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“I don’t know who my father was,” I exclaimed.

“You may never know.”

My eyes burned.

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“It doesn’t make it any less true.”

I looked down at my hands. A red mark had formed across my palm where it had struck the desk. Demitri noticed, but said nothing.

“He was good to me,” I admitted. “Until he wasn’t.”

“Both things can exist in the same man.”

“I don't want both.” My voice tightened. “I want the father who stood outside the bathroom door, asking if I was alright. I want the man who taught me to drive and danced with me in the kitchen to fill the void my mother left behind.”

I pressed my injured palm against my knee.

“I don’t want to wonder how many women were suffering while he came home and asked me about my day.”

Demitri’s gaze held mine.

“I need one version of him.”

“It’s too late for that, Adriana.”

The answer struck the final fragile place inside me. The space between our chairs no longer felt as wide.

“I wanted you to lie to me,” I admitted.

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because enough people have already decided what truths you’re allowed to survive.”

I reached across the distance between us and took his hand. For a moment, he was motionless as he looked down at our joined hands. Then his hand turned slowly beneath mine. His fingers threaded through my own with deliberate care, avoiding the bruise forming across my palm. We remained that way as the light filtered through the windows and cold gathered in the unused room.

My father was still dead. His name remained buried inside those files among the names of women whose lives had been reduced to a sequence of numbers and one word sentences.

Demitri held my hand while the man I believed my father had been disappeared, memory by devastating memory.

28

DEMITRI

It had been a very long time since six members of the Cavalho family had sat around my father’s table.

Raze occupied the chair at one end, with Atlas beside him. Gianni and Marcello faced them across the polished wood.

Tone sat beside Archie, though no one had invited him to the meeting. No one would have been stupid enough to ask him to leave, either. He was not there as a Cavalho. He was there because his pregnant wife was discussing war, and Archie Popovich would have torn the doors from their hinges before allowing men to decide her fate beyond his hearing.

I sat at the opposite end.

My father’s chair remained empty.

The absence drew my eyes more than any person in the room. I could still remember him sitting there, listening while men offered excuses and pleaded for mercy. He had rarely raised his voice, because there’d never been a need to.