Page 40 of Wicked Rivals

“Are you my dad?”

Nothing like getting straight to the point.

“I think so,” I said. “We can do a DNA test to make sure.”

He shook his head without breaking eye contact.

“We can, I guess. But I don’t think we have to.”

I finished my drink and set the crystal tumbler on the coffee table between us.

“No, neither do I.”

“She has a picture of you in a drawer at home. She thinks I never saw it. You look different in the picture. Younger or happier or something. But I still think it’s you.”

I was confident I knew exactly which photo it was. The day we had taken it, Val and I were on the same couch I used earlier to shield us from bullets. She’d made a joke I couldn’t remember now, but I remembered how surprised I was to hear her making dirty jokes at all.

Then she pulled out her camera and snapped the candid photo of us together. It had perfectly captured her beautiful smile, aimed directly at the lens, and my face turning away mid-laugh.

She’d said she would send it to me, but she never did.

“So what are you gonna do about all this?” he asked, pulling me from the memory.

“I don't know. I didn’t know about you until a few hours ago. I don't even know your name. I mean, she called you Enzo earlier. Is that right?”

“Yeah. My name is Enzo Salvatore Salera. Why didn't she tell you about me?”

I pulled in a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to answer. I knew I should tell him to ask his mother instead of me, but the boy deserved answers from us both, didn’t he?

He deserved whatever truth I could give him.

I couldn’t help but wonder just how intentional his middle name had been.

Val had known me as Stefano Salvatore before she discovered the truth—the fake last name I’d given her to hide who I really was. Was that where the name had come from? Was that her way of admitting to the world who Enzo’s father really was?

“Your mother and I weren't together very long,” I said. “I wasn’t completely honest with her back then about who I am, and when she found out on her own, she left me.”

“Well, who are you?”

That question shouldn’t have thrown me as much as it did. How could I answer that honestly? How could I tell the child I was a criminal, a mafia boss? That I ran one of the most vicious family businesses on the East Coast? That my family traded in arms, drugs, extortion, and bribed city officials?

I cleared my throat and settled for the middle ground.

“I'm a man whose family obligation dictates his life more than I would have liked.”

“That’s why Mama left and hid me from you? Because of your obligations?”

“I believe so, yes.”

We stared at each other, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave it at that. This boy, however clever he thought he was, however strong, still needed to understand the type of world he’d just entered. The type of danger that now defined his very existence.

“You should know that being my son comes with risks. A significant number of them. More so if you were legitimate, if your mother and I had married before you were born. But the fact remains, a lot of things are going to change for you. There are significant benefits, but also sizable drawbacks.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to marry her?”

The lump in my throat urged me to turn him away, cast him out of my study this very fucking second, end this conversation before this child’s uncanny ability to draw these truths out of me like water from a faucet undid what remained of my composure.

But I couldn’t.

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