Chapter 56

Arianna POV: 

"I heard you were looking for me," a woman called in our bedroom I turned on the lights looking between Giovanni and the woman. The two in a standoff my head rushing with adrenaline, the sound of a heartbeat pounding like a base in the back of my brain. 

Then it all went clear she hesitated looking over at me inquisitively. "Vanessa?" 

My mother's name floated from her lips and I stopped standing straight up. "How do you know my mom?" 

The woman put her gun away and put up her hands. "I'm Ryan Blake?" she gave her name and Giovanni put the gun down with a thump and turned to the woman with his eyes lit with fire. 

"We have a front door most people tend to just knock," He scoffed going over and putting a shirt on. 

She eyed him with a mischievous grin. "Yeah, and most people haven't been tailed by FBI agents or had their tax records pulled in the last 48 hours, not to mention the relentless calling," she turned her attention back toward me. "Nice by the way my friends hate you," 

I felt my cheeks tinge and fidget with my robe pulling it around me. "Well I had to find you," my voice shook a little as I spoke. This woman was so confident, and dangerous, but I had to get to the bottom of it. 

"You knew my mother then, you were the P.I. she'd hired," I pushed past my fear and asked the woman who lounged on the back of the sofa as if she owned the place. 

Her cool and icy demeanor changed and she hardened a bit her jaw setting. "Yeah," was all she gave in response before she stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. "Yeah, if that's what this is about I'm sorry to say you're not gonna get the answers you're looking for," 

She started heading for the door and I should have walked away, there was no doubt in my mind that this woman could kill me. "Hey!" I shouted at her. "My mother said you helped her I need to know," 

"Ask her," she grunted as she pulled open the door. 

"She's dead," 

Ryan stopped in her tracks turning slowly to look at me. "That's not possible," She cringed. "I was keeping tabs on her if there was an obit, a coroners report, anything I would have known," 

It was my turn to cross my arms and get icy. "Not if my father got his hands in it," 

She slammed the door shut her fists clenched by her side as she looked down at the ground. "I told her to call me if he ever reached out again," She hissed. 

I raised my chin, it hurt to see a complete stranger so affected by my mother's passing. This fierceness come out of someone I had never laid eyes upon, for my mom, the center of my world. 

"He didn't reach out he just picked her up one day," I explained. 

She cracked her neck and shook her arms pulling her phone out of her pocket and walking back to the sofa. "I need you to explain everything that's happened so far, don't leave any small details out," She set her phone down to record. 

"You're not here to solve this," I stressed sitting down in the armchair facing her. Giovanni coming and sitting across from us. He eyed me with consideration, his eyes soft with concern. 

"If anything happened to Vanessa I want to know, and I'm gonna make the bastard pay," she snapped her hands extended in exasperation. 

"You seem to care a lot about her," I sat back in the chair. 

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Your mom was the one genuinely good person I have ever come across in my life okay," She huffed. "Your father tormented her trying to pressure her to bring you home, the more powerful he got the less her little photos mattered. So she came to me, and I helped her get some real dirt on him," 

"What dirt?" I pressed. 

She looked between Gio and I who were hanging on her every word. "Oh," she turned her phone off put it back into her pocket, and shook her head. "I see, you two think you're big enough to take him down," 

I grabbed my robe with fists, "He killed her, he beat her and put a bullet in her head. He did all of this to get to me," I growled. "If he doesn't spend the rest of his life in prison, or get the same treatment she did I'm not gonna be able to live with myself," 

She looked at me I couldn't discern her thoughts as she evaluated me. "You are alot like her, but there's…"She trailed off thinking better of finishing the sentence. 

"There's a bit of him in me?" I suggested and I saw the mild guilt flash on her face before she nodded. 

I wanted to throw up at the thought, but what could I do he was my father. Evil tyrant that he was, there were traces of him in me, the way I talked, the way I thought, it probably made her skin crawl too. 

"Vanessa was a kind person, but she didn't have the instinct to harm," Blake elaborated. "She wouldn't use what I gave her to take him down, she was too scared," 

I wish I could argue with her, but that was the truth. My mom had something that scared my father enough to keep him at bay for years, something that got her killed. She never gave it up to the police, when it could have bought us a life together. I realized that a while ago, but I didn't like thinking about it. My mother had prioritized our safety, she did what she thought was right. 

"I don't want to poke holes in what should or shouldn't have happened," I put her words to the side. "I want you to tell me what you found, what did you get that had my father in check," 

Ryan turned her head to the side and put her arms up on the back of the sofa. "As long as you tell me what made you abandon the life your mother had built, I mean besides beefcake over here that explains itself," 

"Deal," I agreed. "You first," 

She smirked at me. "You are a lot like your mom," she chuckled nodding her head. "Let's see it all started about twelve years ago, she came into my office begging me to take whatever money she had…"