Her mouth fell open in a gasp. “What?” She lifted her eyes to mine. The questions in them were clear.
“Isn’t that right, Gio? Your parents might have loved you, but they knew you weren’t good enough to take over. Not strong or clever enough. Sophia was, and they knew it. All she needed was an equal by her side. Someone who would cherish and look after. They wanted me to be that man. The son they really wanted. But you couldn’t let that happen, could you? It would unite two powerful families. It would make me the most powerful man in the city, and it would make…”
“I was never going to allow her to be your whore, Matteo. It was easy to begin with. You never looked at her, so it was easy to talk Mom and Dad out of the match. I made them believe you wouldn’t look after her and that they needed…” He shook his head wildly and pressed the gun even harder into her gut.
Sophia grunted in pain.
“And then…” he growled out.
“I saw her at the party,” I finished for him because that had been the night it had all changed. That was the night I had fallen in love, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.
“Yeah, I saw the way your eyes followed her. Suddenly, she wasn’t just my little sister anymore. So I put forward a name I could control. He didn’t want to marry Sophia. He didn’t want to marry any woman, but he agreed because I told him she wouldn’t tell anyone his secrets. You ended…”
His eyes met mine unblinkingly, and there was a hint of madness to them.
It wasn’t drugs or even drink.
Gio was crazy.
“You walked away like you were supposed to, but you didn’t stayaway. And then he ended up dead and…” Gio shook his head. “You killed a man to be with her.”
“I loved her.”
Sophia’s eyes widened.
“I still love her,” I corrected. “Nothing you will ever say or do will change that.”
“No?” Gio cocked his head to the side, moving faster than I thought he could. He wrapped his arm around Sophia’s throat and pressed the gun to her temple.
“Don’t you get it, Matteo? This is your fault. All of it. If you had let her go, I wouldn’t have had to do it. My parents would be alive. But nooo,” he snarled. “You had to put your happiness before mine. So I did what I had to do to get you apart. I killed them and I made her believe you were involved. She believed me so easily. Especially when I told her that you had planned that night to keep her away.” He chuckled. “To get her alone and that you were going to murder her too.”
I couldn’t help it. I glanced at Sophia. Her face was so pale, like all the blood had drained from her face.
He was telling the truth.
How many lies had he filled her head with?
No wonder she had run. She must have feared for her life and the life of her child, and Gio had fed those fears.
“You’re sick,” Sophia hissed.
I wanted to smile at her bravery, but she had a gun pointed at her head and was still antagonizing him.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. And in the darkness, I heard the safety click off. “Or maybe I’m just ruthless enough to go after what I want. He isn’t right for you, little sister. He didn’t fight for you. He just let you leave.”
No one spoke. Even the sound of Lily’s crying seemed to dim. There wasn’t even a room around us anymore. There was nothing but her wide tear-filled eyes and the grey-black muzzle of the gun pressing into her skin.
It was all I could see.
“I love you,” I mouthed it to her silently and watched as her eyes widened in realization. She began to shake her head, but didn’t manage to do more as I yanked the gun from the small of my back and aimed it at her brother.
A gunshot went off, not mine, his, and it missed me by an inch, rebounding off the wall with a sound that echoed around the quiet British countryside.
Behind Sophia, Lily screamed.
Several things happened at once. Men burst through the doors and headed straight toward Sophia. One grabbed the child from the floor, and using his body as a shield, ran from the room.
Sophia screamed. I wasn’t sure if it was for her child, who was being carried away by a man she didn’t know, or at her brother, but really it didn’t matter.
