Though I couldn’t see him, his presence alone was enough to fill the room, making it feel stifling. I sensed his every move, and I knew he was close to drunk.
Something was on his mind.
Placing the two bottles of water next to the piece of cake, I waited.
He waved his hand, not in dismissal, but bringing the conversation back to where he’d left off.
“Another symbolic gesture life has blessed us with.The sins of the father…” He let that passage trail off while he lifted the wine and took a drink. “Perhaps God felt it only fair that he remind us we are only men. We are mighty, yes, but there is one mightier. We all have an upper to answer to, son.”
I don’t need the reminder.The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I’d have rather bitten off a chunk than say them out loud. He might cut my entire tongue off for it.
He was in no mood for conversation. He was in the mood to talk. A gaping difference between the two. I was taught to listen, and only to speak when he allowed it.
Despite the threat, a contained fire inside of me flared up. Questions that needed answers burned the back of my throat.
Why didn’t you tell me I had brothers?
Why didn’t you order one of your men to kill me, all those times I refused you?
My only choice was to swallow them down, though, or else my wife might become a widow—in the kitchen she loved, at the hands of the man who shared blood with her children.
Would he support her? After he killed me? She would never want for money. Our accounts were fat enough that our children’s children were set. But would he see that she was protected? Being a man meant being a good provider, but being a man also meant keeping a woman safe.
What a fucked-up thing to think, especially since the man who created me was the man stirring the thoughts.
Swishing the wine around the glass, he stared at it, eyes almost possessed.
The only thing on this earth strong enough to make a man like Luca submit was a situation beyond his control, and his own beast was battling with him hard.
I knew, because no matter how much I disliked his business or how he operated it, there was no denying the apparent fact that he was my father.
Hard as that was to accept, it was what it was, but it made me more aware of him.
“I have loved one woman all my life.” He lifted his finger. “One. Your mother. I had children with other women. But when there is only one woman, nothing else can truly compare. She sits here.” He pounded his chest. “In the heart.”
To him it was acceptable to have children by multiple women. He didn’t see those women as women. He saw them only as a means to give him what he needed. An army. Children who were created for a purpose.
We were his, therefore the woman didn’t matter. But the one woman he loved?
She, Maggie Beautiful, ruled his fucking world.
“What about her?”I finally spoke, a cold snake slithering up my spine, making goosebumps rise on my skin. I didn’t like where this was headed.
He looked up, right at me, like he’d just realized that I had walked in and stepped on his thoughts.
“I do not know, but I do not like it.” He downed the rest of the glass, setting it back on the table. “We have the ability to read women. It runs through our blood. Dress size. Ring size. Easy enough.” He lifted his finger again. “You know as well as I do. Our one. We feel the oncoming slaughter before it has a chance to begin.” He seemed to think over his words for a minute or two before he continued.
“Margherita has a rare mind. A rare soul. To take you from her, after she fought so hard, was to take her world. The world I had given her. I left you with her to keep her safe. You were the man of the house. I take it that you remember that part of our conversation.”
“Yes, Father,” I answered in the same language.
All the men she’d been with over the years to replace this one. I respected her enough not to stand in her way, as long as they didn’t hurt her. I watched as man after man traversed through her life, the hole Luca left gaping never filled—until then.
“She is a fighter, but whatever this is, whatever is going on with my heart, will not take muscle to beat. This is much deeper.”
He stood from the table, his hair wild, stopping when he came face to face with me. I could smell liquor on his breath, the tang of a man on the verge of full-out fear, and the other side of it, the murderous rage about to encompass him.
Maybe it was the metallic scent of blood wafting from his skin that I smelled—a scent that I remembered well. It almost made me crave to feel it against my palm, the pulse of my enemy beating in my hand.
