“Mr. Salvatore is right, Gianna,” Julian’s confirmation drew my heated stare. “Your mother needed a backup plan in case the kidnapping idea didn’t work. So, she came to see him, told him about your father’s promise to the other two crime lords, and asked for his help.”
I swung my gaze to Salvatore. “What did my mother promise in return for your help. Wait. Start with how you helped her?”
He studied me with those enticing grays, his expression a deathly calm I’d come to know well. “She asked that I get you safely out of the city.”
“Why would she come to you, know of the marriage promise to you?”
“I was the lesser of the three evils she was facing.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” I bit out and his response was a painstakingly slow lift of his brow I was beginning to regret having found attractive at one time.
“Call me fucked up, call me the devil or whatever you want, Gianna but your mother knew that in my home you would’ve probably been treated like a woman and not a slave traded for her pussy the second her glorified virginity became stale. Your faith would’ve been far worse than what I put you through.”
I gnashed my teeth at his arrogance. “Fine. What did my mother promise you in return, considering she told me that no one knew my whereabouts?”
“A photo.”
My brow creased. “A photo?” My gaze pinged between him and Julian. “I don’t understand.”
“Every year, your mom visited with you, she’d take a secret photo of you and send it to Mr. Salvatore,” Julian answered.
Recognition dawned. “Oh, my God. All those photos you have locked up in a secret coded room in the west wing?” I looked at Salvatore. “That’s how you got my photos?Shegave them to you?” He nodded. “So, you watched me grow? All these years, you watched me?” I repeated, shocked. Again, he nodded. “So, you knew that I would be yours even before I had my first fucking period,” I yelled, consumed by a rage so raw, I wanted to strangle someone and Vincenzo Salvatore looked like, strike that, was the perfect and only target.
“She promised Mr. Salvatore you would be his wife.” Julian’s attempt at calm didn’t help. My body shook with the sheer anger racing through my veins. “But she never gave him a photo of you before your eighteenth birthday, that last visit.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because she had a change of heart after her last visit with you,” Salvatore answered. “But I never went after her. Figured I’d bide my time until you turned twenty-one and then ask her.”
“What changed?” My skepticism for his change of mind was tangible in the way I arched my brow and curved my bottom lip in a sarcastic smirk.
“The night before she died, your mother came back to see Mr. Salvatore and gave him your location.” Julian pulled in a deep breath as though the thought of my mother’s last moments pained him.
“But why would she do that? Why give him my location if I was safe?” I swiped at the tear I didn’t realize had trickled down my cheek.
“Because she didn’t know you were safe,” Julian replied. “She’d heard Cassius’ conversation about trafficking girls and whether they’d found Ria Singh and knew her time was up. Rather than run and because she figured it was only a matter of time before he found you, she came to Mr. Salvatore and he sent Cassius to fetch you, that way keeping your mother’s deal secret.”
My mother knew she was going to die. She chose to save me instead of her own life. The tears fell harder, and I swung away to hide them from both men. I tried to swallow to get them to stop but to no avail and I hated the weakness that descended over my body, hated that my mother had not only been taken away from me, but she’d given me to a man who’d cause so much agony in my life. My chest tightened, painfully so and my breath rasped out in strangled sobs. Every inch of me fought the resistance to stay strong, to not give in to the desperation to cry, to act like an eighteen-year-old once more. To forget everything that had happened to me since that last visit with my mother. And by God, I tried.
“Bella,” the gentle whisper in my ear, followed by strong arms circling me, pulling my back to his chest, had me cringing in disgust.
“Let me go! Get away from me.”
I screamed, fighting his hold, squirming with everything I had but Salvatore’s hold was powerful. I’d seen those muscles in action and now he held on tight, without suffocating me, without squeezing. It was a consoling embrace of a lover. While I hated the notion, I struggled to breathe against the tears choking my throat. My attempts fizzled into muted sobs and sporadic shudders.
When I could no longer fight, I sagged against him and he soothed me with whispered words to the top of my head. Even though I hated him, his embrace felt like a warm cocoon I’d wanted, needed for so long but refused to acknowledge. That soft, emotional woman inside me, had died a painful death. Still, I craved his hold, his warmth. Without thinking, I turned into him, and he let me. And when I cried into his chest, he rubbed my back like I were a child. Just once, I wanted the simple comfort of a man who’d be my lifelong partner. And I had two. Salvatore gave me what I needed, he held onto me, no force, no censure, no demand. Tightening when sobs burst out of me and loosening when I sighed. Just like the arms of a willful lover.
