Page 40 of Chasing Danger

Whatever had caused his bodyguard to attack me, it hadn’t been on his order. In fact, if his shouting was anything to go by, the bodyguard had betrayed him.

D’Angelo and the two bodyguards eventually came to a stalemate, with him pinning Eva to the ground while the male bodyguard aimed a gun at D’Angelo.

A tense few seconds passed while nobody moved, until Eva slowly pointed at me.

“He isn’t who he says he is. His name is actually...”

I shot to my feet. “Don’t you dare. I threw that name away fifteen years ago. You have no right to bring it up again.”

As I seethed, D’Angelo was busy staring between me and the two bodyguards, trying to come to a decision. Breathing deeply to resettle himself, he removed the knife from Eva’s neck, but didn’t put it back in its sheath.

“Oliver, stay there. You two, stand over there. Everyone’s going to calm down and explain to me what the hell is going on.”

The two bodyguards and I were put on opposite sides of the room, with D’Angelo standing in the middle. I couldn’t tell who was protecting who at this point, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to hear that name again, but I had no way to stop them.

“We did a deeper background check on Oliver Grant, as you requested,” Gavriil explained while Eva just nodded while rubbing her neck. “And some unexpected information came up.”

An odd squawking sound escaped my mouth. I would have been embarrassed over the noise, but I was too distracted by my anger. “You ordered them to do a background check on me?”

D’Angelo wasn’t nearly as ashamed by that fact as I thought he should be, meaning he wasn’t ashamed at all. He just waved away that admission as if it were trivial. “I have background checks done on everyone I get involved with. It’s necessary. More than one assassin has tried to kill me by worming their way into my bed.”

“Right.” I let the word drip off my lips, not sure what to do with it or what I should say next. “Fine. I understand... I guess. But that still doesn’t explain why she tried to kill me.”

Eva didn’t answer me. In fact, she seemed to be pretending that I wasn’t there. Instead, she spoke directly to D’Angelo.

“Boss, he’s been lying to you. His name isn’t Oliver Grant. It’s Oliver Radcliffe. His father was Arturo Radcliffe.”

As soon as that name left her mouth, hatred boiled up out of my stomach and spread through my veins like poison. My hand moved of its own accord, grabbing a book off a nearby shelf and throwing it across the room at her.

“Don’t say that name. That bastard has nothing to do with me. He walked out on us right after the fire and I never heard from him again, so I never want to hear his name again, either. My Mom went back to her maiden name, and we got on much better pretending he didn’t exist.”

The book hadn’t come close to hitting her. She didn’t even have to move to avoid it, so nothing blocked her gaze when she finally looked at me. “That doesn’t explain why your birth certificate was changed. Your father is listed as unknown.”

“I don’t know.” I took a step across the room, as if to confront her, but then thought better of it and returned back to my safe place against the wall. “Like I said, we pretended like he didn’t exist. My Mom probably had it changed so we could all forget about him.”

“Hold on.” D’Angelo stepped between us, blocking my line of sight to the pair of bodyguards so all I saw was his face in profile. He was obviously very confused. “Why are we arguing about this? I’ve never heard the name Arturo Radcliffe before. Why is it important?”

Very cautiously, like he was stepping onto thin ice, Gavriil approached D’Angelo and held out his phone. “You would never have dealt with him directly before, but he was a low-level enforcer for the Vidales family.”

“What?” D’Angelo snatched the phone from Gavriil’s hands.

In contrast to D’Angelo’s sudden burst of movement, I remained frozen.

“Who’re the Vidales family?”

As D’Angelo scrolled through the information on the phone, he gave me a brief summary. The Italian mafia was not just one family, but several families arranged in a hierarchy. The Mariano family sat at the top, controlling everyone else, while the Bianchi family and the Vidales family held equal positions of power just below the top. Although part of the sameorganization, D’Angelo’s family and the Vidales family were, in a way, rivals.

And apparently my father was a member of this hierarchy.

“No.” I shook my head wildly side to side. “No. My father worked at the harbor. He was a dock worker. He wasn’t... He wasn’t this.” I gestured uselessly at D’Angelo, as if that would explain everything.

D’Angelo regarded me for a moment, then he held out the phone with a carefully neutral expression. “See for yourself.”

With trembling hands, I took the phone. There, right on the screen, sat a picture of my father. He looked exactly as I remembered, and yet somehow completely different. His eyes were the same color as mine, and our noses were the same shape. His ears even stuck out a little like mine did. Yet, in the picture, he looked rough in a way I’d never seen before. A black eye along with several other cuts and bruises made him look like he’d just gotten out of a fight, and he glared directly at the camera. I was so shocked at first that I didn’t immediately notice that the picture was a mugshot.

Listed below the picture was a horrifyingly impressive arrest record.

Drug dealing.

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