Sold To the Grizzly Don (Alcee and Bruno) novel Chapter 173

Chapter 173

Alcee looked at her mother, “I’m right, aren’t I? I was Dad’s kid. You didn’t fudge around with those DNA results but Alfio, he’s Panfilo’s. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything Mercurio said to me when we were coming here. Dad was a shitty businessman, but he had good gut

responded appropriately to the room he was reading but he knew what

instincts when it came to people. He could read a room. It didn’t mean he

was going on. Tell the truth, Mom. Now.”

“He overheard me and Panfilo arguing one day and Panfilo said it’s my child.” Her mother’s weepy voice called out. “We told him Panfilo as mad at his wife over some child rearing differences and we thought he bought it but a few weeks later we found out he tested Alcee for DNA. When I confronted him over it, told him how the urologist confirmed his vasectomy failed, he said he didn’t believe me when I gave him the excuse about Panfilo’s kid.”

“Dad wasn’t my dad?” Alfio croaked out from the floor where Tito still kept him pinned.

“All you ever needed to do,” she looked at her mother with disgust, “was tell him the truth and maybe, just maybe, my father wouldn’t have hated me. He hated me, Mom. Do you get that?

Your selfish greed made it so my own father couldn’t love me. If you’d told him the truth, but in his mind all he could see was your betrayal.”

“Then he would have hated Alfio!”

“But Alfio would have had Panfilo for his actual father. His father who clearly took a risk and argued with you over his paternity with my father in the vicinity. Tell me he didn’t want him. Tell me!”

“He did. He does,” Apollonia Mariani shot sad eyes to her son, “it’s all he’s ever wanted. You were a miracle, Alfio. Panfilo got mumps when his son caught them when he was two years old. He wasn’t completely sterile but pretty damn close. He and his wife tried for years and couldn’t conceive. I found out I was pregnant when I was barely four weeks along. I never missed a period, but I knew there was no way it as Edgardo’s because he was in Italy. I flew to Italy to surprise him. We made love and then when my next period was due, I told him I missed it. I lied to all the doctors about the date of my last period. Even Panfilo didn’t know. It was on your second birthday party Panfilo noticed.”

“What did he notice, Mom?”

“Alfio and his son Rocky from the ages of twelve to eighteen could have been twins. There’s a seven–year age gap between the boys,” she wiped a tear off her cheek, “but if you compare photos of them at those ages, it’s nearly impossible to tell them apart. His wife never guessed but Panfilo knew. At the birthday party, Alfio made a facial expression before diving into the pool, and he said it was like looking in a mirror. He went off about how he should be allowed to parent his own child. Your father walked in on the one sentence. I managed to twist things around.”

“Are you still having an affair with Panfilo?”

“No.” She shook her head, “I love him. I have loved him before my arranged marriage to your father. I loved him after. However, I passed his son off as another man’s and he never quite forgave me. He begged me more than once to let Alfio know but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I knew your father was suspecting you, Alcee but we held the evidence which proved you were his. If he didn’t go and test all the kids, then it was safe. I only wanted to keep my son safe.”

“You used me as a scapegoat.”

“But we proved you were his.”

“He hated me anyway! He thinks you lied about the evidence. He thinks you fabricated it somehow.

“But I didn’t. He tested you again after and was angrier still when it continued to prove you were his. He was so sure he was right about what he overheard but it never dawned on him it meant one of the boys.”

“Jesus Christ, Mom.” Mercurio rubbed his face. He stared at her angrily, “is this guilt then? This shit you’ve been trying to spout with Alcee?”

“No. It’s not guilt, Merc, it’s fear.” Alcee held her mother’s gaze, “if I’m out of the country, married to someone else who would keep me hidden from Torq, I’d never come back. She doesn’t want me around because she knows I’m the only one who questions everything. Karolos Pavlidis is correct. Dad should have left the family to me because I’m smarter than half of this room combined. I’m brilliant. The more I dug, the more I was going to find out. Like Dad, I can read a room. Unlike him, I also know how to add two plus two to get the requisite four wherein he usually only gets three. He always misses something, but I don’t.” She waved at Tito, “let him up.”

“Does Panfilo’s wife know? Did she ever figure it out?” Michelo asked quietly from the side of the room where he stood reeling.

“No. She’s so devoted to him she wouldn’t blame him for a sneaky fart.” Her mother said with anger. “He was mine first and our fathers decided I

1/2

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify