Vengeance (COMPLETED)

Part 12

"What do you know about your mother's relationship with Vassilis?" Atticus asks.

"Everything. She told me everything."

"How they met? Why she didn't mind he was involved in organised crime?"

"I mean... she liked the thrill. She always said she didn't care what he did as long as he didn't involve her and treated her right. I thought it was ridiculous and stupid, but I couldn't change her mind. She was lovesick."

"Erin..." Atticus shakes his head. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees just like he did that first day in my room, except this time his eyes are filled with compassion instead of amusement. "Your mother wasn't dating him because she liked him. She was working with us to take him down."

"What?" my scowl deepens. That's impossible.

"She helped us get him out of the country so we could execute our plan here, and in the meantime, she gathered information we could use against him. She'd report back to us once a month."

"Why would she do that? Why would she work with you?" It doesn't make any sense.

"Because she knew what we were trying to do — the changes we wanted to make to the family."

"Yeah, Catarina told me about that and the supposed good you do," I dismiss him. "I just don't understand where my mother comes into this. Why would it matter to her? She wasn't involved in anything illegal."

"No, she wasn't, but your father was."

"My dad?" I never even got to know him. He died when I was a baby — more than 26 years ago. Why would that matter now?

"Your dad was my fathers' lawyer, and he killed him."

"No, my dad died in a car accident."

"Orchestrated by my father."

"No..." I shake my head, but it makes sense — more sense than my mother being in love with Vassilis. I never understood it — how the strong, intelligent and independent woman I knew could be with someone like him. To avenge my father is much more logical than anything else I've come up with. She never liked to talk about him, and I didn't like to bring it up. She much preferred to ignore her feelings than face them head-on. I have no reason to doubt Atticus. He's only told me the truth so far. Why would he start lying now? What would be the point in making this up, anyway? He's connecting the dots I've been stuck with for years now. "Alright, so both my parents were killed by your father."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Great," I look down. Catarina's words from earlier come back to mind, reminding me of the brothers' intention to do better than their father did. He killed both of my parents. My mother wouldn't even be dead if she wasn't working with them. "Is that the real reason you care about keeping me safe? It's not about me being an asset or anything like that. You feel guilty."

"Truthfully, yes," Atticus' voice fills with sorrow. "You have been helpful to us. We only spoke with your mother once a month. A lot of information could've been missed, and you've already started to fill those gaps. But mostly, we wanted to keep you safe. Your mother died for us. You lost her because of us. Keeping you safe is the least we could do."

"And Simpson knows about this?" I raise my earlier suspicions.

"She does, yes," he nods. "We reached out to her when we found out she was assigned to you. We both wanted to keep you safe, so we decided to follow procedure first — to give you a chance at a normal life, but my father... he's obsessive. He was never going to let you go."

"Why didn't you tell me this from the beginning?" I wonder. All of this drama could have been avoided.

"We were worried it would make you upset, or you'd conflate us with our father, and that's the last thing we want," this expression changes from compassionate to determined. "I promise you, we are doing everything we can to be as far from him as possible. We're cleaning up his messes. I'm doing everything I can to make sure I'm nothing like him. Nothing."

"I know," I try to give him a reassuring smile, but I think it comes across more sad than anything. "You've already shown me you're nothing like your father."

"I'm truly so sorry for everything my family has done to yours. The death of your father was out of our hands, but your mother... that's on me."

I shake my head. "My mother would have known the risks before she started working with you. She still made the choice to follow through, so you can't blame yourself for that."

"It's not just that. We took away your chance to live a normal life, away from all of this."

"I was never going to live a normal life," I know that now. "I made the choice to fight against him and to work with the authorities. If it wasn't for my mother's sake, it would have been for my father's. She would've told me the truth eventually."

"She had a plan for you, you know?" a slight smile pulls at his lips. "Once Vassilis was out of the way, she wanted to move here with you. That was part of our deal. If we managed to pull it off, we'd build you a villa on one of our islands."

"Really?" I grin. My mum would've loved it here. "Is that why Santos asked me to stay and work for you?"

He nods. "But you don't have to, of course. It was stupid of him to bring it up before you knew the whole story."

"Can I ask something, though?" I wonder. Something's not adding up.

"Of course," he leans back in his seat, clearly feeling relieved now the hard conversation is over.

"Why didn't you kill Vassilis to begin with? Why did he have to get ousted when you could have just killed him? You'd still have taken over from him, right?"

"Trust me, we wanted to, but it was dangerous. The rest of the family would question us. They were loyal to him, not us. There would have been an uprising. We had to show them what he was truly doing and why it was bad. That's why he still has men working for him now. Not everyone agreed with us."

"But the family know you want to kill him now?"

"They do, yeah, and they agree. It'll only be a matter of time before he's built himself up enough to come back for us. We can't keep looking over our shoulders. This needs to be done with."

"I agree," I say. "I think I have a plan."