Page 73 of Blood Money

“Go on, make some coffee.” I told him as I shut the bedroom door and demanded Vito tell me everything he knew.

34

LIAM

“Tell me everything you know about your father and don’t keep anything back. If I find out you’re lying, you’ll never walk out of here.”

“What’s going on, Val? I don’t understand.”

He glared at me. “Start talking.”

Tears stung my eyes. Why was he acting like this? “I already told you what happened to him. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“What did he really do for work?”

“He was an accountant. I already told you that. What’s going on?”

He closed his eyes and squeezed the back of the chair across from me. The way he was looming over me, so suddenly angry, made me want to run. It was the first time I’d been seriously afraid of him since the day he’d agreed to let me work at Pound.

“Did he ever take you to work with him?” Val’s voice was even now, some of the tension seemed to have drained from him. “Or talk to you about his work?”

“No, he didn’t really share things with us. He was a decent dad, but he wasn’t very involved. All I knew was he went to the office in the morning and came home at night. I wasn’t really interested in the intricacies of it. His work sounded pretty boring.”

Val looked like he was trying not to smile, which made me feel a little better. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Val ignored me. “Did he go on business trips?”

“Why are you interested in my father?”

“You truly have no idea?”

“No, I don’t. He occasionally went to conferences or to visit clients. He was in corporate accounting, I think.” Why did I not know more? Was that weird?

Val shook his head. “Your father wasn’t really an accountant. That was a cover. He was a man much like me, except he worked for the Irish.”

The room spun as my vision narrowed. Did I hear that right? My father was a mobster? No. It couldn’t be true. “I…I think you’re confused.”

“The accident wasn’t an accident; it was murder.”

I shook my head. “No.” My heart pounded so I hard I thought it might explode. “No, that can’t be true.”

Suddenly Val was there on his knees in front of me he took hold of my hands and pulled them from my face. “Focus on me.”

I tried but the room was spinning too fast.

I stared into Val’s eyes. He was speaking but I couldn’t hear the words, then the darkness closed in and there was nothing.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was a ceiling fan above my head and a cold sensation on my forehead.

“Liam? Thank God you’re awake.” It was Val. I realized he was sitting next to me.

“What happened?”

“You passed out? Do you remember?” He lifted the cold cloth for my forehead and drew it across my cheeks and over my throat. “Do you need some water?”

“No. Maybe.” Everything came back to me slowly. Val got a call from Vito, and he was angry with me, but I didn’t know why. Then he told me my father wasn’t who I thought he was. “I think I remember now.”

“I’m so sorry I was angry with you. I thought…For a moment, I thought you knew everything and that you were playing with me.”

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