Page 88 of Torn By Fate

I could still taste that candy—strawberry, too sweet, the kind my father would have frowned upon. Angelo had winked at me as I had popped it into my mouth, his finger pressed against his lips in conspiratorial silence.

He had been family. More than family, truly. He was the steady presence in a household where affection was measured in expectations and accomplishments.

“Your father...” The words felt foreign on my tongue. How could Angelo be Serafina’s father?

No, but she said she was… Elyssa Garza. Not Serafina.

That made… no sense.

“Angelo was a traitor,” I finally spoke around the lump in my throat.

“He was a man who fell in love,” Serafina or Elyssa defended, eyes blazing with a fury that seemed to emanate from her very core. “He fell in love with my mother, and he wanted out. He wanted a normal life. A life without blood on his hands. Is that so difficult to understand?”

I turned away from her, my hand raking through my hair. The memories collided with each other, a chaotic jumble of past and present, of the man I had grown up respecting and the man I was sent to eliminate.

“He was my father’s confidant, his most trusted soldier,” I said, more to myself than to her. “He knew everything—every operation, every contact, every skeleton in every closet. My father sent him to Chicago to infiltrate the Morelli organization, to watch Santino, to report back.”

It had been the most critical assignment my father had ever entrusted to anyone. One mistake could have shattered the fragile peace between our families and plunged us into yet another war that neither side could afford.

He chose Angelo because he trusted him with more than his life. He trusted him with our family's future.

Angelo was one of the few men capable of moving through Santino's world without drawing suspicion, of getting close enough to uncover what we needed without leaving a trail that could be traced back to us.

Because if Santino ever discovered that we had been spying on him, there would be no more negotiations. No alliance left to salvage.

The betrothal between Serafina Morelli and the Salvatore heir was the only thing keeping our families bound together by something other than bloodshed.

“And he fell in love instead.” Serafina’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “He chose my mother over your father’s war. He chose us over your family’s vendetta.”

Men in love did foolish, dangerous things. Angelo Garza proved that.

I turned back to face her, a cold, heavy weight settling in my chest. “He chose to become an informant. He chose to betray decades of loyalty, to hand over my father to the FBI. That wasn’t love—that was self-preservation.”

“He was protecting us!” The words exploded from her, almost desperately. “The FBI had him cornered. They knew who he was, what he’d done. They gave him a choice. Testify against Enzo Salvatore or spend the rest of his life in prison. He chose to live. To be there for my mother, for me, for Caleb. Is that so unforgivable? Does that decision truly deserve… death?”

The silence that followed was almost deafening. I could hear my own heartbeat, steady and relentless, the opposite to the chaos in my mind.

“It took me three years to find him,” I said finally. “Three years of chasing shadows, following false leads, hunting a ghost. Your father was good, better than good. He knew how we operated, how we thought. He had trained me himself, in many ways.”

Serafina’s face contorted with pain. “And when you finally found him? When you stood in our living room on my fifteenth birthday? Did you feel proud? Did you feel like you had accomplished something noble?”

The memory of that night surfaced with brutal clarity, the cramped two-bedroom mobile house, the birthday cake, and the two children hiding in the bedroom.

I remembered Angelo’s face when he had seen me, the recognition, the resignation in his expression.

“He begged you,” Serafina continued before I could even process what she was really saying, her voice breaking over each word. “I heard him through the door. He begged you to spare his children. He offered you everything. He just wanted us to live.”

My eyes squeezed shut.

The sound of Angelo’s voice echoed in my memory, stripped of the authority I had always associated with him, reduced to something raw and desperate.

“Please, Adrian. They’re just kids. They don’t know anything about any of this. I am all they have. They need me.”

“I gave him mercy,” I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. I opened my eyes again, spearing Serafina with a hard look. “I was sent to eliminate a threat to my family. I was supposed to make it clean, make it final. But I let him live.”

“Mercy?” Serafina’s voice rose, trembling with barely contained fury. “You call what you did mercy?”

“I could have killed him. I should have killed him. That was the job.” I forced myself to hold her gaze, despite the storm of emotions I saw there. I didn’t… understand. “Instead, I made a deal. He would disappear completely—no contact with anyone from his old life, no attempts to reach out. He would live as a ghost, and in return, I would tell my father he was dead.”