The change in Dad didn’t go unnoticed, and Cristiano shifted to follow his gaze. His eyes went to Cali first, and his brows pulled together until his dark eyes landed on me. Tears filled the mafioso’s eyes, his throat working hard as a choked noise left him. “Nova.”

The sound of something breaking drew my gaze to Anya. She sat there, her shaking hands no longer holding on to her coffee cup—that was now shattered into little pieces at her feet. Her face was pale, her eyes glazed with tears.

“You’re…” She jumped to her feet and took a hesitant step toward me. “Nova, you’re…”

“You trained her so well, Anya,” Mom said in a deceptively sweet tone. “How could you ever imagine any other outcome except for her survival?”

A painful knot squeezed my insides. Mom had hinted that she knew something when she’d sent me to retrieve Garret, but I’d tried to convince myself that she hadn’t guessed the full truth. Obviously, I’d only been fooling myself.

“She told you?” Anya asked weakly.

“No,” Mom denied, glaring up at the other woman. “But after what happened when she was thirteen, I had a theory. Nova came home with far too many bruises after her Paris trips for me not to wonder what the two of you were getting up to. Shopping is not a contact sport, after all.”

“What are you talking about?” Dad muttered beside her, his green gaze going back and forth between the two brunettes.

Mom ignored him, keeping her attention focused solely on Anya. “Raven taught her enough self-defense to get by, and between her father, uncles, and Ryan, I knew she could handle a gun. But a teenage girl taking on two grown men who outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds each—hired killers, no less—and her coming out the victor with nothing more than a knife wound? It makes a mother wonder. Then she magically comes back from the dead, is standing in my kitchen alive and well, with no visible marks on her? Between Guzman and Maria, I was able to put together what happened to her down in that basement. Raven sure as fuck didn’t teach her how to break a man’s neck with her thighs.”

“Fuck, Annie,” Cristiano groaned. “Tell me you didn’t spend your Christmas trips with Nova teaching her to be an assassin. Ryan will go ballistic.”

“Of course I didn’t teach her to be an assassin!” she denied adamantly. “I would never put that kind of life on her. I simply taught her how to take care of herself. I knew they would come for her, and I needed to protect Ryan by protecting her. And yes, I know he will go ballistic if he finds out. That’s why we kept it from everyone.”

Mom jumped to her feet. “If you trained her so well, then how could you think that whoever was on that table was her?”

“Sheena thought of everything.” Anya tried to defend herself. “The blond hair, the same outfit Nova wore out that night. But it was the necklace that convinced me. She never took it off. Never. I knew that someone would have to decapitate her before she willingly allowed it to leave her. And that’s what Sheena did!” She was breathing heavily, her small body shaking with emotion. “And then Ciana drove that assumption home by saying she saw it happen. She couldn’t take her eyes off what was left… She swore it was Nova.”