Page 90 of Vendetta

“Did you find it odd that my father was so pissy about omegas? Considering Mom just died, I expected some sort of reaction to that. He’s never been an emotional guy, but it was strange, even for him,” I asked, not expecting anyone to answer as I scrolled through my contacts list.

I stopped on Dom’s entry. My brothers might know.

Nico: How are things?

Dom: Listen, we aren’t going to hurt Claudia. We’re keeping her. So don’t bother asking.

Well, fuck. That wasn’t even what I was going to ask about, but I guess that explained why Rosa didn’t buy the finger threat.

Nico: Fine. I don’t care about Claudia. Have you noticed anything strange about our father?

Dom: No more than usual. Why

Nico: He’s being weird. Something's up. Where are you?

Dom: In town.

Nico: Get here. Be ready for war.

Dom: I’m dying to ask what you think is going on, but I don’t really care. Any excuse to blow shit up. We’ll be there.

My brothers were more loyal to me than my father, and I had a feeling I was going to need their help even if they were generally unreliable and volatile as fuck.

“You find anything, Oliver?” I asked, leaning into his space.

He slid toward me, angling his laptop screen so I could see. “It’s something.”

Well shit.

I scanned the email he’d found. It was paternity test results dated the day before my mom died, showing that my youngest brother, Luca, was not related to my father. He was seven years younger than me and six years younger than the twins. It didn’t prove anything, but my father was a jealous man. That was why he never had a pack. He couldn’t stomach sharing my mom with anyone. If someone looked at her for too long, they’d be lucky not to find a car bomb the next time they left the house. That certainly was a motive.

Unease simmered in my gut.

“Find the camera footage from the night my mom died.” Everything I’d been told, all the hatred I’d harbored. It all hinged on my father’s word, and it was unraveling like so many bloody intestines spilled on the floor.

Oliver tapped away on the keyboard. “I looked already. That whole day was erased from the archive, but only that day is missing.”

That was convenient.

“Can you recover it?” I clenched my teeth, not sure if I honestly wanted to know. Wouldn’t it be better to think that an outside enemy had destroyed my world? Wouldn’t it be easier?

“Already working on it.”

I gripped my phone, at war with myself over what could be on those deleted files.

It pinged, and I looked down. There was an unread text. Probably my fucking brother. I swiped it open without looking at the preview, and was shocked to see that Rosa had texted me back.

Rosa: I’m coming.

Chapter 58

Rosalina

As soon as we made it out of the cellar, my father and Diego started making calls. I was at a loss. I needed to get to Nico, but we were trapped in this house, surrounded.

Diego saw my confusion. “Don’t worry, Rosa. We got this. Lorenzo was overconfident. The island is criminally short-staffed.” He chuckled at his own silly joke about criminals and motioned to the camera feed on his phone. “There’s only the two guards at the gate. No one else is here. Well, other than those poor omegas locked up in Rafael’s room.”

My mouth dropped open. “What? Locked up?” I didn’t remember anything like that, but I was busy being knocked out and drooling on the tile most of the time that I’d been in there.