Page 43 of Fierce Secrets

"Yes it is! It's not that hard to tell me the truth, Gray!" I ended the call before he could respond, my hands shaking with anger and frustration.

The sound of the shower running upstairs reminded me that Sofia had promised explanations too. But would they be real ones? Or more carefully constructed half-truths?

I was tired of being protected from whatever truth everyone seemed so desperate to hide.

The phone rang, and I went to reject the call until I noticed it said 'Unknown Number'. It wasn't Gray calling back to argue.

"Hello?"

"We know what really happened to your father." The voice was distorted, mechanical. "If you want to keep it buried, you better start paying."

My heart stopped, and I rose from the stool I was on, glancing around Sofia's place uneasily. "Who is this?"

The line went dead, but seconds later my phone buzzed with incoming photos. I opened them, then wished I hadn't.

A screen capture of a security feed from the looks of it, but I recognized the location, and my father. Blood pooled beneath his bruised and broken body on the concrete floor of our childhood home's garage. But what made my heart falter most, was the young man standing over him.

Leo. Even though he was staring down at my father, I recognized him instantly. The phone slipped from my nerveless fingers as a memory slammed into me with the force of a freight train.

That night. The night everything changed.

My father's fist connecting with my face, the taste of blood in my mouth. His alcohol-soaked breath as he screamed that I looked just like her. Just like my mother. That it was my fault she was gone.

Gray and Leo bursting in, their faces transforming with rage when they saw me on the floor. The sickening sounds of fists hitting flesh as they beat him. The way his body had gone limp, but they didn't stop.

"Help me get him to the garage," Leo's voice, colder than I'd ever heard it.

Gray turning to me, blood on his knuckles. "Go to your room, Mer. We'll fix this."

I'd obeyed, crawling under my bed like I always did when Father came looking for me with that darkness in his eyes. The same spot I'd hidden in whenever Gray wasn't home, whenever the whiskey made my father see my mother in my face.

"Never again."

The memory released me, leaving me gasping on Sofia's kitchen floor. My phone lay beside me, those horrible photos still glowing on the screen.

They hadn't just beaten my father that night.

They'd killed him.

"I'll always protect you."

CHAPTER 16

LEO

The safe-house was too quiet now, empty without Meredith's presence. I spread the files across the dining table, each one a potential suspect in our current nightmare. Someone was trying to squeeze money out of us, claiming they had evidence about Anthony Cassaro's death.

My first kill outside the family business. My sloppiest.

I took a drink of whiskey, remembering that night with crystal clarity. The rage that had consumed me when I saw Meredith on that kitchen floor, blood on her face, that bastard standing over her. Gray and I had lost control, letting our fists do what years of her suffering had demanded.

But moving the body, dealing with it, that had been messy. We were young, running on adrenaline and fury. Still, my father had helped clean it up, and that night, Gray had been welcomed into our world. No longer just my best friend, but a true member of the Donati family. All because Anthony Cassaro had been stupid enough to try skimming money from my father's accounts while managing our financials.

The irony wasn't lost on me that Meredith had pursued the same career path. Some twisted attempt to make her fatherproud, even in death. A father who'd never deserved her devotion.

My hand tightened around the glass as memories surfaced – fourteen-year-old Meredith showing her father straight A's, only to have him grunt and turn away. Her perfect piano recital that he'd missed because he was drunk at home. She'd given up playing after that. The way she'd still try to make him breakfast every Sunday, even after he'd thrown the plate at the wall the week before.

She'd been such a good child, so desperate for his approval. And that bastard had never seen what was right in front of him.

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