Now that I know for sure that I’m pregnant, and now that Alessandro knows too, it’s all starting to feel real to me. We’re going to have a baby. Me and Alessandro. The man I despised and wanted to poison so I could go home. A wave of guilt hits me at the thought of home. I’ve really neglected to reach out to my family now that everything is okay between the two of us. It’s a horrible thing for me to do, leaving them hanging and wondering if I was suffering or not.
But I didn’t want their judgment.
I just knew that if I suddenly seemed happy, they wouldn’t believe it, which would cast doubt on my relationship with Alessandro. And they put me in this position in the first place, goddamn it.
So, if they’re sweating a bit while I’m living a life of domestic bliss as a mafia queen, so be it.
My mind fixates so much on my family that I almost don’t bat an eye when my brother, Max, stands in front of me in the living room. He’s wearing black tactical gear, gun drawn. His eyes narrow as he looks me up and down.
“Stai facendo qui?” I hiss.
He raises his eyebrows at me and shakes his head.
Then I realize I spoke to him in Italian, so I switch to English, the words feeling foreign after all this time.
“What are you doing here?” I try again.
“IthoughtI was rescuing you. But you’re… you’re… fine? I thought they were keeping you in the fucking dungeon.” He takes a few steps forward, scanning his surroundings no doubt to make sure he will not be ambushed as if I’d allow that, then reaches down and grabs my wrist, inspecting my hand. “He didn’t cut your fingers off?”
“What?” I snap. Then my heart sinks as that triggers a memory. Alessandro briefly mentioned something related to my fingers, the time we had sex in the gym. But so much happened between us immediately afterwards that I forgot, and besides, I assumed it was an empty threat.
“We heard from an inside guy that we had nothing to worry about, so we stopped paying up and fucked with Alessandro a bit. Then we receive a box of fingers, that we thought were yours, and then it’s radio-silent from Alessandro. We thought you were…” Max looks away, noticing the phone on the table. He hisses with rage. “I’m relieved that you’re okay. But… fuck, Sofia! You have free rein of this place? There’s a phone right there. You haven’t called in weeks!”
Weeks? Has it really been that long? He must be exaggerating. Okay, maybe technically two weeks. But definitely not three.
He squats down so that we’re eye-level. “He messed with your head, didn’t he? Manipulated you. I’m going to fucking kill him.”
My mouth goes dry, and I don’t know what to say. “I… I’ve been meaning to call, but we just got back from a trip a moment ago. We took one of his boats to Greece.”
“You went on a cruise?” he shouts, looking around before lowering his voice back to a hiss. “Nick and I have been sneaking around this labyrinth of a castle all day looking for you, but it’s been empty. I mean, we collected the teeth from the incinerator, for fuck’s sake, so that we could bring them home and take them to the family dentist to see if any of them belonged to you. Is that even possible for a dentist to figure out? Who knows? We’ve been trying to problem-solve this situation in silence only to find out that you’re living life like a princess.”
“It was horrible initially, right after the wedding.”
His jaw tenses, and I know he’s picturing putting a bullet in Alessandro or something even more graphic than that.
“But notthathorrible. I was nervous and miserable at times, but he never hurt me. Anyway… we eventually started to get along, and now we’re in love with a child on the way.”
That was too abridged. Too abridged. But I’m trying to get my words out as quickly as possible so he knows what the current situation is.
His face goes pale as he slowly nods his head like I have a plant growing out the top of it. He must think that Alessandro emotionally tortured me to get me to act like this, and he will not think differently until he sees us together.
“Everything is fine, Max. Let’s go find him and talk everything through. Are you hungry? You said Nick is here too?”
As the last words slip past my lips, the sound of a gunshot explodes from upstairs.
“Oh, shit,” Max mutters under his breath.
My cousin, Nick, sprints down the main staircase away from the gunshot.
I let out a scream, but Max muffles it quickly. My knees buckle.
Nick killed him.
Alessandro’s dead.
“No, no, no, no, no…” I sob and bury my face in my hands as Max prevents me from falling to the floor. “No, please! You didn’t do that. He can’t be…”
Max supports my entire weight as I hang against him. This can’t be happening. He can’t be…
