Page 80 of Everything We Found

Her stomach sank and she glanced away. He’d overheard her conversation with Aimee. She slowly nodded, turning back to him.

“Why?” He spoke with the same hard, cold anger he’d displayed after the siege on his house.

“It sort of slipped out.”

“Glasses slip out of hands. My dick slips out of you.” His face twisted with disdain. “A secret like that doesn’t just slip.”

Fury painted her vision crimson. She welcomed the hot, blinding rage against his frigid contempt. No simpler way to say it than he wasbeinga dick. He was mad—she’d even wager he was scared—and he wanted to hurt her.

Hackles raised, she threw out her arms. “Maybe a part of me wanted her to know. So sue me. What more have I got to lose? I just ruined a thirty-year friendship because I chose to listen to you over her. We both know she’ll never forgive me.”

His jaw worked, the skin over his knuckles white where he gripped the hammer.

“You know what? I’m relieved she knows,” she continued, the words tumbling out. “There’s been this sky-high wall between us for a decade. It kept us apart. I always had to climb overit or walk around it to feel any sort of the closeness she and I once had. I’ve never felt the same around her as we were before James’s funeral.”

She took a step closer to him. “Now there’s nothing between us. It’s just her and me, the real me, not the one keeping secrets. Better she hates me than mourns me like she did with James after I’m gone.”

Aimee wouldn’t see it this way, not at first. But Nadia had given her a gift. Because, yes, she had been there when Aimee mourned James. Front row, center seat. She wouldn’t put Aimee through that again with her disappearance.

“You got that right. She will hate you,” Thomas said, flatly. Something he hadn’t wanted for her since the beginning of this, that Nadia knew. He was probably thinking “welcome to his world.”

“She already does.” She studied him. Tension vibrated through every muscle. “What are you doing out here?”

“Fixing the gate. What does it look like?” He turned back to the hinge and resumed pounding, each blow more violent than the last. The metal was warping, the screw beginning to pull free of the wood.

That was not fixing the gate.

“Cut the crap,” she shouted over the racket. “What are youreallydoing out here?”

He got in one more strike before whirling back to her. “Waiting,” he spat. “I’m fucking waiting on everything. Our papers. News about Ruiz. An update on Kane’s family.” His voice rose with each item he ticked off. “For James to return my calls. My mother—” A visible shudder ran through him.

He didn’t know where she was or if she was still alive. And that was killing him. Nobody liked to feel useless, powerless. Thomas most of all.

He swiped the back of his wrist across his damp forehead.

“Damn Phil.” The name came out as a growl. “He’s dead and I still loathe everything about him.”

Nadia nodded, listening cautiously, but she didn’t think he noticed. She just let him air his grievances like easing pressure on an overinflated tire.

“Fucking abhor him. I hate my parents for treating him like an outcast. But I hate him more, and will until my dying breath, for bringing the Hidalgos into our lives. I can barely stomach how he died, but maybe there’s some sweet justice in that.”

“You don’t mean that,” she said, shocked at the intensity of his words.

Thomas fixed her with a hard stare. Oh yes, he meant it. She shivered with an icy tremor.

“Phil set out to destroy Donato Enterprises because my dad didn’t make him company president. He wanted to get his revenge on the family,” he went on, words tumbling out faster now. “But it wouldn’t have been just us he’d have taken down. He would have taken down every employee and the families they support. As president, those people were my responsibility.” He punched the air.

“What he did to us and our business cut so much deeper than he could ever wrap his massive head around. Do you know what I saw when my dad and the FBI first pulled me in? The bodies. The fucking bodies, Nadia.” A fault line ran through his steady tone. “Teenagers overdosed in alleys. Parents losing their kids to fentanyl. Entire communities devastated by the poison Phil was helping funnel into this country.”

His haunted eyes burned bright. “Every dollar laundered through our company bought more drugs, paid for more guns, funded more deaths. Kane sent me reports, pictures of what the Hidalgos did to people. They wiped out entire families. I’d go to sleep at night knowing our family business was part of that machine.”

He shook his head, disgust written all over his face. “People think about what I’ve done and think me selfish. They believed I was all about saving the company, about protecting the Donato name. Wrong! It was about stopping the bleeding—all those lives destroyed because my brother’s ego was bruised.

“I had that to deal with on top of saving James and keeping him alive. Keeping Aimee from finding out the truth about you. The last thing I wanted was for all this to ruin yet another relationship. I used to feel like I had it all under control. But right now—” He ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and went back to hammering with big downward swings. Nadia felt each impact reverberate inside her chest. With one final destructive blow, the large screw stripped free of the wood post. The gate, now unhinged, clattered onto the concrete floor, the sound echoing loudly.

They both stared at the fallen gate, its purpose destroyed as it lay useless and broken. Just like their lives.

Thomas rubbed a hand over his head, his arm flopping to his side in a gesture of defeat. “I’m afraid of what they’re doing to her,” he said so low Nadia could barely hear the confession. Her heart broke for him.