Her Secrets

61

|Athena's POV|

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't believe it at first either because I was like why would she do that? It makes no sense. But I asked around. I watched the footages of that house— something nobody considered of doing. How could they just blindly trust someone like that? It was completely stupid."

"I mean, Elizabeth is a pretty damn good actress," Sean said, "she looked terrified when we went to take down Vladimir. But what if she wasn't acting? I mean... why would he boy denounce her?"

"Because the asshole had hope." I replied, based on the information I received, "he thought that Elizabeth would get him out you know? Free him but I don't know... she didn't. I guess she was scared to blow her own cover or something. Or maybe Vladimir loved her too much to rat her out. I mean, you never know with these people."

"Okay so you're telling me that Elizabeth is the bad guy?"

"Yes." I pursed my lips in a thin line, giving him a nod all while keeping my eyes fixed on him as I tried to read him. He was probably not believing me right now— or maybe he was. Sean was not stupid, definitely. He was smarter than most. He was quick to catch up on things which made hiding things from him almost impossible.

Alessio told me how he already knew that Lea was the 'deadly' the whole time but said nothing. He also told me how Sean knew that he was the 'shadow' but kept quiet about it. He was not one to socialise but he was always observing. Something I kind of admire— and find incredibly hot. I'm not even gonna lie.

"I'm gonna need you to dive in..." He let out a loud sigh, a frown settling on his features, "give me more details. I want to know what the fuck happened to my sister and if Elizabeth was involved."

"When I found out that she was not the innocent woman she was pretending to be, I wanted to tell Alessio but then I was like; no. He wouldn't believe me."

"He would have," Sean was quick to interject, "with sufficient proofs."

"I didn't know what to do," I said, glancing at my fingers on my lap, "I— I was conflicted. I found out some stuff that could possibly ruin— I just... I didn't want to be the one to ruin that for them, you know?"

"So you kept it to yourself." He stated which was more to himself than I. I only nodded at that, "I did. But since she was a potential threat, I couldn't just... leave her unsupervised so I made it my duty to keep an eye on that woman. I hired some people to track her every moves. It was not easy considering that she was living in a mansion which was like a damn fortress and she'd barely go out."

"So I'm guessing you ‘hired’ some of Alessio's men," he said, ending his ending with a small scoff, "interesting how disloyal these people can be. That's why I don't tell shit to my men."

"I thought the mafia was one big happy family." Sarcasm was clear in my tone which earned a small smile from him, "you thought wrong. Money makes people greedy. There are just like around three in five thousand that are actually trustworthy. People are really fucking easily corrupted."

I hummed in agreement at his words before resuming my story, "true that. Anyway, yeah... these people would tell me about her, what she'd do, when she'd wake up and most importantly— how she was the one to go give food to Luigi since he was kept in their basement ever since Thea became part of Alessio's life."

Sean visibly became rigid at my words. He looked at me with his eyes narrowed, holding a questioning look as he spoke, "run that by me again?"

"Yeah, she was the one who started going to give food to Luigi ever since Thea and Alessio became a thing. It took me a week to gain access to the cameras of that house," I explained, "it was a dangerous game but I had to do it. Once I did, I started observing her closely. I watched her every move."

Of course Alessio would not suspect his own mother. Why would he? First of, he was too happy to have found her to even question it. Secondly, she built up that perfect little image in front of them. Although she did slip a few times but none of them paid attention to it or if they did, they didn't mind.

I mean, she was the 'poor innocent traumatized woman who was kidnapped and tortured for years by the russian mafia leader' to everyone's eyes. To them, she was innocent. Who would even think of her being a suspect let alone blaming her?

"I knew they were planning something; Elizabeth and Luigi. It was clear that she was in love with Vladimir so for him to have been tortured and killed by her own children pissed her off. She wanted revenge, of course... that's my theory. Point is, she wanted to ruin Alessio's life. I don't know why Alessio only and not Lea but then I remembered that Alessio was not Vladimir's child— Lea was. She's the product of their 'love'. Why would she want to ruin that? So she decided to go for Alessio."

"Makes sense. When the fuck did you even connect all those dots?" Sean questioned, his jaw slightly dropped. "Months ago. I know I'm smart."

"I'm smarter than you." He retorted, rolling his eyes, "but fine I suppose you are smart as well. Now go on with that story. No, wait. Skip to the part where you tell me about Thea."

"I can't." I shook my head, "you won't understand anything if I do that."

___________________

I'm sorry for leaving you guys on a cliffhanger last time and again. But I promise that the next chapter's going to be published in like an hour or 2 or less. If you are confused, all your confusions are going to be cleared. Wait for it. I've got homeworks to do 💀