“Listen.” I hold my hands up, palms facing outward, as I work to remind myself who I’m looking at. This is her father. She loves him. She wouldn’t want this. “I have nothing against you personally. Even when I knew you were knocking yourself out trying to pin a charge on me, I said, I get it. The man has a job to do. I ever respect it. And the only reason I could, was because I knew you’d never be able to make a charge stick. I’m too fucking smart for that. Still, I didn’t rub it in your face. Nevertheless, here you are, driving up to my house, writing checks you can’t hope to cash Are you sure this is how you want it to be?”


    A tear escapes his eye and rolls down his cheek, sparkling in the sunshine. “You ruined my daughter!” he bellows.


    Ruined her? “If she wants to be with me, she can be. She’s a grown woman who can make her own goddamn decisions. She doesn’t need her daddy telling her what to do anymore.”


    When his face falls, and he takes a staggering step back as if I’ve hit him, I realize my mistake.


    “Be… with you?” he whispers, shaking his head. “No. No, that’s not true.”


    “That’s what I said.” Fuck. There’s no taking it back now. It’s painfully obvious he did not know about us, and I just spilled the whole can of beans.


    My men back away, clearing their throats, looking at the ground while Charles stares holes through me. He’s drunk, his brain drifting, although not slow enough that he can’t put together what he heard. “She’s been with you? You… have been together?”


    I shouldn’t continue. I should send him on his way and hope his drunken state will cover up the memory, but what’s the point? He’s going to find out, eventually. I’m not hiding my rtionship with Caterina from anyone. I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. She is mine, and I will scream it from the rooftops if I have to.


    “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened, and she’s a grown woman. She can decide to be with whomever she wants. Believe it or not, your approval is not needed when ites to her happiness.”


    “How could you?” he whispers, backing away and retreating to his car. Good, let him go. If he’s lucky, he’ll wrap the damn car around a tree and put himself out of his misery. He would spare his daughter a lot of pain in the process.


    “What?” I call out after him. “Tell me what is it that’s pissing you off? Is it that you can’t face the truth that your daughter’s a


    grown


    woman? What the hell are you even here for, Charles? What did you thinking here was going to aplish? I can’t force Caterina to stay away from me, and I won’t try.”


    He slides into the front seat, one foot still on the ground–then quickly emerges, the metal of the gun in his hand shimmers in the light.


    “Boss!” Roger moves like lightning, cing himself between Charles and me while my guys rush toward him.


    “No, no!” I shout, waving my arms over my head to break things up. “No, let him feel like a man. He just found out he doesn’t have control over his daughter. He needs to feel like a big shot again. I wouldn’t dare to take that away from him.”


    “You sick son of a bitch!” He’s shaking so hard I doubt he could aim if he tried. I bet his vision is doubling by now because he keeps squinting and blinking. Surprisingly, he made it here in one piece. “First, you took my wife, and now you’re taking my daughter. When will it be enough? How many more lives do you need to destroy?” He’s so stricken<b>, </b>so defeated, I wonder for a second if he’s going to put the gun to his own head.


    Roger peers at me over his shoulder. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”


    “I don’t have the first idea.” I wave him to the side, in any case. I’ll be damned if I hide behind somebody else, especially when ites to this broken–down shell of a man. “What the hell are you talking about? I did nothing to your wife. We never met.”


    “No,”


    ,” he moans. “No! You’re a fucking liar! Is this how you sleep at night? I always wondered about criminals like you. How you can look at yourself in the mirror every day without letting the guilt eat you alive. I wonder how broken you trust be to walk through life knowing all the pain you’ve caused others.”


    “That still doesn’t exin what you’re talking about. What makes you think I did anything to your wife?”


    “Don’t y stupid. You know what you did!” he bellows. “You fucking killed her! You took her from me. One single fucking


    bullet to her head, and she was gone. It meant nothing to you, but to me… she was my person. She was a mother and a wife, but more than anything, she was innocent! She was everything to mend you took her. You fucking took her.” His voice cracks, and he crumbles, releasing a ragged sob, allowing one of my men to disarm him easily.


    That’s what he thinks happened to his wife? Now I have to go back through my memories. Has Caterina mentioned her? Did Tatiana? I do remember back in the day when the girls were young there was a time Tatiana mentioned Caterina’s mom being in heaven. If I recall correctly, it was a car ident. Perhaps Charles knows something I don’t, or maybe he’s delusional. “Charles.” My voice is lower now, drained of some of the outrage he’s stirred up. “I’m still not sure what you think I had to do with your wife’s death, though I assure you, it wasn’t me. If somebody put a bullet in your wife’s head, it didn’te from my gun. That’s not how I operate.”


    “Bullshit!” he barks. “Everything you say is a lie.”


    “Look, I had no reason to kill your wife. So what, is that why you were after me? Get in line. I can’t tell you how many times I have dealt with cops and even the feds on my ass. Do I go around killing their wives? No. Never the innocent. You might not believe it, but I do live by a code. Killing innocent people, especially women, that’s at the top of the list. I had nothing to do with it, and I’m sorry you think I did. I could have set you straight a long time ago.”


    “Stop. Enough with the lies and delusions. The only person you’re fooling is yourself. I know your type. You think you’re a good man. Only you aren’t. You’re a scourge on the earth, and now you tell me you’re fucking my daughter. All you’ll ever do is hurt her. You’re going to ruin and drag her down, and I’ll be damned if allow that to happen.”


    “None of those things are true. I love her!”


    Shit, again. Something about this asshole has me confessing to things I never intended. “I love her,” I say again, calmer this time. I’m sick of denying it, anyway. “I don’t want to hurt her. That’s thest thing I want. She means the world to me, Charles.”


    “I don’t believe you.‘


    “It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe me. It’s the truth. We both can love her.”


    “You took… everything…” He staggers, then drops to one knee. I look at Roger and jerk my chin, signaling for him to help the poor bastard up. It’s not like me to feel sympathy for somebody like him. A person so hell–bent on fucking up my life and showing up at my house to stick a gun in my face. It doesn’t really matter what I think or want, not when he’s Caterina’s father. I’m not going to kill him. I love her too much to do that. I never intended to admit it out loud, not yet. However, everyone knows now. There’s no point in hiding the truth, anyway.


    “Get him home,” I order Roger, who helps Charles to his feet. “One of you guys, follow them in Charles’s car.”


    “You can’t have her! You can’t!” Charles yells after me, and I turn away from them to walk back towards the house. I briefly catch him fighting with Roger, but he easily subdues him. I walk the remaining way into the house.


    Now he knows. Fuck, he knows the truth. I drag a hand through my hair, hoping he doesn’tsh out at her. Maybe I should warn her, but then again, I would have to exin how he came to know in the first ce. Everything will spiral, and she’ll ask questions. The idea of causing her pain… I don’t want that for her. Maybe we’ll both get lucky. He’s so drunk there’s a chance he won’t remember any of what was said when he wakes up. I trust Roger to do the right thing by him, and I’m sure he’ll be unharmed when hees to.


    e this whole


    There’s something else on my mind now, something that refuses to go unnoticed now that it’s been brought up. Why does Charles think I killed his wife, and what would make him assume I would do something like that? Part of me thinks it involves needing someone to me, but it could be something else. His wife’s been dead for years. He can’t honestly time I murdered her, right?


    A more significant questiones to mind, then. Does Caterina know what her father thinks? Did he tell her? Is that one more reason she wants nothing to do with me? It’s almost too much to handle all at once, the questions and implications and possibilities.


    Above all of it, ‘one idea rings out the loudest.


    Finding out who fired that fatal shot might go a long way toward setting things right.