Page 86 of Torn By Fate

He was several inches taller, his shoulders broader, though his overall build was leaner than the other two. He wore a dark suit that fit him like a second skin—seamlessly, perfectly, without effort, as though it had been tailored just for him.

His hair was dark, falling across his forehead in a way that should have looked careless, but it didn’t. His features were sharp, his angular jaw carved with definitions that should have only existed in books, and there was a small scar on his upper lip, pale and thin, that caught the light when he moved.

He was… handsome. That was the first thing my fifteen-year-old brain registered and that embarrassed me even in the moment.

But he was… handsome, in a dangerous way that dangerous men were.

Because I knew he was dangerous, everything about him screamed it.

His eyes were dark blue and stormy. Cold like the Arctic. He looked around the room with calculated patience, taking in everything—the furniture, the photographs, the birthday cake still sitting on the kitchen table behind my father, uneaten.

Those eyes missed nothing.

“Witness protection, eh?” he drawled casually.

His voice was a low rumble, carrying what I caught was a faint trace of amusement. And then he chuckled—a dry, quiet sound that held no warmth.

“That seems... inconvenient.” He tilted his head slightly, studying my father with cold indifference. “Very unlike you, Angelo.”

He paused, lifting a brow questioningly.

“Or should I call you Anthony?”

My father said nothing. I could see the back of his neck, the way the muscles had gone taut. His hands hung at his sides, open and trembling. The slightest tremor that anyone could have missed, but I saw it.

I had never seen my father afraid before. Not truly.

He had always been the perfect and constant fixture in my universe, the one who made sense of a world that otherwise felt too big and complicated. To me, he had always been invincible simply because he was… my father.

But standing in our living room with these three men, he was afraid, and the fear rolling off him was so palpable I could taste it. Thick. Metallic. Bitter. Like the taste of blood on my tongue.

The man, the one with the dark blue eyes, took a step forward. Just one. But the room seemed to contract around his movement, the air crackling with his authority, almost making it harder to breathe.

“You’ve been difficult to find,” he said. “But not impossible. Nothing is impossible, Angelo. You of all people should know that.”

My father’s voice, when he finally spoke, was barely above a whisper. “My children are here.”

The man tsked, and I couldn’t see it, but I almost imagined him rolling his eyes. “I’m aware.”

“You leave them out of this.”

The man’s expression didn’t change. His eyes held my father’s for a long moment, and something passed between them—some history, some understanding that existed in a language I didn’t speak.

“I have no intention of harming your children, Angelo,” he finally said. “They are innocent in your betrayal.”

Betrayal…

What did he mean? Who did my father betray?

I slammed my eyes closed, forcing the memory away. My throat burned as I swallowed back a cry.

I wanted to rage.

God, I wanted to hurt him, the same way he hurt me. Them.

“You see, there was so much I didn't know about my father. So much I didn't understand. He carried my truth, his truth… my mother’s truth, all of it, inside him for years, never once allowing it to cast a shadow over my brother and me.”

I wished I had known the truth sooner.