"Valentina Victoria DiMarco, how much you've grown." I stare directly at the man in front of me, unable to muster up a sentence maybe even just a word—I know I should probably think of something to say but it's as if my jaw has locked in place and the ability to speak has left me completely. "Daughter." The man takes steps towards me and I can't help but take steps back.

"I'm not your daughter," I shake my head. "You have the wrong person." The man, Vincent looks towards Harry beside me and nods making him walk away. Before I can walk after him, Vincent speaks.

"I have something I want to show you, Valentina." He now had a box in his hand when he reaches me. "Please come with me." I hesitate as I watch him walk away, I thought about walking off to find Harry but I was alone with four burly men behind me. When I look ahead, Vincent is waiting on the steps for me. His gaze, hopeful.

I take in a deep breath before sighing and walking up the steps towards him. Vincent looks at me for a moment but ultimately walks us inside and up the stairs towards the room I saw when I first got here, it still stood and I hated it. I was reluctant to go in, even when Vincent held the door open for me. "I don't like this room." I say, maintaining my feet planted by the doorway. I felt dirty in this room for some reason.

"I'm so sorry," Vincent says, his face was a soft gaze and he looked genuine. "I'm sure you're confused."

I nod. "Somewhat." I say sarcastically.

Vincent nods and walks towards a chair on the side of the room near the crib, beside it was another chair and a small white table in the middle. He sits and looks at me. "I would like to be able to convey the answers to sustain your confusion, if you'd let me." He motions to the chair beside him.

I once again hesitate, I hate this room but I do want to know what the hell is going on. So I take a deep breath and slowly walk in towards the chair, I sit. I look around for a moment, the room still pretty much giving me the creeps. Vincent looks at me with a faint smile and I look down to the box he now placed in the table between us, I nod to it. "So what did you want to show me?" I awkwardly clasp my hands together and put them between my knees in a way to stop them from bouncing with growing anxiety.

Vincent looks down to the box for a second or two before reaching for it. He takes out some photographs and sets down one of a woman, a woman I had already seen before because Harry had shown me. "My father always had one thing that he absolutely lived by and that was family. He had battled greatly with cancer, for years. You'd think a terminal disease would get him a bit of humility, but my father was a mean son of a bitch up until the end. He threatened to remove me from the will if I didn't start a family." Vincent chuckles ruefully at the memory.

He sets down another picture, this looked like my father at a young age, I reach for the picture and look at it closely. "Fiore and I knew each other from boyhood, we were like brothers and people treated us as such." He clenched his jaw and shakes his head disapprovingly. Another picture, this was my mother. "Frida was amongst us in our teenage years. She was a lifeguard at the local pool and even though we had a pool in our backyard, we would go just to see her." Vincent seems to admire my mother's picture a little longer.

"When you're young and rich, you feel like nothing can touch you. Everybody knew my father was a mafia leader, and people sort of treated us like royalty. There came a point where being friends with Fiore wasn't as easy as it once was. He liked the power that came with his father being a successful business owner, and having the son of a mafia leader in his circle just worked in his favor. Still, he was almost sort of envious. The moment he saw me getting close to Frida, he told me he was going to marry her one day. Understandably I stepped back."

"I don't mean to interrupt," I interject, getting impatient and annoyed at the fact that I was still in this room. Vincent looks at me. "But I still don't understand what this—" I motion to the room. "Any of this has to do with me or why I'm here."

Vincent chuckles and nods his head. "I do apologize if I'm rambling. I've spent so much time behind bars I've forgotten what it felt like to just...talk about my life." He sighs and relaxes a bit. "But if you want to understand, I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep talking." I bite the inside of my cheek and nod. I did want answers after all. "Frida and I always had a special kind of bond, a bond her and Fiore never got to experience. I was in love with her from day one and I felt guilty about that. How could I do that to my best friend? When Viola came into my life, we were good friends for a time until we tried to make things work. I was hurt that my best friend was marrying the woman I loved and I guess I took that out on Viola. As a result, she became pregnant."

"And then what happened?" I push.

Vincent seems to ponder on what he said before speaking once again. "And then it all went to shit." He sighs. "I turned to alcohol and drugs, I was depressed and I felt as though my life was falling apart. Fiore got me into breaking into houses for the hell of it. We got into so much shit up until Viola started showing. I wish I could say that it stayed that way but that wouldn't be the truth. Fiore hated the fact that I was being pulled away from all the chaos, we were in our early twenties. I should've been out partying, not at home playing house. I was driving him back home from a party one night, he seemed riled up and I didn't understand why, maybe it was the substance he had abused."

"I don't quite remember what had happened but I do remember the fight we got into. A week later, Viola went into early labor. I missed the birth and by the time I got there, she had already lost so much blood." Vincent looks ahead, reminiscing. "There was hope for a minute or two before she..."

I shift in my seat as Vincent struggled to find the words. "I only got to hold the baby once before everything went to shit. The next thing I knew, I was thrown in prison for something I didn't do. Murder they said. Hearing my sentencing, my father suffered a heart attack and died, leaving everything to me. But by then, nothing else mattered. I had just lost my freedom, the mother of my child, my best friend and my baby. My family." He digs inside the box and takes out a Manila folder that he passes to me.

"What is this?" I ask, looking at him hesitantly.

"The answer to all your questions." I look back down to the folder in my hands, I felt my heart pounding in my chest and cold sweats. I hesitate for what felt like forever before I eventually open the folder to reveal a birth certificate.

Valentina Victoria Di'Marco born to Vincent Di'Marco & Viola Di'Marco.

