He turned his face just a fraction, enough for me to see the tears in his eyes. “I went home the next mornin’ and found you in your crib screamin’ something fierce. Hungry, diaper hadn’t been changed.”
I was gripping the bedrail so hard my knuckles had turned white. “Where was she?”
He shook his head. “She was gone, Eva.”
“Gone? As in—”
“As in half her shit was gone and so was she.”
I glanced up at Deuce. Standing beside me with one hand on my back, he was watching Preacher intently, every bit as captivated by the story as I was. Releasing the bedrail, I wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my jeans. “So she did run off, then?”
“Never woulda guessed she woulda left me—or you—like that.” Preacher’s voice began to quiver. Blinking rapidly, he swallowed several times. “But I fucked up, Eva. I said some shit I shouldn’t have. None of that shit was her fault. It was mine—it was all my fault.”
“Did you ever find out anything? Anything at all?” My voice was hoarse—strained with desperation. And my skin felt too tight, my lungs and throat, too—as if my last shreds of hope were strangling me.
“I kept thinkin’ she’d show back up after she cooled off. I kept thinkin’ that she had to come back… for you, at least.”
Tears burning in my eyes, emotion lodged in my throat, I could hardly speak. “So she didn’t come back?” I managed to ask. Deuce’s hand on my back began to move in soothing circular motions.
Preacher stared off across the room. “I was a mess—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I had Tiny stayin’ at the apartment, gave you to Joe and Sylvie, and I went lookin’ for her. Looked everywhere. Even filed a missing person’s report. That’s when the Feds came knockin’, tryin’ to say I did somethin’ to her. And that’s when I found out who she really was.”
Preacher released a chest-rattling sigh. “Elizabeth Stephens—that was her real name. Born and raised in Southern California. Parents were Linda and Daniel Stephens—blue-collar family. Daniel died in a car crash when she was only three years old. Fell asleep at the wheel. Linda worked odd jobs for a few years until she remarried some hotshot real estate developer from Newport Beach. Name was Bruce Holtz. Guy was loaded. And a real fuckin’ scumbag.”
Listening to Preacher, it sounded as though he’d memorized a file on my mother—which, knowing my father, he probably had.
“A few women filed rape charges against him over the years.” His eyes on the ceiling, Preacher shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ ever came of any of it—the charges were always dropped. Back then, things being the way they were, him being as rich as he was, I figured either nobody believed those poor girls, or he’d paid ‘em off.”
“Rape,” I repeated numbly. “Did he—”
“She never told me,” Preacher interrupted. “But with him bein’ such a fuckin’ scumbag, and her bein’ so damn scared of bein’ sent home, it wasn’t hard to put it all together.”
I closed my eyes and just breathed—an attempt to clear my head of the uncomfortable, painful images filling it. Just like my mother, I knew what it was like to be violated by someone who’d been like family to me. Had she blamed herself, too?
It certainly wasn’t something I was glad to share with her, but it did help me understand why she’d been so secretive, and why she lied to everyone. Even the fear that had caused her to betray Preacher to the FBI made sense.
“What happened to Holtz?” It was Deuce who spoke. The hand on my back stilled, and I opened my eyes to find my husband staring at my father, a menacing gleam in his eyes.
Looking between them, seeing a similar expression on Preacher’s face, I swallowed hard. It was easy to forget the kind of men they were—how cold and detached they could be when it came to those who’d wronged them or dared to hurt the people they loved.
Preacher smiled faintly—a slight baring of teeth. “He died the followin’ year. Got carjacked at gunpoint, and took a bullet in each eye.”
“The followin’ year?” Deuce sounded amused.
Preacher’s expression turned indignant. “I couldn’t do anything right away. The club, the goddamn Feds—I had too much heat on me. One wrong move and I was goin’ away for life.”
“How’d you get the FBI off your back?”
“I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
“You helped them take down the Columbo family, didn’t you?”
Preacher shrugged. “They wanted a notch on their belt and the recognition, and I figured I was better off havin’ the Feds owe me one, rather than them beatin’ down my door every other second.”
“Jesus, Fox. You’re half the fuckin’ reason the Italian’s operation fell apart.” Deuce sounded impressed—a rare occurrence.
“And her mother—my grandmother?” I interrupted, faltering over my words. I couldn’t have cared less about anything to do with the mob or the FBI. Tears were still threatening and I was finding it increasingly hard to hold them back. Deuce’s hand moved from my back to my shoulder and gave me a comforting squeeze.
Preacher’s eyes shot to mine. “Don’t you cry for her, baby girl,” he growled. “That bitch wasn’t your grandmother; she was a goddamn drunk and a piece of shit. I kept tabs on her over the years. She got all that bastard’s money and drank herself to death. Died when you were fourteen. Was a better death than she deserved, and she damn sure wasn’t worth your tears.”
I shook my head, and a single tear slipped free. I wasn’t crying for her. I wasn’t even crying for my mother.
I was crying for Preacher.
I’d thought I’d known who he was. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t known him at all.
It isn’t easy to see your parents as people, separate from you. To think that they once had a life before you, that they’d lived and loved and lost, and everything in between, all before you’d ever existed.
The Preacher I knew, the one I’d loved my entire life, was a driving force in the criminal underground. He was a hard man, steadfast, who brooked no arguments from anyone—with the minor exception of those he loved.
But he’d also been so much more than that, more than I’d ever dreamed. I’d never known the young Preacher—full of self-doubt, lost in the world, and wishing for something more. I hadn’t known the son who’d struggled to free himself from the life his father had laid out for him. Neither had I known the man who’d loved the girl.
I only knew the person he’d become after he’d lost so much, the man he’d become because he’d lost so much. I was suddenly feeling as if he’d been shortchanged—as if we both had.
“Ah, shit, Eva.” Preacher reached over the bedrail, his hand quivering. “Never could stand seein’ you cry.”
I grasped his hand between mine and bowed my head. And then I cried. I cried for all of us. For Preacher, for The Judge and Ginny, for Elizabeth Stephens, and… for me.
“Why did you wait until now to tell me the truth?” I eventually asked, wiping away the last of my tears. “About all of it. I still don’t understand, Daddy. Why did you keep it from me?”
Preacher stared at me for a moment, considering. “Back then a lot of people thought I took out my own parents, and I didn’t bother correcting them. They thought I was crazy, they were afraid of me, and that served me well over the years… but I didn’t want you knowin’ any of that—thinkin’ that of me.” He paused, his chest heaving with heavy, painful-sounding breaths.
“I might have told you the truth once you were old enough to understand. But as it turned out… I didn’t even know the truth.”
Tears filled his eyes. “And then… I couldn’t tell you, Eva. I couldn’t face it. It was all my fault… all my fuckin’ fault. It was right there in front of my face the whole goddamn time and I never saw it.”
Eyes narrowed in confusion, I squeezed his hand harder. “What was your fault?”