She bolts away from me, moving to Ethan’s side, but she looks a little more distressed now, less angry. “My father and I don’t really have much of a relationship,” she tells me. “He’s not a great person, obviously.”
“He’s scum, is what he is,” I inform her, meeting her gaze.
Dropping mine, as if embarrassed by her own connection to him, she nods.
“She already knows that,” Ethan states, wrapping a protective arm around Willow. She wraps an arm around him, leaning into his side for comfort.
“Just making sure we’re all on the same page,” I tell him.
“We are,” he assures me, nodding.
“I want Willow to call him,” I state, glancing from him to her. “I want you to ask him to meet you, tell him it’s important, you have big news, something to lure him out.”
“Why?” she asks, quietly.
I’m sure she already knows why. “He won’t bring a heavy entourage to meet you,” I state. “He’s come completely unguarded in the past. I doubt he will now, but… he’ll probably bring a body guard, nothing more.”
“I can’t do that,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s a bad man, I know that, but I can’t… You want me to help you kill him, and I can’t do that.”
I glance to Ethan. He looks a little less sure—like he agrees with her, but only because he loves her, not because he’d be even a little sad about Antonio’s passing.
Sighing, I drop my gun hand, letting it point at the ground. It’s time for the big guns, not the little metal one.
“I’ve met your brother a few times over the years, but most recently when he came to me with this crazy idea that my boss was behind your abduction and subsequent… abuse.”
Willow’s eyes widen and her cheeks flush. I feel bad bringing it up, letting her know I know, but I need to tap into any negative emotions that whole experience stirred in her.
Ethan’s grip on her tightens, another protective impulse. None of her negative emotions seem to be wrapped up in him somehow, even when I mention that—even when he was the perpetrator. This doesn’t surprise me as much as it should. Obviously I’ve been working for Mateo for too long.
There’s no shielding her from the truth, though. Not now.
“Because my boss doesn’t like being blamed for shit he didn’t do, and because I don’t like men who abuse women, I decided to use some of my free time to do a little digging. As far as I could tell, nobody ever figured out who was behind what happened to you.” I watch Ethan now, to see if he does know. I’m sure he looked into it, but I don’t know what he found. Judging by his expression, I don’t think he knows.
Then he can’t help asking, “Did you find anything?”
“I did,” I say, nodding. “I didn’t care so much back then, and once your brother realized where I was going with it, he didn’t want my help anymore—probably easier to just ignore things. So, I left it alone. Wasn’t my problem, and I have enough of my own.” I pause, pressing my lips firmly together for a moment. “But now it is my problem. People are dying because of your father—a lot of people. And they’re going to keep dying if something isn’t done. And so, while I really hate having to tell you this, Willow… your abduction was funded by your father.”
Her head starts shaking slowly, but it doesn’t stop. She just shakes and shakes and shakes her head, rejecting what I’ve just said.
“Yes,” I say, with a single nod.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ethan demands, stunned.
I shake my head. “It was his first attempt to turn his family on Mateo. Tito used to work for us—for Delmonico, he had him on his crew. Fired him, because Tito’s a liability and we don’t really keep on liabilities. Antonio picked him up, had him assemble a crew under the guise of still working for Delmonico. None of you assholes needed much proof, I guess. When the job was done, Castellanos killed off everyone who could talk—everyone but you, because Willow wouldn’t let him, from what I understand.”
“Why?” Willow asks, her voice small. “How could you…?”
“He knew that coming after his children would be enough to ignite a war. He thought he could kill everyone off, make it look like Mateo just covered his tracks, and then no one would’ve been the wiser. Problem is, Salvatore was smart enough to bring it to us. To get all the facts before engaging a war. The facts weren’t on Antonio’s side.”
“But why me?” she asks, shaking her head again. “Why me?”
Shrugging apologetically, I tell her, “I can’t say with absolute certainty, but if I had to guess, he wanted one of his kids hit, just… not one he was close to, in case it all went bad.”