Only I don’t go to my office. I go to Dominick’s, where I find him and Matteo.
“Good. You’re both here.”
I close the door behind me to give us some privacy, not wanting anything regarding Brielle to be overheard. “Want to tell me how you act like you’re so protective of your sister, yet you let her get raped and then forced into having an abortion?”
Dominick’s eyes go wide, and Matteo’s turn hard.
“Did my father know?” I ask without giving them a chance to answer my question since I didn’t actually expect an answer.
“We don’t know,” Dominick says. “The conversation between our fathers wasn’t recorded. From what Giuseppe said, your dad and Anthony met with Andrey to discuss the arranged marriage because they didn’t want to wait any longer.”
“After he fucking raped her?” I bark.
“Yeah,” Matteo says, standing and getting in my face. “Afteryour brotherraped her.”
“He’s not my fucking brother,” I correct. “He was a loose cannon, which is why our father never let him anywhere near the company.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Matteo barks. “He wasn’t good enough to run the company, but he was good enough to force my sister to marry him.” He chuckles darkly. “Guess it runs in the family.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s only saying what I’ve been thinking for the past two days since I found out what Brielle had gone through.
“Regardless,” Dominick says, “my guess is that Andrey was pissed that Brielle was not only having sex with her boyfriend when shewas supposed to save herself for marriage, but he also took Anthony raping her personally since Andrey viewed Brielle as nothing more than property. So, he forced her to have an abortion.”
“And you did nothing to stop this?” I accuse.
“We didn’t know,” Matteo says. “We were combing the fucking streets, trying to find her.”
“We think when Andrey met up with your dad and Anthony, Andrey probably threw the abortion in your dad’s and Anthony’s faces since the entire purpose of the arranged marriage was to tie the families together through blood, and had the baby been Anthony’s, it would’ve done just that.”
“So, my dad got pissed,” I say, the pieces all coming together, “and shot your father, and then Giuseppe used Andrey’s death as an excuse to go after my father since he never got past the betrayal with Maria.”
“Ding, ding, ding.” Matteo slow claps. “You win a prize.”
Actually,I think to myself,I just lost the prize.
31
Brielle
“I think I’m pregnant.”
I don’t know if it’s because my period is late and I can’t keep my food down to save my life, or because my husband has been avoiding me since I told him I was raped and forced to have an abortion, but when Kane asked if I’d accompany him to a gala this evening, I broke down in tears the minute he walked out the door and then ran to my mom’s house, needing her.
Mom’s eyes go comically wide. “Have you told your husband?”
I shake my head. “He’s been … distant since we got home from our ski trip,” I tell her. “Maybe he’s just been busy, and I’m overthinking things, but it’s been two weeks since we had sex.”
Mom glances at me sympathetically, and I choke out a sob.
“Oh my God,” I cry. “I need to fix this.”
Tonight, I’m going to seduce my husband and fix whatever is broken between us.
“Oh, honey,” she says, pulling me into her arms. “You don’t need tofixanything. You need to talk to him. Contrary to popular belief, men don’t want sex twenty-four/seven, and if he doesn’t want to have sex, it probably means he’s stressed out or he has a lot on his mind. But you won’t know what’s going on until you talk to him.”
I know she’s right, but I’m terrified of what will be said when we do talk.
What if I am pregnant and he no longer wants to be with me? What if him finding out I was raped by his flesh and blood was too much and he sees me differently now?
