“You like your little masks, don’t you?” she asked, looking around the room, finding nothing left to throw and facing me again. “Tell me, was it you who branded Mateo? Was it you who branded me?” She sucked in a breath and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I never saw your faces. Everyone but Victor wore a mask.” She looked at me again. “You sick fucking asshole.”
“Gia,” I said, close enough now to take her wrists as she tried to hit me. “Gia, stop.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Were you there? Did you hold him down? Did you—”
A sob cut off her words, and she bowed her head into my chest.
“Did you chop off his tongue?”
“No.”Christ. She’d seen that?
“I know who you are. I know.”
I let go of her.
She sank to the floor, her face in her hands.
“Gia.” I squatted down.
“Don’t touch me.”
She shoved me away and sat with her back leaning against the blood-splattered wall. I sat across from her, watching her come apart.
“Don’t…” she started, but her words trailed off to nothing.
“The brand was a setup. Part of Victor’s plan, Gia.”
“Mateo was trying to do the right thing.”
She shook her head, not hearing me at all, her face scrunched up in confusion.
I noticed the book on the floor beside her then. The book of the great Benedetti family. Our family crest—no, not fucking ours! When the fuck would I get that into my head? When the fuck would I stop calling it mine?
“You knew all along,” she muttered. She looked up, her eyes red and puffy.
But I had to look at the book again. At the open page. At Franco and my mother, standing there holding their second born, Salvatore. Sergio standing beside them, his hand in his father’s. Dark wood paneled the background, and above it a painting of the damned crest. Franco stood taller, straighter, his face beaming, so fucking proud. The perfect fucking family.
“The blood, it’s when you tried to kill your brother.”
Her words broke into my thoughts. Forced me to hear.
“You think no one knows, but we all know. I should have recognized the names.”
I turned my gaze to hers. I had no defense.
“You must have thought me pretty stupid, huh?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re sick, Dominic. You’re a sick, sick bastard.”
I felt myself go still, my chest tightening. She was right. Every word she said, truth. My guilt must have been etched on my face, because Gia reached out a hand to shove me backward.
“You’re a hate-filled monster.”
