My brow bunched. “Uncle.”
He smiled. “My dear niece. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you happened across my path. I thank you for giving me this night. I loved your mother very much.”
Oh, my God. My head started to pound. I reached up to rub my temples. “Maybe we should start at the beginning.”
Laredo chuckled. “Clara used to do the same thing when she got a headache.”
My fingers stilled. I opened my eyes to look over at him. “Yes. She did.”
“Don’t look so surprised, Mina. I knew everything about her.”
I doubted that. I knew my mother better than anyone, thank you very much. Alessio kept quiet. I was grateful. I needed time to adjust.
“Okay,” I uttered. “Your brother is my dad. Alessio’s dad. Where is he?”
“Dead,” Alessio sneered. “Trust me, you’re lucky you never met him. He liked to kick my ass whenever the fuck it suited him. Fuck knows what he would’ve done to you.”
To my surprise, Laredo agreed. “Yes. Enzo was not a kind man. So when I pursued your mother, it was only natural that he made it a competition.” He shrugged. “Clara danced like a dream. She was an angel. After my wife passed on, I thought I would never feel love again until she came along.”
But I was stuck on something he’d said. “My mother was a server, a waitress. Not a dancer.”
Laredo seemed taken aback, as if he didn’t know how to tell me something important. “Mina,” he started. “Clara worked at my first club, Sweet Blood. She was a dancer, my dear. One of the best.” At my blinking stare, he added, “Did you never wonder how a waitress could afford the home you had? Did you never notice that she only worked nights?”
Shit. He was right. Our house has bigger than average and I never went without. We never had money problems. Our bills were paid on time. I had the best of everything. Every night, she put me to sleep and went to work. She would come home just before I woke to get ready for school, smelling of stale beer and…
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “My mom was a stripper.”
Lev turned to me and stated, “There’s nothing wrong with that. People need to work, Mina.”
“I’m not judging her,” I lied. “I’m just wondering how I never saw it.”
Laredo smiled. “She was your mom. She was your world. You were a child. How could you have known?”
Nicolas Van Eden spoke then, “My mum was a street lady. She sold her body to all the men in our neighborhood. Some of my boykie friends even had a go at her.” He shrugged and smiled widely, “Still love my mum, God rest her soul.”
God, he was adorable.
Roman Vlasic added to the conversation, “My mother was a doctor.” His eyes dimmed. “She was a terrible person. Cold and bitter.” He eyed me good. “Just because my mother had a respectable position, it didn’t make her a good person, lutkica.”
Davi Lobo spoke rapid-fire in a language I couldn’t understand. Laredo listened intently, nodding before turning to me. “Davi understands a little English, but only speaks Portuguese.” Well, that would explain why he was looking at me so fixedly. He probably didn’t have a fracking clue what I was saying. “He said that sometimes people do things that are beneath them to provide for the ones they love.”
A soft smile graced my lips and I held Lev’s hand tight, running my thumb over his fingers. I spoke gently to Davi. “Yes. I suppose sometimes they do.”
Philippe sipped at his crystal glass of water. “I didn’t have a mother.” He smiled sadly. “Count yourself lucky to have had one, no less a mother who loved you so.”
They were right. My mother was wonderful. I suppose it just hurt knowing that perhaps I hadn’t known her as well as I thought. But all the important things…I knew those. Memories of her took me back to my youth.
I don’t know why, but I felt I needed to share. “My mother, Clara, was a sweet woman. She smiled all the time, and laughed almost as much. She was like a ray of sunshine, pretty as can be, and she always had time for me.” I smiled to myself. It was nice to talk about her. “She sang to me before bed. We always had dessert. She helped me with my homework.” I turned to Lev. “She was smart.”
He squeezed my hand, smiling softly at me, and I went on. “Whenever I was in a bad mood, she would take me down to the store and tell me to fill the shopping cart with anything I wanted. We’d eat ourselves into a food coma.” I chuckled. “She always had the corniest jokes just to make me smile. She was on the PTA. Made my Halloween costumes from scratch. Took me to the beach on the coldest days just to sit on the sand and take in the air. She was a great mom.” My heart panged with guilt. I turned to face Alessio. “And I’m sorry you missed out on that.”
Alessio’s expression remained hard, but when he turned to avert his eyes from mine, I could see he was affected.
Why didn’t Alessio live with us? Why was he left to a father that didn’t want him? I didn’t understand.
I faced Laredo. “Why were we separated?”
Laredo ran his tongue over his teeth. “Because it hurt Clara, and my brother liked to punish her.” He frowned, almost lost in thought. “My brother was married. He didn’t have children with his wife. Clara was nothing more than a plaything. I tried to make her see reason so many times, but,” he sighed, “she loved Enzo.”
Oh, Jesus.
My heart sank. She was the other woman? Who the hell was this person?
“Enzo was good to her for a while. Treated her well. She loved the attention, of course.” He raised his brow as he made his point. “He was the better looking brother.”
I see.
“Clara fell pregnant only a month after sleeping with Enzo. The entire club knew who the father was. Clara asked him to leave his wife. He refused. She told him she would leave him. Just disappear. Told him her baby needed a father.” Oh, God. She sounded a little like Irina. My stomach dropped. I was so embarrassed. “He told her that after she had the baby he would leave his wife. But I knew he way lying.” He shrugged. “It was no surprise to me that after she had Alessio that he stayed with his wife. Clara was heartbroken. She planned to leave town. Enzo caught her packing her things. He went ballistic.”
Laredo glanced at Alessio before turning back to me. “He beat the shit out of her. Said that if she tried to leave him again, he’d kill the boy. I had no doubt that he would. She wasn’t stupid enough to try again. At least she was allowed to see her son.”
“He beat her?” My voice shook. “She was the sweetest person in the whole world, and he beat her?”
Laredo leveled me with a stare. “Enzo used whatever means to keep her by his side. When Clara realized she’d picked the wrong guy, she turned her affections on me.” He smiled. “I was good to her. I loved her. I wanted to father her children. It wasn’t fair that Enzo had that. He didn’t deserve any piece of her. She found that out a little too late. But I took care of her as much as she let me.”
My view of my mother was dimming fast. “Yeah, she sounded like a real peach.”
“We grew careless,” Laredo ignored my snide comment and went on. “It didn’t take long for Enzo to grow suspicious. He walked in on us one night and I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I fought my brother tooth and nail. I fought so hard that I broke his bones as well as mine. But Clara…she’d had enough of us. She took off, leaving Alessio behind.”
Poor Alessio.
My throat thickened at the harsh fact.
How could she?
“My brother tried to take Alessio’s life a week later. He attempted to drown him in the bathtub. But he couldn’t see it through.” He turned to look at Alessio. “He didn’t want to love the boy, but he did. A month later, Enzo was found in his home office stone-cold dead. He’d died of an accidental drug overdose that I presume was not so accidental. Enzo’s wife didn’t want Alessio. She knew he was the product of an affair, so I adopted him. He should have been my son in the first place. I love him very much. I tried to find Clara, but she hid well, funnily enough, right under our noses. I didn’t even know she passed away until two years ago.” He eyed me. “I didn’t know she had a daughter.”