CHAPTER THIRTY

ARIES

For six fucking years, I've looked for her. Should I have given up by now, and moved the fuck on? Probably, but I couldn't. There can never be anyone other than Dalia. Finally, I have an address, and she's going to sit and listen to me if I have to tie her to a damn chair. I hold the piece of paper with her address in my hand like it's my goddamn life line. And it is. Did she really need to move three hours away? The drive may cause me to snap long before I get there. To be this close, and not be looking at her yet, is torture.

After driving for what feels like forever, the GPS tells me I'm about fifteen minutes out from her house, and my heart starts to pound erratically.

It's been six years, so hopefully she's not as angry, but Art wasn't able to find much information on her. What if she's married? If some fucker married my goddamn dream girl, he has to die. She's mine and now that I've found her, some other asshole will not come between us.

It's funny how fifteen minutes can feel longer than three hours, but the fifteen minutes it takes me to finally make it to her street just about kill me. I park on the street so I have a minute before she notices I'm here. After getting out of my car I walk to the driveway, I find a two-story brick home. It's awfully big for one person and the panic instantly returns. There's a purple door that I find myself staring at from the driveway. The door opens and I hear her laughing, but she's not alone. I look from her shocked face to that of a little boy.

"Aries," she gasps while clutching the hand of the child. For a moment I wonder if she got married and had a kid, but there's something about him. Dark hair, curly at the top, flopping into his gray eyes. It's like traveling through time and looking in a goddamn mirror.

DALIA

I'm having a stroke. That's what this is. If I had the ability, I'd grab my phone and google stroke symptoms to self-diagnose, but I'm sure that's what it'd say is happening to me right now. Are hallucinations part of it?

Ares starts shaking my hand, "Can we go now Mommy? Can we go?"

Glancing down at him, I am taken out of my mental fog, "I forgot I have something to do, go ask Holly if she can take you."

I stare at the man before me that broke my heart twice, but gave me the greatest gift in this world, my son.

"Is he mine?"

He runs a hand through his slightly grayed hair, looking like he's hanging onto his sanity by a single thread, yet still every bit as gorgeous as he was six years ago, "Aries. It's been six years. Why are you here?"

Pain reflects in his eyes as he speaks low, "Did I even know you? Or is this your revenge? Keeping my son from me for how long? I don't even know exactly how old my fucking son is, Dalia."

The door opens and I beg him, "Please don't say anything. We'll talk, I'll tell you anything you want to know."

I squat down and give Ares a hug and kiss, "What's the rule, baby?"

He rolls his eyes at me, "If I can't see Holly, she can't see me."

"Good boy. I love you. I'll see you in a bit, okay?"

Holly's eyes dart between myself and Aries, "Are you going to be okay here? Alone?"

I reassure her, "Yeah. I'll be fine. Maybe take him for lunch afterward."

She smiles, "I'm sure he won't argue about going to McDonald's. I have the change left from the groceries. I'll use that."

Touching her shoulder, I say, "Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

I take a deep breath as her and Ares get into the car and drive away. Glancing at Aries, I say, "Come in."

He slams the door behind him, "He doesn't even know about me, does he?"

I turn to him and sit on the couch, "No."

Aries paces back and forth, "When did you find out?"

"The night you held a gun to the guard's head."

Turning to me with a glare, he grits through clenched teeth, "It meant nothing to you that I was suffering so much?"

"No more than it did to you when you refused your assistance."

Walking over to me, he leans over me, places his hands on the back of the couch and cages me in, "I wasn't the fucking head of the family. I didn't fucking know you. And I didn't know then that I was going to fall so madly in love with you, that six years later I still wouldn't be over you. I sure as fuck didn't know you were going to have my child."

Gazing up at him, I try to ignore how he still smells the same, "A child you didn't want."

"Who the fuck are you?" He growls, "I didn't know about him. I certainly never said I didn't want him."

"When I mentioned birth control, you said you never wanted children with anyone."

He hangs his head down and speaks in the most threatening voice I've ever heard him use, "I can't decide if I want to kiss you or kill you."

