She’s standing in the doorway wearing one of my shirts, her legs bare, her hair messy from sleep. She’s beautiful.
“Is it over?” she asks.
“No.” I take a sip. “It was a setup. We walked right into it.”
She moves into the room, and I hear her sink into the chair across from my desk. “Did you lose anyone?”
“Three men.”
“I’m sorry.”
I look at her and see a woman I know I cannot and will not live without. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“It’s about your mother.”
She goes very still. “What about her?”
I take a breath. This is going to hurt her. But she needs to know.
“Your mother was murdered.”
She exhales. “I suspected. My father never told me. I never asked. I think I’ve always known.”
“What you don’t know is who ordered it.”
“A rival.”
I slowly shake my head. “No.”
She frowns and tilts her head to the side. “No?
“Sofia, your father killed her.”
She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t break down. She just endures in silence, like her mother did during her life.
“My father?”
“I don’t know that he did it with his own two hands, but from what I witnessed, it was more than one man.”
Her hand covers her mouth. “What?”
I hate doing this. I can spare her the worst details, but she needs to understand who her father is. “She was beaten.”
She’s trembling but I give her space and don’t touch her.
“I always assumed it had been a quick assassination.”
If only it had been.“No.”
“Why?” Her voice is quiet. I know that tone. She’s holding herself together through sheer willpower. I want to pull her into my arms, but I can’t. My girl has to fight through the pain on her own. That’s the only way she survives this. Her strength. Knowing she can do it without help.
“Because she was having an affair with my father.”
The words hang in the air between us. I watch her process this information. See the pieces clicking into place.
“She betrayed him,” Sofia says in that flat tone that tells me she’s completely disassociating. “So he killed her.”