Page 39 of Merciless King

My heart stops at her words, and I feel like I can't breathe. "My parents? They… they paid you to leave town?"

Piper nods, her eyes brimming with tears. "They showed up at my door the morning I learned I was pregnant. Offered my parents a fortune to take me away."

I run a hand through my hair, my mind spinning with this new information. I can’t make sense of it. “They wouldn’t do that.” Would they?

She scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest. "If you really want to know the truth, why don't you go ask them yourself? I'm sure they'll be more than happy to fill you in on all the sordid details."

I shake my head, a humorless laugh escaping my lips. "I can't. They're dead.”

She flinches.

The pain of the last few years, of all I’ve lost, pierces my chest. “Should I ask Lazaro? Oh, wait, he’s dead too. Do you think Lana knows? She’s all I have left.”

Her eyes widen in surprise, and for a moment, I see a flicker of sympathy in her gaze. But it's quickly replaced by anger once more. "Well, then I guess you'll never know the truth since you don’t want to believe me."

All the information is swirling in my head. I’m fighting to make it coherent. I think back to eight years ago. I’d made a promise to Piper, and the next day she was gone.

They showed up at my door the morning I learned I was pregnant. Offered my parents a fortune to take me away.

Piper's words hit me like a punch to the gut, and I stagger back, my mind reeling with the implications. My parents paid her to leave town, to hide her pregnancy from me.

I look up at her. “I’m Elysse’s father?” I feel like the world is tilting on its axis, like everything I thought I knew has been turned upside down. I have a daughter. A beautiful, amazing little girl whom I've already fallen in love with. And I've missed seven years of her life because of my family's brutally cruel act.

“Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

Betrayal cuts through me, and I can't breathe. They took everything from me. The woman I loved, the chance to be a father to my child. And for what?

I close my eyes as I remember right after Piper disappeared, I was told that I’d be marrying Ava Rinella when she came of age. Did my parents really pay Piper’s family off to secure some bullshit alliance with the Rinellas?

I look at Piper, really look at her, and I see the pain and anger in her eyes that I'm only now beginning to understand. If this is what she believes, then of course she’d be angry.

Except… I would never do what she’s accusing me of. How could she believe I would? The pain of that is beyond anything I’ve ever felt, worse than when she disappeared.

I shake my head as a toxic brew of anger and hurt swirl. “I loved you. How could you think I would abandon you, abandon our child? Fucking hell, Piper. I promised you everything. I gave you all of me.”

She watches me, blinks as if she wasn’t expecting that response.

“No… this isn’t on me. What you and your parents and my parents did… that’s on you. I bet that was it, wasn’t it? All that time, you and your family struggled. You saw a way out. My father was an asshole, but he knew people. He took one look at you and your family and knew money was all you wanted.”

She looks at me with desperation. “What? No. They made me leave.”

“You could have called me. Emailed?—”

“They wouldn’t let me?—”

“How convenient. So you won’t believe me that I knew nothing about this deal you and my parents struck up, but somehow, I’m supposed to believe you couldn’t contact me?”

“It’s the truth. They told me you didn’t want to be there.”

"And you believed them? Just like that?” I’m seething now with so much anger and pain. “The night before, I vowed to love you forever, but instead, you believed my father whom you'd never met.”

Piper's eyes fill with tears, and she wraps her arms around herself. "What was I supposed to think, Elio? We were eighteen. Your family had all the power, all the money. I was just some girl from the wrong side of the tracks who got knocked up by the heir to a Mafia empire."

I run a hand through my hair, frustration and hurt warring in my chest. "You knew me. You knew how much I loved you. How could you think I would ever agree to something like that?"

She’s looking at me like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. "They… they never told you?"

"No. They never mentioned a word. One night, I was high on love, and the next day, you were MIA. I showed up at school on Monday and was told you'd moved. That was it.”