Page 45 of Sweet Revenge

Shaking my head, I tried to let that sink in, but I didn’t get it. “Wh-what?”

He lifted his head so that he could look me in the eyes. “Alexander La Rosa is my father.”

CHAPTER27

ELISA

Dezzy’s revelation had me reeling, but when I looked at Daemon, it was hard to tell at first whether he was in shock, denial, or ready to finish his brother off once and for all.

They were still brothers, despite what Dezzy had just shouted in Daemon’s face. They still shared a mother. That made them half-brothers. It was pretty clear, though, that Dezzy had already made up his mind that DNA meant nothing to him. Perhaps he was so desperate to have another chance at having a good father, one who would love him and guide him as a father should, that he would do anything to attempt to please Alexander La Rosa.

Well, I had news for him. My father wasn’t any better than his last one.

“You’re crazy,” Daemon finally said, shaking his head. Denial for the win. “There’s no fucking way that’s true. La Rosa has gotten to you, too. Poisoned your brain the way he did Ma.”

“No, it’s the truth.” Dezzy’s face was bleeding in so many places, I wasn’t sure how he was even talking. His nose was broken and possibly his jaw. “Ma told me that she’d been in love with Alexander since they were practically kids. Over the years, they’ve kept up with one another, even when her first husband was still alive.” Daemon took a step back when Dezzy described the man they had both called Father for so long “her first husband.” Dezzy kept talking. “One time, they weren’t careful enough, and that resulted in me.”

Daemon continued to shake his head. “That can’t possibly be true.”

It was hard to say based on looks at the moment since Dezzy had a busted-up face, but I would say the resemblance between Dezzy and Daemon was close enough that it would seem likely they had the same parents. But then, I looked absolutely like no one in my family, and we all had the same parents, so stranger things had happened.

“It is true,” Dezzy insisted. “Alexander confirmed it to me. He made a big deal out of it, welcomed me to the family, and said he was so proud to finally get to call me son. He said, ‘See? Our families are already more joined than you think.’”

“So that asshole convinced you to come after me, your best friend for life, because you think that will somehow, what? Make you his favorite son?” Anger flowed from every word Daemon spit out. I couldn’t blame him. Even if Dezzy’s story was true, it didn’t give him the right to come after Daemon when he’d been nothing but good to him.

When Daemon turned to look at me, his gaze was softer. It made me glad to see I could be a soft spot for him to fall. “What do you think, baby? Is this guy your half-brother, too?”

I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but if what Dezzy was saying was accurate, he was trying to kill two of his half-siblings. It also seemed weird that Daemon and I could share a brother, but I didn’t dwell on that. “Well, when I was in that hole beneath my father’s house and he was beating the living shit out of me, he did mention that he’d been in love with your mother for a long time. Since they were teenagers. He said your father stole her away somehow.”

“I don’t fucking believe this whole time Dezzy hasn’t been my brother.” Daemon turned back around to say something more to the man hanging from the ceiling, but this conversation sparked a memory in the back of my head. I found myself drifting away from what was happening around me as I tried to pull it from the recesses of my mind.

I remembered promising myself that I wouldn’t forget something my father said when I was in that basement. The torture had caused me to try to block most of that out. Either that, or I simply hadn’t been capable of remembering it, but I knew it was important. It was something I needed to tell Daemon, something about his mother.

Dezzy was pleading for his life and crying when it came to me. “That’s it!” I gasped. “Daemon, listen.”

He turned away from his half-brother and looked at me. “What?”

“My father said that your mother tricked you into killing your father.” I blurted it out hurriedly, and it took him a minute to think through it.

“What?” His face puckered up as he went over it again. “No, that’s not fucking possible. I had a million reasons for killing my old man, and my mother didn’t need to convince me of a damn one. No one did. He had a good reason to die.”

He had a point, but I didn’t think my father would say that if it wasn’t true. “But where did that reason come from? The main one. The one that made you finally decide time was up?” I asked him.

Daemon shrugged. He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “I guess it was my ma who told me about it, but I had plenty of reasons to kill that old bastard.” He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “Even if she lied to me, it all starts with your father. He’s the reason she took control of the family from me, and he’s the reason he’s been pulling the strings from behind the scenes for years. Alexander fucking La Rosa needs to die.”

I didn’t disagree with him, but I seriously needed him to reconsider what he was saying about his mother.

But he wasn’t done. “If this is true, and he’s known Dezzy was his son all along, then who knows how long he’s been trying to manipulate things from the outside? When you have a son with someone, for Christ’s sake, that changes things, doesn’t it? Bastard probably thought he could use her to infiltrate us all along.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but he was still thinking aloud, so I closed it.

“I’ve got two of his kids now—”

“Three,” I quietly corrected him.

“Right. But two I’ve taken hostage. I’m still assuming you’re here of your own free will.” He managed a flash of a smile, and I nodded. It wasn’t like my father wanted me back anyway. “So this should be enough leverage for me to be able to get something done. We can see how badly he brainwashed my mother. Once I kill that fucker, we’ll be able to see if she can be saved.”

“Daemon, I’m nervous about her,” I admitted.