Stumbling into his chest as his arms wrap tightly around me, the soft scent of leather and smoke ensconcing me is not what I expect. One hand cradles the back of my head while another rubs soothingly down my back.
“I should have done more,” he croaks. Guilt and regret are choking him. Something wet hits the top of my head and I belatedly realize he is crying. Dante Romano, head of the Italian mafia, is crying. “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry,piccolina.”
Shit. Now I am crying even harder.
It is cathartic.
Cleansing.
Exactly what I have been needing. To know that someone I grew up with cared and it wasn’t all a carefully placed façade.
“What do you need from me?” He pulls back, his thumbs wiping at the tears along my cheeks. Fuck, have any of my men seen me crying? My gaze darts around the docks. “No one but Vas saw anything.” He assures me.
Oops.
Dante smiles proudly. “I know you didn’t come alone, Ava,” he says. “It is expected. I am not alone either.” I let out a nervous laugh that is wobbly and wet from crying.
“So,” he starts again. “What do you need? I am at your service.”
“This man.” I pull out a picture of my grandfather from the stack of papers I gave him. “His name is Seamus McDonough, he’s…”
“Your biological grandfather,” he finishes for me.
Nodding, I keep going. “In her journal Libby mentioned Elias talking to a man about me. She identified him as the ‘man with the silver cane’.”
“What does that have to do with Seamus McDonough?” he queries looking at the picture again.
“At the gala I saw him and my grandmother.” I take out another picture that Mark managed to obtain from the gala’s security cameras. “Look at what he is using.”
“Okay…” skepticism colors his voice. “There are plenty of canes out there that have a silver cross on them.”
“That’s true,” I admit. “But look at the emblem just beneath it carved into the wood.” Dante still doesn’t look convinced.
Not yet anyway.
“Now,” I flip to the photograph of Madam Therese. “Look at this cane.”
His forehead puckers, eyes darting between the pages as he takes in every detail he can.
“Do you recognize her?” I ask him. “Or the symbol?”
Dante shakes his head. “No,” he sighs. “But I’ve met Seamus McDonough before, and he never had a cane. Certainly never needed one, but, shit, it’s been nearly twenty-five years since I last saw him.”
That gets my attention.
“Where was this?”
Dante thinks about it for a moment, his eyes flickering up as he recalls the memory. “In Boston. My father was still alive and runningla familgiaat the time. He wanted to show me the ropes and help to secure a new merger.”
Merger?
“What year was this?”
“1996, I think.”
The year my mother went missing.
“Was your father looking at merging with McDonough Shipping Corp?” Part of me already knows the answer.