Page 19 of Reign

That’s Papa’s fault.

My brothers had years with her.

I had nothing.

And the worst thing that ever happened to her happened while I watched from behind a locked door.

“No,” Adriana says, voice trembling. “I mean—before she met your father. The traf—”

“Shut up.” The words tear out of me before I can stop them.

The room stills.

My hands are shaking beneath the table.

“Elena, keep your fucking tone in check.” Angelo’s voice cuts through the air, low and lethal.

Yeah, because that’s what matters.

My tone matters more than his wife reading a journal that was never hers. More than Adriana dragging my mother’s pain to the dinner table like some tragic little discovery. More than the only piece of my mother I managed to steal for myself being ripped open in front of everyone.

My tone.

Angelo turns toward Adriana, confusion and concern carved into his face. “What are you talking about, Tesoro?”

His voice softens for her.

Adriana’s mouth opens, and for a second, I think she is going to say it. I think she’s going to take the truth out of my mouth before I’ve even decided whether I can survive speaking it.

Then she swallows. “I…I don’t know.”

“No,” Angelo says, softer, but no less commanding. “Don’t do that. You do know.”

I can’t breathe.

Every word feels like a hand closing around my throat. That journal was my mother’s.

My mother’s.

The only place I found her without my brothers standing between us. The only place she wasn’t filtered through family myth or softened by men who needed her story to hurt less.

It was mine for one moment, stolen again the next.

My chair scrapes violently as I stand, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet room.

“She’s talking about Mamma’s journal,” I snap.

Every head turns toward me.

Let them look.

Let them see what happens when they keep a girl starving and then act surprised when she steals crumbs.

“The one I took from Santo’s library when I was visiting Vasilisa,” I say, my eyes burning. “I left it in Angelo’s office when I was staying here, and now this nosy bitch is trying to unravel our family.”

“Elena!”

Angelo’s chair slams back as he surges to his feet, the Don in him fully present.