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I used to ask my mama who my daddy was every birthday.
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She’d always give me the same answer:
“Just a man I left behind to protect you.”
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I thought she was being dramatic, like most mamas with secrets.
But I never expected that secret to come with bloodstained money, a family with a body count, and a stepmother who looked at me like I was dog shit on her red-bottoms.
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Growing up, it was just me and Ma in a little apartment on the west side. She worked double shifts at the hospital, came home smelling like antiseptic and broken dreams. We didn’t have much, but I had love. I had peace.
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What I didn’t have was answers.
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She finally gave me one when I turned 21. No cake. No balloons. Just a name:
Antonio Santiago.
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The Santiago family wasn’t just rich. They were respected. Feared. Untouchable.
And I was his “outside child.”
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I remember the first time I met him. He walked into the restaurant we agreed on with a black suit and eyes that didn’t blink. Looked me up and down like I was a threat before giving the first nod of approval I ever got from a man.
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No hug. No smile.
Just,
“You look like her.”
Her being my mother — the one who escaped his world with me in her belly.
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He offered me money that same night. I didn’t take it.
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Instead, I took the truth.
And I guess that was enough to get me invited to the house a week later — their house.
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That mansion felt like a damn museum. Cold floors, colder looks.
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His wife, Isabel, opened the door herself. She was tall, sharp, and icy — the kind of woman who could break you with a stare. Her lips barely moved when she spoke:
“So you’re her child.”
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She didn’t invite me in. She stepped aside like I was the smell of something spoiled.
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Then came the brothers. Seven of them.
Each one worse than the last — tall, tatted, and looking like they ate loyalty for breakfast.
They stood in a line like I was on trial.
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“Why she here?” one asked.
“She look soft,” another said.
One didn’t speak at all — just stared at me like I was a chess piece he didn’t trust.
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And my daddy?
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He sat at the head of a long-ass table like a king judging a stranger’s fate.
“You wanted to know your family,” he said.
“Well. Here we are.”
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That night, I didn’t cry. I drank.
Took a shot of whiskey one of them left on the counter and walked out like I hadn’t been cracked in half.
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But I went back.
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Because even though they didn’t welcome me, I wasn’t some secret they could sweep under a rug. I was Brielle Santiago — the piece of the puzzle they didn’t plan for. And whether they liked it or not, I had his blood, too.
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Now I own my own bar. No Chill ATL.
Built it brick by brick with no handouts.
And funny enough, the same streets that raised my brothers — the same ones my daddy ruled — now come through my doors to relax.
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They don’t know my last name. Don’t know I’m tied to one of the deadliest names in the city.
And maybe it’s better that way.
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Until him.
The man with eyes that make me forget every warning my mama ever whispered.
The man whose touch feels like peace.
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