I swallow hard, "Aries, I'm sorry. Please, I'm begging you, don't leave me here for our son to find my body."

Taking his hand off the couch, he digs it into my hair and pulls, but it doesn't hurt, "That's what you think? I'm the man that murders the woman he loves? Even more than that, the mother of his child? And leaves her fucking body for his son to find? That's where we are, Dalia?"

"I know what you did to the Aiellos," I admit.

He chuckles, "Oh do you? So you know they deserved it?"

"I know what a bitch she was. I know what she did to my own family, but what you did to Jewel? I'll never be okay with that. She never touched Sierra."

Letting go of me, he stumbles backward, appearing disoriented. He wanders over to the end of the couch, sinks into it and puts his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands.

"How did we get here? I don't understand."

The Aries I know is a strong, confident man. This defeated version I don't even know what to do with.

"I'm sorry for not telling you about Ares. I honestly thought you'd want nothing to do with him."

He snaps his head in my direction, "His name is Aries?"

I nod, "Pronounced the same, but there's no ‘i'."

His expression gets serious, "I killed every man in the Aiello family. I swear to you, Dalia, I didn't fucking touch Jewel. What was done to her… Fuck, I would never do that to a woman."

The murder of Jewel Aiello was perplexing. My family, of course, had the biggest reason to kill her, but we generally don't go after women. And we definitely wouldn't kill a woman the way someone did to her. They raped her brutally over and over again. Orally, vaginally, and anally. As horrible as it must have been for her, that was not how she died. The authorities believe she was hung from a meat hook and slowly bled out, the murderer knew exactly what he was doing and transfused her and started all over again. The coroner believed this took place over a period of weeks. It was brutal, and I struggled with the thought that the father of my son could commit such a heinous crime. Aries, as well as my brothers, are not good guys. They murder regularly but there's normally a reason for it. And none of us could figure out why Aries would do such a thing. There's no love lost between his family and mine, so it's not like he would've avenged what Jewel had done to Dante, and my other brothers. It made no sense.

"I swear I didn't touch her."

"I believe you. Why didn't you set the record straight?"

People talk in our world and he could have easily gotten the word out. I just can't understand why he wouldn't have.

"I don't care what anybody thinks, Dalia. Only you. I never thought it would reach you, since you aren't in the business, but I guess I wasn't thinking about your brothers running their fucking mouths to you about shit they don't know."

I hold my hands up, trying to let him know I'm not trying to antagonize him, "They never said you did it, just that that's what people were saying. In fact, Dom said he couldn't see it."

He turns to me and quietly watches me for a few minutes before he speaks, "Yet, you could see it? You believed it."

I shrug, "I didn't want to. When I found out what you did to Vinnie and his friend, that was really disgusting, by the way, I thought maybe you were capable of more than I realized."

"Tell me about my son."

I can't help the smile that appears on my face from simply thinking about him, "He is six, and an active boy. Baseball is his favorite sport. He's really smart, he reads at a second-grade level. Oh and he's an amazing little artist. Do you want to see a picture he painted?"

He nods slightly, "I didn't even know this kid existed before today, suddenly I want to know everything. What's his favorite color? Does he argue about going to bed at night? Is he happy in the morning? Is he grumpy like me or does he take after you and have a warm personality?"

The guilt nearly swallows me whole but I dismiss it and give him what he wants. What he deserves.

"Follow me."

I take him through the kitchen out to the glassed-in patio, "These were all made by him."

He gawks at me, "He has a studio?"

I giggle, "Well, I don't know if I'd call it a studio, more mom wants him to paint there so she doesn't end up with paint all over the house."

"These are really good. Are you artistic?"

I shake my head, "I can't even draw a stick figure. You?"

He nods, "Yeah, when I was a kid I used to paint all the time."

I giggle, "I knew he didn't get it from me."

The way he stands there staring at me, causing tingles to travel down my spine, "What?"

He shakes his head like he's trying to snap himself out of something, "Nothing. I just really fucking miss that sound."