getting a reaction out of him, I make my ears hurt. The sound echoes through the hallway, only intensifying my headache. Ugh.
Walking back to my cot, I sit down and try to gather my thoughts. Where the fuck am I, and how did I get here? Most importantly, how the hell will I get out of here?
A few minutes later, I hear someone approaching. Getting myself ready for a fight, I get up on my feet and let my hands form fists beside me. Every muscle in my body is tense when I see none other than Xander Rossi appear on the other side of the cell door.
“Good morning, Zane. Sobered up enough to behave?”
I’m so shocked at seeing him, that I’m speechless, but I’m even more shocked when he reaches in his pocket and fishes out a key to unlock the cell door. The door swings open, and he takes a step to the side, motioning for me to come out.
“Is this a joke?” I say, my voice raspy like I smoked a pack of cigarettes last night.
“Not at all. Let’s go, we have a lot to discuss.”
Hesitantly, I walk past him while anticipating an attack any moment now. He has to be joking. What could he possibly want with me? If he thinks I have some dirt on Christian or Matteo, he’s going to be wildly disappointed.
He makes me walk ahead of him, down the hallway and up a flight of stairs. When we get to a second hallway, and I don’t know which way to turn, he takes the lead and lets me walk behind him. I don’t miss that huge display of trust, him turning his back on me like that. He’s showing me that he trusts me, probably expecting me to trust him in return. The question is, why?
I’m shocked yet again when we turn the corner and go through another door. Looking around confused, I wonder if I’m still sleeping, and this is a dream because now I’m standing in a foyer of a mansion… I assume the Rossi mansion.
“Why am I here?”
“Let’s go sit down. I had my cook prepare some breakfast for you. I’ll explain everything while you eat.”
He leads me through the house and into a huge dining room. As he said, an array of breakfast food is spread out on the table. Part of me wants to refuse the food. I still don’t trust him, I have no reason to, but given my current state, sustenance will greatly benefit me.
We both take a seat. Xander pours himself a coffee, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee invades my senses. He pours me a cup as well, without asking if I even want one.
“Talk,” I order while taking up a fork and start eating the omelet in front of me.
I glance over at Xander, who is raising an eyebrow at me, clearly surprised by my lack of fear of him. After a moment, he starts talking anyway.
“As soon as I saw Dove, I couldn’t believe the resemblance she had to someone I know. I figured they had to be related in some way. I started digging when she was here, but I hit one dead end after the next. After I let Dove go, I kept looking. There was something about her that I was missing, and I couldn’t let it go.”
Where the fuck is he going with this story?
He pauses to grab something from the inside of his suit jacket and places it in front of me. My gaze falls onto the old photograph, and for a split second, I think it’s Dove looking back at me, but I quickly realize that the woman in the picture is a little bit older than Dove, her hair just a little bit lighter and her lips just a tad bit less full.
“Who is that?”
“My mother,” Xander says, and I almost drop my fork. “My first thought was that Dove had to be my mother’s daughter, but when Dove told me her age, it became an impossible scenario. Dove is twenty-one, and my mother died twenty-two years ago… or so we thought.”
“What do you mean?” I almost don’t want to ask. If Dove is not only related to Castro but also to Rossi, she’ll be forever caught between the two families.
“Like I said, I couldn’t let it go. So, after Dove left, I took her toothbrush and had her DNA tested, matched against mine. The test results confirmed that Dove is my sister.”