“I’m surprised you believed the kid was Dante’s.”

“I’m not a fool,” she snapped. “I’d seen this happen before in our circle; a rich man dies and a pregnant whore comes forward claiming the child is his. Before I offered her any financial compensation, I set up an in-utero DNA test. Those results validated her claim. I provided her with a safe, discreet place to live for the duration of her pregnancy, and I provided a loving future for the child she did not want.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much money did her silence cost you?”

“It doesn’t matter now if you know. I paid her a quarter of a million dollars. She signed every single legal stipulation without hesitation.”

“Of course she did. She was fifteen fucking years old. That money probably sounded like a fortune to her.” He laughed bitterly. “The joke was on her. She walked away from a real fortune by not holding on to a JFW heir.”

“Her stupidity was no concern of mine—then or now.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, if I would’ve known? I wouldn’t have let you give Dante’s kid away.”

“Oh, spare me your indignation.” She sneered at him. “What kind of help would you have been, raising a baby? None. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Deacon. You didn’t have the skills to be anything to that boy except a fair-weather uncle. You would’ve disappointed him as much as you’d disappointed everyone else.”

“Goddammit, Julianne, that’s enough. You don’t get to talk to him that way.”

She whirled on her husband, her jaw nearly hanging on the floor. “You’re taking his side?”

“There are no sides. He is our son.”

“He is being an ass, as usual,” she hissed. “I hate that he’s standing there in judgment of me when he didn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions! We did. We had to start over. He shows up, looking like a thug, full of contempt for me, for you, for everything we ever provided him. For the future in the family business that he refused to be a part of. And now, because of a legal technicality, he can destroy it.”

Her venom paralyzed him. And like the snake she was, she slithered forward, eager to sink her fangs in for the kill.

“What a slap in the face it is to your granddad that you changed the name you were born with. The name that entitles you to the inheritance that means you don’t have to hold down a real job. Deacon McConnell can work out, add more tattoos, get in the ring for three or four minutes and prove he’s tough. Why your grandfather didn’t cut you off astounds me.”

And he was done. With all of this. For good. “I’ll tell you why Granddad didn’t cut me loose. Because when I came back after bein’ gone for years, he asked me why I left. He was the only one who did. Until Molly, he’s the only one I told.”

Her eyes flashed fear. She shook her head—as if asking him to keep quiet.

Fuck that. And fuck her.

Deacon opened his mouth, and his mother moved in front of her husband. “Don’t listen to him, Bing. He’s caused enough problems over the years. Don’t let him make more for us now.”

“Deacon.” His father’s eyes met his. “Tell me.”

“Granddad knew. I don’t know how, but he was the one person who understood the kind of loss I suffered after Dante died. He knew there’d be no recovering from it.”

“That’s because Dad had a twin who died when he was ten. He never spoke of him.”

Now it made sense.

“What did you tell him, son?”

“What my mother said to me the night you left me with her.” Deacon looked over at her. “She told me she wished I would’ve died instead of Dante. I’d known for months I repulsed her every time she looked at me. But to hear her say that she hated me?” He took a breath. “Then she told me everyone would be better off if I disappeared because losing my family was what I deserved after killing her son.”

Silence.

Then his father made the most anguished noise Deacon had ever heard. He wheeled around, loomed over his wife, and yelled, “How could you?” right in her face.

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then explain it to me, Julianne! Explain to me why everything always comes back to you? I trusted you. I stood by you.”

“But it’s not—”

“No buts! Did you, or did you not, tell our only surviving son that you hated him and wished he were dead?”

Tears rolled down her face.