“I was eighteen.”
“And you used me as a puppet to help you get out of your marriage arrangements?”
“Vincenzo helped with some of them too. I had other methods as well.”
“Fuck. You.” I step closer to her, not caring that she still has a gun in her hand.
Her eyes narrow.
“Your entire childhood, you watched him torment me. And then you grew up and jumped into bed—”
“That was all Marco. Marco egged him on to be cruel to you in order to strengthen him. He thought it was an effective method to mold Vincenzo into a strong leader.”
It didn’t work out that way, but I hold my tongue.
“Even if that’s true. You grew up together. It’s perverted.”
“We’re not related,” she growls.
“How old were you when Marco took Vincenzo in? Do you even remember the first day he came to us, or were you too young?”
That pisses her off enough to point the gun at my head.
I raise my gun at her and consider whether or not I could actually shoot her. Kill Elena? Never in a million years would I have thought that would be a choice I’d consider. My baby sister. The one person who could cheer me up in my darkest days. But now I have Sofia and a child on the way. I’m not letting her kill me.
Luckily, she lowers her gun before I have to consider that. Fresh tears form in her eyes. “I was so confused throughout my wholelife. Marco treated me like a princess as soon as he took me in. He told me he kept you away from me because you were evil. And I believed him because I was so young.” She sniffs. “By the time I was old enough to realize that was wrong, I had been long settled into Marco’s family, and I didn’t know what to do. He was my father, and as complicated as our relationship was, you took him away from me. And now you’ve taken Vincenzo as well.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me? You acted as if you hated those two, but that was far from the truth? If I had known, I wouldn’t have killed Marco.” I know that I’m lying to myself with that one. “I would have known why you were so upset when Vincenzo was in a coma.”
“My relationship with Marco was strained once I reached adulthood. That much is true. But I don’t know if you want the rest of the truth, Sandro.” Her voice cracks.
“Tell me.”
“I pitied you.”
Those three words feel as though she’s stabbed me in the stomach.
She holds back a sob. “I could tell you had this narrative in your head that we were both suffering. That it was me and you against the world. But I can honestly say that I had a happy and lavish childhood. The one dark stain in my life was having to watch you suffer from afar. I didn’t have the heart to tell you what was happening. By the time I was an adult and no longer gettingalong with Marco, I realized how horrible that was. But it was too late.”
The walls feel like they’re closing in on me as I backpedal towards the stairs. She lied to me my entire life. How? She’s seven years younger, so how the fuck can anyone be that conniving? But was she even the conniving one, seeing that Marco was the puppet master behind all of this?
“Just… get out of my home.”
“Fine,” she sobs.
I feel devastated and empty as I leave her and run down the stairs. Desperate to find Sofia and have her in my arms.
“Sofia?” I call out in the main foyer. She could have run off anywhere, concerned for her own safety. Then, the hair sticks up at the back of my neck. Where are my men?
A fucking gunshot went off in my home and none of them rushed in to help? I hurry out of my home and check the hallway outside to see no one stationed there. My head was reeling so much that I didn’t even think about the oddity of the situation.
“Sofia!?” I shout as loud as I can, worried that there’s a coup in the works and she’s in danger. Vincenzo alluded to a plan being in place before I shot him.
I run down to the basement level, trying to calm myself, thinking that this would have been a strategic place for her to run off to. I’m sure she’s hiding in the gym or maybe the pool locker room.
“Sofia!?” I try shouting her name again.
I stand in the dark hallway, the desperation inside me feeling unbearable.