"I can still remember the day you were born," Vincent says but I keep my eyes focused on the paper before me. "You were so small and you fit in my hands. You hardly cried." I felt sick to my stomach, I didn't know much of my background back home as it was and now to be here and have this strange man tell me that what I lived before was a complete lie.

I blink away tears that threatened to spill and set the paper down to look at him to see he had something in his hands, a necklace. That same necklace my mother took from me as a child. "Where did you get this?" I say as I take it from him.

"That was the necklace I left with you the day you were born. It was your first birthday present." He says sadly. "All this—" Vincent motions to the pictures. "Every one of these pictures were sent to me by Frida throughout the years."

"If what you claim is true, why was I on the other side of the border? I mean what was I doing there? Why was I kidnapped in order to get me here?" This was still so very hard to believe.

"The day I was arrested, I told Fiore and Frida to take care of you for the time being. I even signed over the family business, I had no siblings and Fiore was about the closest thing to a brother. I trusted him and I had no doubt in my mind he'd raise you the right way. He was supposed to tell you about me when the right moment came—but I guess somewhere along the lines, that son of a bitch became greedy. Where there was contact, suddenly there was no more. For years I tried to call around, after all you were what was keeping me going in prison. Knowing that you might be waiting for me one day, maybe even come and see me. But that never happened. I had to go out of my way to get people to look for you, day and night. I wasn't going to rest knowing you were still out there."

"I felt betrayed and I wanted nothing more than to kill him but it was as if he fell off the face of the earth. But then we got a lead, we found out where he had been residing. Living under a fake name in stolen land down in Mexico. A family of four, two young girls. For a moment, I thought it couldn't be. But I could never forget his face. We set up an interference, we found out you were being relocated every other month and got in contact with the man that was in charge of moving you."

"And you made it seem like you were buying me." I say, looking forward as I listened to the story. When silence falls, I look up towards Vincent who's already looking at me.

"I've been through a personal hell on earth. I had everything taken from me in under twenty-four hours. All I ever did want was to get you back, to bring you back home. Or at least, I hope it becomes home for you one day. I know this is probably too much for you to understand, you probably feel like you've been lied to. God, I can't imagine what you've been through but I can surely come to understand. But I just—" He takes a breath. "I just want to be your father one day, I understand if you think it's too late and if you say you don't think I've done enough to get you back I'd believe you. But I did try my best, and I have never loved anything more than I love you."

I blink back the water in my eyes as he spoke, this man before me didn't seem like another dangerous individual, he seemed broken and sad. I could feel the pain radiating from him and onto me but as much as I wanted to let my inner child reach out, I just couldn't. He was still a stranger. So I say nothing. "I understand if you want to be alone," Vincent says as he stands up and without another word, he walks out of the room and closes the door behind him.

Once he's gone, I allow myself to cry into my hands. So many thoughts raced in my head, he told his story as if he'd rehearsed it time and time again. I mean I guess he did, he had all the time in the world in prison for eighteen years. I reach out for the pictures he left on the table, there was various pictures of me still left in the box.

The annual photos my mother took of me by the same doorframe to tell my height was in there, elementary graduation in the backyard down to my high school diploma that I received in the mail. Birthdays, holidays all in the same backyard. Constantly home ridden, never going outside. I should've known something was up the moment I was scolded for stepping out.

"You're right," I hear a voice by the door, when I look up it's none other than Harry. "This room is creepy." I give a short rueful chuckle as I put the pictures back in the box. I keep the necklace in my hand. "Are you okay?"

I wipe away some tears and rest my back on the back of the chair. "Well I was just told my life is infested with liars so." Harry closes the door behind him and walks towards me, he grabs the ottoman off to the side and sits on it in front of me.

"It could be worse," He says and when I look at him he looks away towards my hands. "What's that?" He doesn't wait for my to answer because he's already reaching for the object in my hands, softly prying my fingers open and looking at the flower pendent.

"It's just a necklace I had as a child," I say. "I thought I had lost it but it turns out, my mother mailed it to him as well as pictures." I pat the box and lay back on the chair again. Harry dangles the necklace in between his fingers.

"Come." I look to him as I watch him undo the clasp at the back of the necklace. I quickly understand that he wants to put it on me so I lean forward and move my hair off to the side. Harry's arms go around my neck, pushing me further into him so that my forehead rests on his shoulder and I can smell his cologne.

Once he clasps it, he runs his fingers through my neck gently and before I can pull away, his fingers hook in the necklace. He held me there, faces just inches apart. For a second, I thought he would kiss me with the way he stared at me but that quickly leaves when he lets go of the necklace and looks away.

"How's the party?" I say, clearing the tension a bit.

Harry shrugs at this. "I wouldn't know, I've been on watch since you and Vincent came in here." I nod at this. "I'm probably about the only person who knows how overly annoying you are—"

"Oh wow, thanks." I retort sarcastically with the roll of my eyes. "What a way to kick me when I'm down."

"I know we've been through some shit before that we aren't going to talk about, and I know I haven't also been a walk in the park. We are both exhausted, but I think you should go out there and enjoy your night."

"Harry—" I begin but he stops me.

"Trust me. It will do you good to have fun for a change." He stands up and unexpectedly, lowers his hand to me. I stare at it for a moment before I take it. I fix my dress around my thighs and Harry tries to play off like he didn't just check me out.

"You're being nice today." I say as he takes his hand back.

"Don't get used to it," He says as he opens the door for me. I walk out and look back to him to see him standing by the stairs.

"You're not coming?"

"No," He shakes his head. "You can relax knowing I'm not on your ass for tonight." He smirks and walks off towards a room.

Meanwhile, I do as he says and relax.