“Could you repeat that part because I suddenly feel like Alice in Wonderland, only I swallowed a pill marked, stupid?”
“Your mother came to me just before she died.”
Salvatore and I stood in his den back at the castle and I’d laid into him about paying the captain to keep me at the prison camp and he said he’d have to start at the beginning. “Really? Why would she, knowing my father was using me to pay off his debt to you?”
“Always impatient, aren’t you?” His eyes glinted with amusement. “Because she didn’t trust Cassius to keep his word. She feared that he’d use your skill with numbers as a pawn between criminal lords. Sell you to the highest bidder who’d be willing to fund his business. And she was right, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, but why come to you.” I frowned.
“Your mother asked me to take care of you. Protect you.” Salvatore said.
I laughed. “Wait. I’m having a hard time believing that my mother would ask you, a perverted fuck, to take care of me.”
“I understand your skepticism—”
“Do you?” I scoffed.
“Hate me all you want,bella—”
“Stop fucking calling me that,” I lashed out with a fist to his chest. “You don’t deserve that right.”
He gripped my wrists, tugging me into his body, his gray eyes penetrating my very soul. Yet, there was no hate there. “Your mother asked me to protect you but she also asked that I toughen you. Fill you with such hatred that you’d take on the world. Revenge her death.”
My jaw dropped so hard, it hit me in the eye on its way back up. “My mother asked you to toughen me up and that’s the shit you put me through.” I scowled. “Revenge her death?”
His eyes searched mine before he released my wrists. “Not everything is black and white, Gianna.” The sudden use of my name caught me by surprise. He’d never used it before. Dragging a hand through his hair, he walked to the window and stared out. “The day after he brought you to me, Cassius rescinded his offer. As he said, he was prepared to return my money with interest and wanted you back.”
“So why didn’t you,” I hissed, my anger escalating by the second. “As fucked up as it sounds at least my father was honest about why he wanted me. Why did you want to keep me?”
“Give me a sec.” He moved over to his table, picked up his phone, and dialed. “Send him in.”
Curious, I stared at the door waiting to see who he’d called. The breath caught in my throat when Julian entered the room. He nodded a greeting to me before shifting his gaze to Vincenzo. “Sir.”
“Julian, I’m trying to explain the truth to Gianna, and I need your help since she doesn’t believe me.”
“Do you blame me?” I threw back and he lavished me with a slight tilt to his head I was beginning to find distracting, more so his calm demeanor.
“The truth, sir?” Julian spoke before he could.
“Yes.”
“All of it?” Julian asked, spiking my curiosity even more. Salvatore nodded. Julian looked at me and I caught the tenderness in his eyes before he smiled. “After your father had you kill Mr. Salvatore’s father, your mother heard him offer you to others. That’s when she realized she had to get you away from him.”
“That’s when she planned my kidnapping?” I asked.
Julian nodded. “Yes, but there were a limited number of people she could trust to help her without them telling your father of her plan.”
“She mentioned that,” I recalled our last conversation before I frowned. “I remember her saying she had to cut a deal with someone. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done but it was the only way she could safeguard me. Do you know what she meant?”
Julian’s smile was hesitant before he looked at Salvatore. “Would you like to tell her, sir?”
With his hands in his pockets, Salvatore leaned his butt against his table, stretched out his legs, and crossed one ankle over the other. “I think she’d believe it more if it came from you, Julian.”
My hackles rose. “Would you two just tell me what the fuck’s going on? Who did my mother cut a deal with?” I’d never, in all the time I knew him, raised my voice at Julian and his soft chuckle had my brow shooting up. “This is not funny, Julian,” I grumbled.
“Calm down,bella.”
“Fuck you, don’t tell me to fucking calm down. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with your arrogance.” My words held no impact. He merely cocked a brow. God, for once, could my words have some impact on him.
