Page 4 of Hidden Empire

He blows out a breath. “I was at her home today, sorting out a domestic dispute…”

“And?” I drawl before he can find the words.

“Any chance you knew her intimately ‘bout eighteen, nineteen years ago?”

The already quiet room becomes deathly silent. His question gives me the kind of gut ache no man has given me outside of torture.

“Why?” I repeat.

“There’s a girl. Her name is Jade, and she’s seventeen.” He clears his throat. “And Kim says she’s yours.”

“What the fuck?” the curse bursts out of one of my sons. I’m not even sure which because I’m struck dumb.

He drags a hand down his face. “Kim wanted to kick her out, but she’s got a few weeks left before she’s eighteen, and obviously, we couldn’t allow her to do that. She was ranting and screaming, and when we finally asked if there were any blood relatives she could task with taking her.” Breathing out, he adds, “She named you.”

My jaw ticks. “Did she?”

He nods slowly. “Gotta be honest… it was pretty fucking vile to watch. Told me like it was meant to hit Jade where it hurts. Apparently, she told Jade that her daddy didn’t want nothing to do with her and left them. She,” he pauses, losing the words.

“She what?”

That doesn’t sound like the Kim I knew at all.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t even want to repeat this shit,” he mumbles. “Kim looked her in the eye and told her that she didn’t want her, but you’d have wanted her less. That she was only sending her to you now because she was just like you, and she hoped you’d kill her.”

I… Why would I?—

“She said Moretti girls are pure, and you’d—” he struggles to speak. “Goddamnit, she said you’d kill her for being a whore.”

“Is she a whore?” my oldest, Apollo, drones.

“Apollo,” I snap. I want to reprimand him further. And I would, if he’d truly asked that question about his sister. But—do I believe this shit? Do my sons have a sister? Do I have a daughter?

I certainly wouldn’t kill her for being a whore if I did. Who the fuck does Kim think I am? A good man, most definitely not. But a kin killer? No way in hell. I’d sooner die than off one of my own.

“From what I’ve heard, no,” Brian answers anyway. “But the taunting and the revelation that she’d been lied to, it sort of made her lose it. Got a few too many swings in on Kim before I could get her off of her. She’s in the infirmary now.”

My heart stutters a beat. “Jade?”

“No, Kim.”

Matteo whistles like he’s impressed. “Damn. Go, sis.”

“We don’t know that she’s our fucking sister, idiot,” Leon tells him dryly. The gibe isn’t an entirely malicious one. My boys bicker, yes, but they’d kill, maim, or die for each other without blinking.

“You can do whatever DNA testing you want, but Dante? She’s got your eyes.”

This gets all of our attention.

Sharply, I demand, “Where is she?”

He sighs. “She’s in my car. And before you lose your shit for having her sit out there, I couldn’t very well bring her in here without explaining it first. You hear ‘potential daughter’ of yours, see her fists dry with blood, and I get a bullet to the head, no?”

I won’t tell him he’s wrong.

“She wouldn’t let me bandage her up, and she’s been stoic the whole ride. She was already a sad little thing. I answered domestic calls about Kim’s creep boyfriend all the time. Most recently, because he made a move on Jade, and she stabbed him. Don’t think she likes being touched much.”

My whiskey glass shatters on the table as I slam it down, standing up. “A man did what to her?”

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