

“Shouldn’t we take them to court?” I suggested again, and both of them shot me a wry look. “Well, we have a leg to stand on. I never signed the papers, and I was over eighteen.”

“You’d be okay sending your grandmother to jail?” Cesar asked curiously.

“To keep Skye, absolutely.” My words were shitty, but they were already out in the open and there was no retracting them. Cesar and Dante tensed, their faces hardened. “You think I should forgive her?” Cesar opened his mouth to say something, but Dante shot him a glare. “What?”

Cesar avoided looking at me, so I glared at Dante.

“It’s nothing important.” The way Cesar’s body flinched told me it was.

“If it’s not important, then tell me,” I signed, agitated.

“We didn’t come here to ruin our time.” Dante’s muscles were pulled tight to the point of exploding.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “But we also didn’t come here to bury our heads in the sand.”

Cesar nodded. “Might as well tell her.”

“Yes, tell me,” I demanded.

Dante rubbed the back of his neck and muttered something under his breath. I imagined they were very colorful words.

“We found a note in your grandmother’s safe,” he finally said. My brows furrowed, watching him and waiting for an explanation. “It was to my father from her. It was dated right before the kidnapping.”

I swallowed. “You think she might have had something to do with your kidnapping?”

I wanted to believe my grandma wasn’t capable of something so sinister, but after witnessing her scrutiny of my mamma and the way she manipulated the system to get rid of my baby, I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.

“It sure as fuck looks like it,” Cesar stated with a grim expression.

Disappointment and anger made for a heavy heart. Throat thick, I forced all my emotions down and met my husband’s eyes.“Let’s ask her, then.”

* * *

It took about twenty minutes for Dante to reroute our IP address so it’d be hard for anyone to trace.Not impossible, he’d said. Just very difficult.

I punched in my grandma’s number and waited for the signal to connect. It rang and rang, and just as I was about to hang up, her face appeared. Her eyes widened when she saw me. She was probably expecting to never hear from me again.

“Is everything okay?” She seemed distraught. Concerned even.

I went straight into attack mode.

“Did you arrange for Dante Leone to be kidnapped?” Her expression froze, and I knew I had my answer. It was written in her eyes and every line of her face. She betrayed us. She cost us five years. “How could you?”

“It was for your own good.” Her eyes glimmered, but I didn’t trust her tears. She was an actress through and through.

“How did you know it was him? That he was the father of my baby?” I demanded. “I never gave you his name.” She didn’t answer, and the fury inside my chest grew tenfold. “Tell me. Or I swear to God, you won’t have any family left after I’m done with you.”

“I had you followed.”

I sensed Cesar and Dante’s bodies tense next to me, but all my attention was on my grandma’s face. I didn’t want a single flicker of emotion to escape me.

“He was going to take care of me. How could you betray me like that? Him? Our unborn child?”

The ache in my chest became unbearable.

“I promised your mamma I’d take care of you. She’s probably rolling in her grave right now seeing both of her daughters married to mobsters.”

“So you sent him to be tortured?” I was furious, and the buzzing in my brain was getting louder by the second.