“So, is this why you asked me here?” He gives the file a slight shake. “To air out all of Christian and Elias’s dirty laundry to me?”
“Part of the reason,” I admit with a shrug. “You deserve to know what happened to your daughters. You’ll find one marked for Kenzi as well.”
“Kendra tells me she is doing well at college.” He seems puzzled that I would have anything to hand over when it comes to the daughter who he believes is on the other side of the pond living a normal college student life.
“Kenzi never made it to college.”
Dante swears.
“Kendra either has her head buried in the sand or is complicit in her own daughter’s sale.”
“Sale?”
“Elias sold her to the Chameleon Agency.”
Dante’s face pales beneath his Italian coloring. It is apparent he knows who they are or at least has heard the name.
“You’re wrong,” he jeers. “He would never do that. Elias knew their reputation. Why would he...?”
“Get rid of the one daughter that is of no use to him?” I mock. “Did you bother to even contemplate whether or not your brother suspected an affair? That maybe he knew that Kenzi and Libby weren’t his? He kept Libby because she was useful. Kenzi wasn’t and Elias only kept around things that were useful.”
“So why did he keep you around then?”
Well, that stings like a bitch. Rage thunders through me at his callousness. I almost walk away. Almost.
A new wave of anger sweeps over me as I think back to all the times he knew about my predicament and never once thought to help.
Nope.
This useless bitch is gone.
Sayonara, fucker.
“Wait,” Dante calls out as I turn on my heel to begin walking back toward the shore. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Turning, I raise a brow at him, incredulity written on my face easier to read than a neon stripper sign.
“You think?”
“I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this, Ava,” he fumes. Dante runs his hand angrily through his hair, stressing the roots, his jaw clenched. “You’re telling me my own nephew not only murdered his sister but also committed patricide and my brother sold off one of my daughters. That’s a lot for anyone to take in.”
My lips curl into a snarl, gaze hardening as I think back to all the information I’ve been slammed with in the last few months. “Oh?” I bare my teeth at him and let the bottled-up rage unleash itself. “You mean like finding out the man who called himself my father since I was eleven, who beat me and tortured me, was in fact, not my father but the one who abducted, sold, and then bought my mother? That he raped her and used her. The man who sold me so that his precious son could live?”
Dante stands stunned before me, unable to form any words. His lips press into a thin line.
“How about how the man I thought was my brother brushed up against me time after time when I was growing up? Who threatened to rape me? You want to know what he did to me when he told you herescuedme?”
That fucking word gets air quotes and everything.
“He woke me up with a stun gun. Or a cattle prod. Sometimes with a whip. Hell, one day I woke up to him trying to drown me,” my voice has risen, silent tears tracking down my cheeks. The look of horror on his face doesn’t help. He honestly had no clue what Christian did to me. “After the funeral, he told Eduardo to rape me so I would learn my place. You want to know what I did?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “I smashed his skull in with a rock. I killed him, Dante. Ended him. And it wasn’t enough. Because every person involved is going to bleed.”
Might have left out that one of those people is going to be Kenzi.
I doubt Dante will take well to me wanting to kill his only remaining daughter.
“Is your mind scrambled yet, Dante?” I mock. “Hear enough? Because I’ve got more where that comes from.”
There are a lot of things running through my head in that moment about what he might do. Scoffing and brushing me off is one of them. Attempting to kill me is another. Maybe he will simply nod his head in acceptance and take it all in stride.