Pain, unlike anything I have ever felt before, batters me from all angles, and I want to rage at a world that lets this happen. How could anyone do that to a little girl? I always knew my brother was a monster, but this…this…it’s unimaginable. I attempt to control my tears as I don’t want to make this about me, but it’s hard to remain unmoved listening to this.
“The cosmetic surgery Saverio made me have removed most of the damage to my body, but some scars were too difficult to erase.” She levels me with a dead look that pierces my skin and penetrates my heart. “I was mostly Carlo’s toy, but Primo and your father abused me too.”
Fresh horror crests over me in powerful waves. Nausea travels up my throat, and I think I might puke. So many emotions are running riot inside me.
My family hurt her, over and over, and I didn’t know.
I didn’t know the woman I love, the queen I lie beside every night, had suffered so terribly at the hands of my own flesh and blood.
I am ashamed to be a Greco.
“I am so sorry. I hated them already, but now there are no words to describe how I feel about them. I—"
“Save your sympathy,” Renzo hisses, storming across the room and glaring at me from above. “This all happened while you were upstairs. Those sick pricks had her for seven months, abusing her nonstop, while you went about your life, ignoring the injustice taking place in the basement. She was thirteen! A sweet innocent teen, and your brother made her life a living hell!”
“I didn’t know, Rina,” I plead, ignoring the asshole and staring at my wife, beseeching her to look at me. “I was fourteen, and they kept me away from everything. I was labeled a mommy’s boy. Written off as a mistake. Purposely ignored. You know this! I told you. That day I stumbled across you was the first I knew of your existence, and it haunted me.”
I flashback to the past. Pain crashes through my chest as acid crawls up my throat. “I fought with my father and Carlo that day, but they were men, and I was still a boy. I was no match for their dual strength. They beat me so bad they broke my arm and cracked three ribs, and I had a head injury that left me unconscious for days. When I eventually woke up with a concussion, I didn’t remember at first. Then it came back to me. You were all I thought about from the minute I woke each day, and you haunted me in my dreams. I was confined to bed for weeks, locked in my room. I cried nonstop and begged my mother to help you. She told me she tried to get a message to the Mazzones when Carlo first brought you to the house, but she was betrayed by someone she thought she could trust, and my father put her in the hospital. He threatened my life and hers. Said he would kill us both if she tried to intervene again. That is when he started heavily drugging her.”
I pause to draw a breath, peering deep into my wife’s eyes, hoping she knows the truth when she hears it. “She wasn’t conscious much after that, and I knew she was too scared to try again, so I begged Gabe to do something. He got a message to your dad, telling him where you were being held.”
“What?” she blurts. Shock splays across her face, quickly followed by confusion. “Why would that have helped? My father already knew where I was. He willingly gave me to Carlo to avoid Natalia suffering the same fate. I thought he loved me, but he loved his job and Natalia more. His commitment to the Mazzones came before me.” Pain underscores her words and ripples across her face.
Fucking hell. All this time, she has believed the lie Carlo fed her. I can’t begin to imagine how that must have made her feel. She needs to understand who her father was.
I strain against the ropes tying me to the chair, leaning my body toward my wife, needing to be closer to her. “No, sweetheart. That’s not how it went down. Gabe overheard Carlo bragging to someone on the phone. Your father was not complicit in your kidnapping. Carlo took you to force Rocco into betraying the Mazzones. He was using you to make him spy on them for him. He didn’t hesitate to do it, Rina. Rocco did whatever Carlo asked because your father was desperate to get you back.”
She steeples her fingers against her chin, looking completely shell-shocked.
“Carlo was making his own power play in the background, and he needed intel. Later, he attempted to kidnap Natalia and your father, Rocco, helped. He was going to sacrifice her to save you.” I let the truth of that sink in for a few seconds before continuing. “From what I’ve heard, Carlo had been terrorizing her in the run-up to their arranged marriage and he grew impatient. He didn’t want to wait for his wedding night.” A sour taste floods my mouth as I recall things I have been told and discovered over the years.
“I don’t understand,” she chokes out, looking lost, like her entire belief system has just come crashing down, and perhaps it has. “If Daddy knew where I was being held, why didn’t he come for me?”
I cast a glance at Renzo, and I see the truth in his eyes. He shielded her from this reveal. I don’t want to hurt her any more than she’s been hurt, but all these fucking secrets have got to end. “Hewascoming for you,mia amata. He got word back to Gabe, and we were going to help by setting up a decoy to lure Carlo, Primo, and Papa away from the house while they could rescue you.”
“Something went wrong,” she whispers, staring at me with fresh tears clinging to her lashes.
Slowly, I nod. “I don’t know why he didn’t tell the Mazzones. Angelo would have intervened and helped, but Rocco chose to do it on the down low. Your brother was gathering a few friends to help, and someone sold him out to Carlo.” I deliberately gentle my tone. “Carlo killed Fernando as a warning to your father. To force him to toe the line or risk losing his other child.”
“No, Massimo!” A horrified sob bleeds into the air. “No! Fernando was killed in the line of duty. That’s what Mama told me when I came home to discover my father and my brother had both been killed.”
“That wasn’t true. Carlo did it. I would never lie to you about that.”
She looks up at Renzo, and sorrow trickles into the air. “He is telling the truth about this. I found out years after the fact and chose not to tell you. I didn’t see how it would help. You were already in so much pain but coming through it. I feared it would set back your recovery.”
She gulps, slowly nodding. “I understand, but you still should’ve told me.”
“I’m sorry,” he softly says. His feelings for her are crystal clear in this moment. He loves her, and I believe he would do just about anything for her.
I still hate the motherfucker and don’t trust him an inch.
“Did your father know you and Gabe were involved?” Emotion pours from her eyes as she sits up on her knees and begins untying the rope around my ankles.
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Yeah, he knew we helped to set it up. After he punished us, he sent Gabe and me to live with our uncle in Italy so we couldn’t try anything else. The farm was in a real remote part of the Italian countryside, and we were completely cut off with no phones and no way of communicating with anyone. When we were brought home a few months later, you were gone, Carlo was dead, and we were warned never to speak of it unless we wanted to die.”
“Shit!” Renzo’s expletive interrupts our conversation as we both whip our heads in his direction. “Donna, you are needed urgently at the front gate,” he says, reading a message on his cell.
“For what?” Rina asks, stalling with her fingers at my ankles.
