Page 23 of The Rise of Saint (The Sins of Saint 1)

My lips parted as I gaped in disbelief. “Is this some bullshit joke you’re trying to pull on me right now?”

Long fingers weaved together as he clutched his hands. “Do I look like the kind of man who bullshits?”

It was impossible for me to make any sense of what he was trying to tell me, and I shook my head. “This can’t be happening.”

He held up a hand, silencing me. “Let me finish. Giovanni Russo and Roberto Torres were close friends. Roberto was on the verge of bankruptcy, risking losing everything he owned, and that included Torres Shipping. Giovanni gave him the money he needed to save his company without expecting repayment. All he asked was that the two families would become one in the form of an arranged marriage.”

“Jesus Christ.” I sighed. “Besides the fact that this is completely ludicrous, why so specific, a Russo son and Torres daughter? Why not vice versa?”

“Because the Russos hadn’t had a firstborn daughter in centuries. They were known for their long legacy of firstborn sons—sons who became even more powerful than their ancestors.”

I pulled both hands through my hair, thinking I should pinch myself and wake up from this sixteenth-century hell. “Okay, let’s say I believe you. This was eighty-six years ago. What does this have to do with me now?”

Saint placed his elbows on the armrests, clutching his fists together in front of him. “As fate would have it, after the deal was made, the Torres family never had another daughter as a firstborn.” He licked his lips. “And the deal specifically said it had to be a firstborn child.”

With wary eyes, I stared back at him. “I’m not going to like the next part, am I?”

“You, Mila, were the first firstborn Torres girl in years.”

Sand scraped down my throat as I swallowed. My hands shook, and I didn’t think I was ever this terrified in my entire life, my body flushing from hot to cold, and back to hot in seconds.

Saint shrugged. “Unfortunately, as the years went by without a Torres daughter to complete the deal, conflict developed between the two families.”

“What conflict?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is your parents refused to uphold their family’s part of the deal. The day after you were born, they made a public announcement saying their daughter, Milana Katarina Torres, died less than two hours after birth.”

I sucked in a breath. “No,” I whispered.

“They shipped you off to the United States. Placed you in the foster system, going on pretending you had died, all because they refused to have their daughter marry the newest firstborn Russo son.”

I jumped up from my seat, my head spinning with the worst case of vertigo I ever had. “Are you saying they gave me up because they didn’t want me marrying some Russo firstborn?”

All he gave me was a simple nod, and I started pacing, my thoughts racing at a thousand miles per second.

“Who…I mean,” my voice shook, “there had to be a reason they’d rather give me up than see me marry a Russo.”

More tapping of his finger, a slow, rhythmic thud. “They were too selfish, willing to do anything to show the Russos they had no intention of keeping to the deal—including giving up their own flesh and blood.”

Unshed tears made my throat feel thick and narrow, my insides coiled tight, barbed wire threatening to slice my gut to pieces. “This can’t be. This can’t be it.” Disbelief clouded my head in a mist of doubt. “This can’t be the reason my mom and dad gave me up.”

He shrugged as if what he just told me was as simple as one plus one. “It’s the truth.”

“They sent me off, not knowing where I’d end up, all because they didn’t want me fulfilling a decades-old debt? That’s insane.”

I sat back down in the chair, roughly pulling my hair back out of my face. Tears had already escaped, and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. “Did they send you to find me? My parents. Is that why you took me?”

A silence as heavy as a thunderstorm slammed down around us, all the air suddenly sucked out of the room.

“No, Mila. They didn’t send me.”

My eyes narrowed as suspicion swirled with dizzying waves in my belly. “Then why? Why did you come for me? Why now?”

As always, his expression remained unreadable, like he felt nothing while he told me the real reason I had to survive one fucked-up foster family after the other—why I had to fight for my own survival since I could fucking walk.

He sat up, strong elbows placed on the desk in front of him, his every feature as hard as stone. “For over twenty years, the Russo family thought the Torres girl died at birth, until an anonymous letter addressed to the firstborn Russo son stated that Milana Katarina Torres was indeed alive, hidden somewhere in the United States.”

Realization dawned on me like lightning cracking through a storm. “Segreto. That’s why you call mesegreto.”

---