Blood vs. Water

Revealing Truth

They walked in utter silence beside each other when they came to the door of which she remembered was locked. He put in a password, opened the door and entered. She followed in behind him. It was indeed his office, like she had guessed.

There were cupboards upon cupboards filled to the brim with paperwork and files. He dug one out of his drawer behind his desk and threw a file onto the rather empty table. He sat down into his chair and crossed his ankle over his knee. "This is what I used to blackmail the dick with." He gave her a sudden cruel smile and nodded his head at the secret folder. "Open it." He demanded Daphne and she picked it up, still standing and scanned through it.

The first paper was a parental test saying that some dad wasn't some baby's biological father. She looked at the name and her eyes went unfocussed. Harper. But this couldn't be, it had to be fake. The picture that followed the paper showed Rosebelle kissing another guy on the lips. Her sister was cheating on her husband and he wasn't even Harper's father. She didn't want to know how Aurelio had gotten the parental test to prove it.

She eagerly turned to the next page. It was a picture of her father and a woman glued onto a document. It wasn't just any picture, they were both naked. She grimaced at it. There were several more photos of him and other women. Her hand covered her mouth and she swallowed thickly. She was very aware of Aurelio's stare on her.

The document behind it was proof of payment to a place called, "Daddy's Money." Which was clearly a stripclub or whorehouse.

The last paper of the file was a copy of text messages between Tommy and a friend. And this paper was much worse than the first few. It said that Tommy had dropped out of collage after he got a girl pregnant. He admitted in the text messages to "taking her clothes off while she was unconscious". Her brother had raped a girl.

She shut the file and threw it to the side, dropping down into the seat behind her. Daphne licked her sudden parched lips and felt her tears well up. Then she slowly got the courage to look up at Aurelio with tears at the brim of her eyes. "This can't be true. It's fake." Her voice shook as her heart thumped in her ears. "It has to be."

"I think you know it's not." He said getting up from his chair and walking around the desk to bend down on his knees in front of her. She felt herself shy away from his closeness. She knew indeed the possibility of it all being true was there. And those photo's couldn't have been misinterpreted or fake. Besides, if it were fake why would her father not call him out on it instead of doing anything to protect it.

"Daphne, I have a whole file in that drawer that has your name on it. And I think you and I both know from that file alone, your family is certainly capable. That file was enough to bend your father to my will." She couldn't hold her tears back anymore as they bursted from her eyes rolling down her cheeks freely. She felt a hollow pain in both her stomach and heart.

He knew about it.
He KNEW.

She collapsed into herself and covered her face in embarrassment. She couldn't think of a time she'd felt more embarrassed in her life. He was the first person to find out about what her family did to her for all those years and because he knew that she knew that the other file was all true.

She felt his arms wraps around her frame and her head pressed against his hard chest. He gave her a moment for herself to cry her heart out into him. Daphne felt herself lean more into the comfort of his embrace but not completely letting herself feel at ease.

After a long moment, her sobbing and racking calmed down and he spoke up. "I had to marry a woman from America to become a legal citizen, to expand my business from Italy. I couldn't get caught or deported, because it would've led them to investigation and find my -illegal business." Daphne had never listened more intently to anyone in her life. She found herself more stiff now, awaiting for the rest of the story patiently. This was what she wanted all along.