My eyes tear up and I will them to stop. The last thing I want is to cry in front of him. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “How could you possibly know that?”

“My mom used to tell that story,” he says.

I look at him sideways. “Your mom knew my aunt Jo?” I say, trying to grasp what that could mean.

“Knew her? My mom is Jo’s sister—the youngest of the three,” he says, and it feels like someone sucked all the air out of the room.

“You’re lying,” I say, pressing my hand into my chest in a desperate attempt to get control of my heart and the crack I feel forming there.

He shakes his head.

My mom and Aunt Jo had another sister. They had a younger sister, and Matteo…“You’re my cousin?” I say, and my confusion and anger surge anew. I shake my head to blink away the tears, but they’re only getting heavier. “When did you know? How could you not tell me this!” I’m stamping toward him, fuming. “My god, you punched me!”

I swing at him and he leans out of the way.

“You made me a target!” I yell, and swing at him again.

He catches my wrist. “You made us a target!” he yells right back at me, and releases my hand. “Stefano is dead because you came here. So don’t tell me what I did to you.”

The more I look at him, the more I realize how much his features remind me of my mom and Aunt Jo. How could I not have seen that before? “Why were my parents in America?”

He looks at me with caution.

“I’m serious. Tell me why my parents were hiding in the country. Tell me why I didn’t know I was Strategia.”

He frowns. “You didn’t know you were—”

“No. And spare me the endless ‘That doesn’t make sense’ responses,” I say. “I know better than anyone that it doesn’t make sense. But I have a right to know who I am and why I grew up the way I did. And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I can see on your face right now that you do.”

“I’m not telling you Family secrets,” he says.

“These are my secrets! I have more of a right to them than you do and you know that,” I say.

Matteo looks at me like he’s not sure.

I exhale. “Look, my mom died when I was six, and although I was always told it was an accident, Aunt Jo was vehemently convinced it wasn’t. Now my aunt gets murdered—our aunt. And I’m guessing that whoever is trying to destroy my family will go after my father next. If they haven’t already. And if what’s going on in this school is related to their deaths, and I’m nearly positive it is, then I damn well need to know. All I have to go on right now is that the Lions hate us because we’re trying to stop them from taking over all of Strategia.”