Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
I moved to Slater’s side. “Hi, Seth.” My voice shook.
“Morning, miss.” He let the water from the hose pour onto the ground as he looked at me. “May I help you?”
“Take a good, hard look at me,” I demanded, coming to halt just five feet from me. “Then, you’ll understand if you can help me or not.”
“I’m sorry, I—” He stared at me, his face turning white. “Maggie?”
I nodded.
“Jesus, you look like your mother. Not the coloring, but your face, your eyes… Jesus. What are you doing here?”
“Surprised to see me?” I asked. “Clearly you didn’t think that would happen when you ran off.”
“You were a child,” he said, color rising in his cheeks. “You have no idea what was going on.”
“I know you left,” I said.
“With good reason,” he said, still angry. “Look, Maggie, I know you were just a kid, but you had no fucking clue—”
Slater took a menacing step forward. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Seth asked.
“A friend,” I said quickly, placing my hand on Slater’s chest to stop him. “Let me handle this,” I pleaded.
Then I turned back to the man I was increasingly sure wasn’t my actual father. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“He’s one of them,” he spat out, eyeing Slater.
“One of who?”
“You know what I mean.” Seth’s attention returned to me. “I may not know who he works for, but I know the attitude. I’ve seen this shit before. Did you bring him here to scare me or beat me up?”
“I’d be glad to do either,” Slater said, anger darkening his gaze. “So, I suggest you start talking before I lose my temper.”
“What do you mean, you know the attitude?” I asked, hoping Slater would behave himself.
“The whole wise guy attitude,” he emphasized, bringing his gaze back to me. “I thought I’d never see it again, but here you are. Your mom wanted you to stay away from guys like him. I’m very disappointed in you, Maggie.”
“Disappointment from the man who abandoned us,” I said in a voice full of sarcasm, but his words had hurt. From the tension in Slater’s body, he knew it, too.
“I didn’t abandon you.“ He shook his head. “They made me leave. When I met your mother, she was working at a restaurant in lower Manhattan. She was already pregnant with you. I didn’t mind—I was too infatuated with her, I guess. We got married, and you were born. Things were normal for a while. We didn’t have a lot, but we were happy enough for four years. Then one night, some mafioso and his henchmen dropped by the shoe store I managed. He said he was the father of Sheila’s child. I didn’t buy it—she’d fed me some bull about how the man who’d impregnated her had been killed in a car accident. But then he showed me pictures. She was in a maid’s uniform at his house—he was there in the background. And I… I believed him.”
Slater nodded. “So then what happened?”
“He told me to leave Sheila alone. That I’d be in a world of pain if I didn’t. And then he let some of his men prove it to me.” Unconsciously, he touched an old scar on his cheek.
“Why didn’t my mother tell me any of this?” Slater put his arm around me.
“She didn’t know why I left. I’m not proud of it, but I just told her it wasn’t working out and took off.”
“Just like that?” There was an edge to Slater’s voice.
Seth looked down at the grass. “As I said, I’m not proud of it.”
“She could’ve told me you weren’t my biological father, though. That might have made it a little easier.” Possibly. But it still would have been crushing. And possibly more than a four-year-old could face. But she’d had decades after that to tell me the truth.
“She was probably just trying to protect you,” Slater said.
Seth took a step closer, but one look from Slater had him backing off. “So you took off and a woman and her young child all alone,” he snapped.
“A woman who whose child was from another man,” Seth said quietly. Then he sighed. “Those guys scared me, okay? I’d never encountered anyone like them. I told myself that it wasn’t worth my life.”
The tears flowed harder. Would Seth have stayed, if my real father hadn’t threatened him? It would’ve made all the difference in the world to my mother. To have someone help with the childcare after those first few years. To have two incomes. To have some support.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Seth said.
Slater squeezed my shoulders, steadying me. “Let’s get out of here, sweetheart.”
I looked at Seth, but I couldn’t think of what to say. In a way, he’d been a victim, too. A victim of the awful world that Rocco, Julian, Slater, and apparently my biological father had inhabited. But the pain was too much. I was dealing with too many of my own feelings to focus on Seth’s.