“Eli, what’s wrong?

A line separating his old life from his new was about to be drawn. The past was another country, and if they had a chance of making it, he had to leave it behind. Eli the liar. Eli the manipulator.

Eli, the son of a Chicago hero.

He stroked her thigh, taking strength from her heat and goodness, and said the one thing he’d prayed would never need saying.

“We need to talk.”

We need to talk. The four most terrifying words in the English language.

She sat up straight and looked into the eyes of this man she had foolishly and irrevocably fallen in love with. “Should I not have spoken to that reporter? I don’t know how she got my number and . . .” Heart thudding, she trailed off at his stark expression and painted on a wobbly smile.

“No, it’s not that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Weston Cooper wasn’t the saint everyone made him out to be, Alexandra. He was just a man.”

She blinked, not understanding how this was the lead-in to getting dumped. Maybe she was going to hear that his dad wouldn’t have approved or . . . She thought back to the missing photos, the thousand-mile stares, the clues her brain refused to compute. Had Weston Cooper been a different man behind closed doors?

“They’re all just men, Eli. But some men do great things, even if they’re not the best in other areas.” A flutter in her chest started up, thinking about what areas Eli’s father had failed in. As sister to foster brothers who had all endured fucked-up parental situations before finding a safe harbor with the Dempseys, she understood that the roses often came sporting big-ass thorns.

“When I was a kid, I adored him.” His gaze traveled to the family portrait hung up in the living room for the public to see. “I didn’t even realize that what he was doing was all that special until later. After. He was just Dad. He put on a suit and went to work at seven every morning and came home and played with the dog and me every night at six. I thought he was perfect, but he wasn’t.”

Those last three words were grated out.

“No one is,” she whispered.

“Sean was. His legacy is forged in fire. No one can take that away from you. What he did, laying his life on the line for his job, his city, his family, for total strangers—that made him a true hero. Logan, too.”

Confusion tore at her brain. “Your father was a hero of a different kind.”

“Stop calling him that.” He spat out the words, his eyes flat discs of fury. “Because he wasn’t. He was a liar and a fraud and he’s the reason my mother is dead.”

“Eli, what are you talking about?”

What she saw in the harsh cut of his mouth terrified her. “A week after I was elected four years ago, Sam Cochrane came to see me. He wanted to make sure I was ready to scratch his back now that he’d bankrolled me to the top. I was happy to ease up on him for a few things, minor shit—it’s quid pro quo, after all—but I wasn’t going to give him any significant preferential treatment. That’s when he played his ace.”

“What, Eli? What did he tell you?”

“My father was a crook. He was actually working with Ronan Cutler, the mob boss who killed him. ”

The chill in her heart spread to every part of her. “Th-that can’t be right. How would Cochrane know that?” Perhaps not the right question, but there were so many and she had to start somewhere. What he had said was mind-boggling.

“Cochrane and my father might have been friends, but that never stopped the bastard from investigating people. If he thinks he can get an edge, he’ll put people on it. Go to any length to find it. He got a tip, found out something, who knows? He was probably blackmailing my father with it. After my parents died, Sam held on to it because he suspected it would be more useful to him if he bided his time. He would use it to catch me.”

“You make it sound like he’s been planning to back you for office for years.”

He didn’t respond, which was an answer in itself. And his eyes . . . those eyes were filled with something she had never seen: hopelessness.

“Two days after my parents died, the cops raided Cutler’s compound, killed him and his top people. There were only low-level peons left, none of whom knew about my father’s involvement with the mob. He had been giving Cutler a heads-up on raids, advance moves of law enforcement. According to Sam, my father wanted out. The guy Cutler sent was only supposed to threaten our family, a message to my father to continue to play ball. But the assassin overstepped his bounds. Killed them both.”

“And no one else knows?”

“There were suspicions. After Sam told me, I contacted someone I knew who had worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the time. They’d been investigating my father, but he was killed before they could indict him. With all the major players out of the way, it seemed fruitless and a waste of taxpayer money to bring it out in the open. My father’s legacy would have been destroyed. Every case he ever prosecuted would come under scrutiny.”

“And you,” she said slowly, the full impact of what he was saying creeping up on her like an icy wave. “You would come under scrutiny.”

“This city loves him, Alexandra,” he said, passing over her observation. “It needs heroes, men who stand tall, and even if he made this mistake, he was still a decent man in other ways. A good husband. The best father.”

And a criminal. She thought back to all those interviews Eli had given before the last election on local and national TV. His obvious pride in his father and his accomplishments—it had all been genuine, she knew that. Now he had to poker up whenever the sainted Coop was mentioned and pretend that he was still the great man, not responsible for his wife’s death or for orphaning a twelve-year-old boy.

All terrible, but still her mind kept circling back to the present.

“But it helped you get into office. What he did, what people think he did.”

Standing up to a mobster. That heroic act. That lie. She drew back, needing the space to comb through and untangle what she was hearing. The only sure ground was quicksand.

He noticed her withdrawal, frowned. “My father’s legacy might be the reason I got into office, but I’ve proved myself. I know I have. I love this city.”

She didn’t doubt that. She’d seen it in the hours he put in, the dedication, but. . .

“People voted for you because of what your father did, because of what he stood for. I—I voted for you.” Because she saw her own pain reflected in his. Because of Sean and Logan.

On his face was frustration that she was choosing to see it in this way. But he’d had years to parse this; she was still reeling.

“I didn’t know then what he had done.”

“But when you found out, you kept quiet. You let people think he was this great man. A hero.”

His look condemned her naïveté. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Thanks for your vote and oh, by the way, my father wasn’t quite the hero after all’? How would that help? Who would that serve?”

Eli’s raised voice drew Shadow out of his drug-induced slumber. He looked up, concerned that Mommy and Daddy were fighting.

“My father was a hero, Eli,” she gritted out. “My brother was a hero. They died doing their jobs for this city. How can you not see that supporting this false image of your father compromises their memories, people who truly died honorably?”

The pain that wracked his expression cut her to the marrow, but it had nothing on the hurt in the space around her heart.

“I know that,” he said quietly. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

But Eli’s father hadn’t died honorably. His father had worked with a killer to ensure his continued freedom to terrorize. His father had pretended bravery when he had no right to do so. People still talked about him with reverence and awe.

In the same conversation as her father and brother.