“What do you mean, access to the family?” Michael Di Maio asked slowly as he and Joseph were beginning to put the pieces together even as Nico cursed, solving it first.
“Did either one of them allow Bianca to use the family soldiers to help her in any way?” Ryker clarified for the older men. He saw the second they understood.
“You let a woman outsider come into the family and order my men around? What did you do? What did she do?” Joseph asked in a way that even impressed Ryker. He’d need to use that tone in the boardroom because he was pretty sure Little Joey just pissed himself. “We’re in a house of God, don’t you dare think to lie to me, boy!”
“She knew I was trying to take over Faulkner Shipping for you and was my inside informant. She had great ideas on ways to take out Ryker and how to hurt him,” Little Joey practically whined.
“Same,” Michael Di Maio added, crossing his arms, and staring daggers at Bianca.
“Nico, Fat Joey, tell your grandfather and uncle what I told you would happen if your families tried to hurt what was mine.” Ryker crossed his arms and waited.
“You’d destroy the entire family, but I didn’t cross you,” Nico swore. “My idiot cousin did. And it’s obvious my grandfather isn’t involved.”
“Neither is my great-uncle,” Fat Joey said, “but I am. I fell for her lies.”
“Ah, they both are responsible,” Ryker said, pointing to Joseph and Michael before stepping back and letting Mary Alice come forward. She slammed her yardstick down to get everyone’s attention.
“Joseph, Michael, tell us about senior year for your children, Connie and Anthony,” Mary Alice demanded. “How many times were you called to my office?”
Ryker saw the confusion on their faces. This was not going in the direction they thought, but they didn’t have Kale doing his thing to give them all this information.
“Several,” Joseph said slowly as if he were trying to remember.
“You constantly caught them fighting. His daughter would attack my son,” Michael said, glaring at Joseph.
Joseph’s face went red and he pointed his finger at Di Maio. “And your son would assault my daughter!”
Mary Alice nodded. “They were constantly caught, alone, fighting throughout the school year.”
Little Joey snickered. “Even back then, my mom knew Di Maios were garbage.”
The ruler smacked down on his hand and he cursed a moment before Joseph leaned over and hit his head with an open hand. “We are in a church of God, for Christ’s sake. Behave!”
Mary Alice tapped her yardstick on the ground and everyone fell quiet. “What happened after graduation? What did Connie do?”
“My sweet Connie spent the next six months in Europe with her best friend. At the end of it, she met her husband and was married six months later,” Joseph said.
“And your son, Michael? What did Anthony do after graduation?” Mary Alice asked.
“He went to visit the family in Italy for three months to learn the business,” Michael said with a shrug. “What does this have to do with anything? We’re here because of that woman!”
“That woman!” Bianca finally exploded as she jumped up to stand. Dylan, Abby, and Greer moved forward to contain her if needed, but Bianca didn’t run. She turned and faced the pew full of Porzios and Di Maios. “I’m not that woman. I am the eldest heir to the Porzio and Di Maio families, and I am taking what is my birthright!”
30
Ryker heard the town gasp as if they were watching a soap opera. This is what Kale had found on his deep dive. A DNA test Bianca submitted to those ancestry sites looking to discover who her family was. That had led him to investigate her adoptive parents and discover the adoption.
“You are no such thing,” Michael spat. “My son is the heir.”
“And I’m his heir. The first-born child of Anthony Di Maio and Connie Porzio. I was born in Italy that August. I’ve learned through records that Anthony and Connie handed me off to a priest and I was put in an orphanage. I was adopted by a Canadian couple four weeks later and flown to Canada. When I was ten, we moved to New York City because my father got a position teaching there. I never knew they weren’t my biological parents until my mother needed a bone marrow transplant and I wasn’t a match because, as the doctor told me as my mother lay dying, I wasn’t family.”
Even though Bianca caused him trouble and put Kenzie in danger, Ryker felt for her. That had to be hard.
“My father confirmed it a year later after my mother died and I approached him with my DNA test,” Bianca said, continuing the story even as Joseph tried to cut her off. “He gave me all the adoption paperwork and I started my journey to find out who I really was. The journey took me to that orphanage where I stole my original birth certificate. There, in black and white, were the names Concetta Porzio and Anthony Di Maio. I traced them back to the neighboring towns in Italy where our relatives are and I asked around. I discovered they were in New York City, no more than a ten-minute cab ride from my house. What do I discover when I get there? My younger brother was set up in the high life as my father and I struggled to pay the medical bills from my mother’s losing battle with cancer. Then I see my birth father, living it up in a penthouse with his family—a family I should have been a part of! I decided right then and there to take what is mine. That’s the family way, right?
“And it worked. Women are always overlooked. You mob men think we’re good for nothing but taking care of you and the kids. We get kept in the dark and skipped over for power. You,” she said, pointing to Joseph, “have skipped over your daughters in favor of this idiot. Even if I had been born legitimately, I wouldn’t be boss. Well, I showed you all! I’m the best you have. I outsmarted all your precious boys.”
Ryker saw Michael and Joseph look to each other and then to Bianca as if trying to find the familial relationship. Now that Ryker knew it, he saw it. She had Di Maio’s eyes and Porzio’s nose.
“Whoa! You’re my half-sister?” Little Joey finally screamed as he leapt away from her.
Bianca rolled her eyes. “And you’re too dumb to be related to me. The men on both sides of my birth family are nothing but imbeciles. You were both happy to turn everything over to me in hopes of hurting the other. You didn’t care about me, you only cared that the other family had me and you’d do whatever it took to steal me away—even giving me access to your whole organization. Neither of you found it strange that we never touched—not once. All you heard,” Bianca said, turning to Little Joey, “was that I was Fat Joey’s and you,” she said, turning to Fat Joey, “only cared I was Little Joey’s.”
Bianca was livid as she turned to face her grandfathers. “All those containers you wanted, I have. I used the already established family to transport them for each of you. I did it, not them. Me! A woman who was given away all because of a feud that apparently goes back to the early nineteen hundreds in your tiny little village over a freaking goat. A goat! I was given up without a second thought because of that. But I showed you. I run your families better than any of them,” Bianca yelled as she pointed to Little Joey and Fat Joey.