“Mia amata,” I croak, willing her to look at me. “Let me explain.”
Renzo barks out a harsh laugh as he yanks my head back. “Too fucking late, asshole.”
He lifts his clenched fist, but Rina darts forward and grabs his hand. “No. You’re not to hurt him.”
He narrows his eyes on her. “What the fuck, Ree-ree?”
Have I mentioned I hate he has a pet name for my wife? I am so fucking sick of him interfering in my marriage. If I get out of this alive, I am taking care of this asshole once and for all.
“Untie me.” Ignoring Renzo, I concentrate solely on my wife. I hate that he’s here, and I fear what bullshit he has been feeding her while I was out of it. Catarina is shattered emotionally by my revelation and not thinking clearly, which means she’s vulnerable to this prick, and that doesn’t bode well for me.
“Why, Massimo?” She paces frantically. “Why did you do nothing? Do you have any idea of the things your brother did to me while you slept soundly in your bed?”
All the color drains from my face at her words.
She’s shaking all over, and a growl escapes my lips when Renzo circles his arms around her. She pushes him away, not looking at him, as she stares at me with the most tortured expression on her face.
Before I can explain, she launches into her story. “I was an innocent thirteen-year-old shopping for a party dress the day he kidnapped me. I wasn’t paying attention because I was daydreaming about the boy who was having the party that night. Lionel was my first crush, and I was so sure he was going to kiss me at the party. My head was in the clouds leaving the mall, and I never saw Carlo coming. Next thing I knew, I was in the back of a van with three strange men, and they were binding my hands and my ankles with rope.”
She sinks to the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of me. A glazed look coats her eyes as she wanders into the past. Her lower lip wobbles as she speaks. “I hadn’t even been kissed at that point. Daddy had kept me sheltered, and I was completely innocent. It didn’t take Carlo long to divest me of that innocence. He stripped me naked in the van in front of his men.” Silent tears streak down her face. “He made fun of my trainer bra and my small breasts. He put his fingers inside me”—a shudder wracks her body as she stares into space—“and told his men to feel how tight hislittle virginwas.”
She squeezes her eyes closed as pain sits heavily on my chest. “He carried me naked into your house through a back door. Your mother passed us in the hallway. She stopped for a second, and I screamed at her for help before Carlo wrapped his hand around my throat and squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe.”
Her chest shakes as tears continue to stream down her face. It is torture listening to this, but I owe her my silence while she gets it all out. “She watched as he opened the door to the basement and took me down. Carlo tossed me into a cage and locked the door. It was freezing, and I was so scared I peed myself. He laughed at me before turning off all the lights and leaving me down there.”
Wracking shudders rip through her body, but she holds up a hand to keep Renzo at bay when he moves toward her.
“You don’t have to relive this, Ree-ree.” He crouches down in front of her. “You don’t owe him anything. Just kill him and be done with it.”
“No!” She drills him with a sharp look. “No.”
He expels a frustrated sigh, stomping over to the window and looking out into the garden and pool area.
I don’t tell her to stop or say anything. I know she needs to do this, and even though it’s killing me inside, I won’t take that from her. She needs to get this off her chest. Maybe then she will be ready to hear my explanation, and we can try to figure out how the hell we move forward from this.
“I cried all night for my daddy,” she whispers, resuming the story. “It was so cold, and Carlo left me sitting in my own piss all night. I was hungry and cold and scared. The house is so old. Pipes rattled, and the wind whistled through the vents making a creepy noise. Scuttering sounds had me screaming in terror. By the time he showed up the next morning, I was so hoarse I could barely speak.”
A stabbing pain pierces my heart, and I wish I could dig my brother up and murder him repeatedly for what he did to my wife.
“He took my virginity the next morning,” she says in a voice devoid of emotion. “I asked for breakfast, and he fed me his cock. He violated my mouth, my pussy, my ass. It went on for hours, and it hurt so fucking much. I called for my daddy, and he slapped me every time I said his name, taunting me that my father was the one who handed me to him on a platter as a trade until it was time to take Natalia for a test drive.”
“Jesus, Rina. I’m so sorry. He was an animal. A savage, cruel bastard. If he wasn’t already dead, I would kill him for what he did to you.” Tears pool in my eyes, and agony twists my stomach in knots. I have never felt so helpless. I struggle against my binds, needing to go to her even knowing the last person she would want to touch her as she relives these horrors is me.
She has a faraway look in her eyes as she continues. “He called me disgusting. He had a choice vocabulary of creative insults for me. It wasn’t enough to debase my body; he had to destroy my self-respect too. He would wash me in a cold bath before fucking me unless I was coated in dried blood. He loved fucking me when I was all cut up and bloody.”
“Enough!” Renzo shouts, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. “I can’t hear this again!”
What a fucking dick to try to make this about him.
“You know where the door is,” she says in a cold tone without looking at him. “Either leave or keep your mouth shut.”
Resting his head against the wall, he closes his eyes and breathes deeply, making no move to leave. Guess it was hoping for too much that he would just fuck off and leave us to deal with this alone.
Rina wraps her arms around herself as her entire body trembles. “He took videos and pictures of me to share with his men. On occasion, he let them fuck me as a reward for something they did. He regularly punched me and kicked me when I displeased him,” she continues. “He almost choked me to death so many times. He used knives and other tools on me. By the time I was rescued, there was barely an inch of my skin without some mark on it.”
I grip the armrests, swallowing painfully over the lump in my throat as tears fall down my cheeks. “The scars on your hips,” I rasp.
She nods. “He did that. Hooked me using chains on the ceiling by my hips. Left me dangling there for hours.”
