Bella reaches for me, her face streaked with tears, but I jerk away from her touch like it burns.
She’s not my stepmother.
She’s my…what?
My sister-in-law?
The woman who married my half-brother and had kids with him while I played big sister to children who are actually my niece and nephew?
“Everything I am, everything I believed about myself—it’s all been a lie!” My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate how young I sound. How broken. “This whole time I’ve thought you were myfather!”
“Iamyour father,” Matteo says desperately, taking a step toward me. “Biology doesn’t change that. I chose to raise you, I chose to love you?—”
“You chose to lie to me!” The betrayal is like acid in my veins, burning through every good memory I have of him. “How could you look at me every day and lie to my face? How could you let me love you as a father when you’re my brother?”
The room feels like it’s spinning.
Every birthday where he gave me presents and told me he was proud of me.
Every time I called him Dad and he smiled.
Every family dinner where I sat at his right hand like the heir to his empire. Every moment of trust and love and guidance...
All of it built on a lie.
“Oh god.” A thought crosses my mind. “Mario. Mario is my brother too, isn’t he?”
Matteo’s face somehow goes even paler.
“Isn’t he?” I’m shouting again, my voice echoing off the office walls. “The man who kidnapped me when I was twelve, who put me in that shipping container and told me it was just a game—that wasn’t my uncle trying to kill me. That was mybrother.”
Fuck, that makes it so muchworse.
The memory crashes over me—being twelve and terrified, curled up in that dark metal box, thinking my uncle had lost his mind.
But it wasn’t my uncle.
It was another brother.
Another person who shared Giuseppe’s blood, Giuseppe’s violence, Giuseppe’s willingness to hurt anyone who got in his way.
Including me.
“How many more are there?” I ask, my voice suddenly quiet and deadly. “How many other brothers and sisters do Ihave scattered around the city? How many other women did Giuseppe rape? How many other children like me are walking around not knowing the truth about what they are? That we’re all just products of a monster, which makes us monsters too?”
“Bianca,stop.” Matteo’s voice is breaking, and there are tears in his eyes, but I don’t care. I can’t care anymore. “You’re not what Giuseppe was. You’re not a monster just because?—”
“Aren’t I?” I laugh, and it sounds horrible even to my own ears.
Bitter and sharp and nothing like the laugh I used to have before five minutes ago when my world made sense. “I’m a rapist’s daughter, Matteo. I’m the product of violence and hate and everything evil about this fucking family.”
“No.” He steps toward me again, and this time I don’t back away because I want him to see the fury in my face.
I want him to understand what he’s done to me. “You’remydaughter. You’re intelligent and fierce and?—”
“I’mGiuseppe’sdaughter,” I cut him off. “I have his blood. His DNA. His capacity for violence. And you know what the worst part is? I canfeelit. I can feel something dark and angry inside me that wants to hurt people, and I always thought it came from you. I thought it was something you taught me, something I learned from watching the man I thought was my father.”
“Bianca, I have his blood too,” Matteo says desperately. “That doesn’t make me?—”
