Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115291 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115291 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
She had cut herself. It was her blood. I looked down at my feet. My socks were soaked with the red liquid. I stumbled away and slipped, falling back, crying out. My butt hit the floor hard and my clothes soaked up her blood, sticking to my skin.
I scrambled to my feet and stormed outside, my mouth open wide, my head throbbing, my eyes stinging. I collided with something. Looking up, I found Father’s furious face glaring down at me. He hit me hard across the face. “Stop screaming!”
My lips snapped shut. I’d screamed? I blinked up at my father but he was blurry. He gripped me by the collar, shaking me. “Are you crying?”
I wasn’t sure. I knew crying wasn’t allowed. I never cried, not even when Father hurt me. He hit me even harder. “Speak up.”
“Mother’s dead,” I croaked.
Father frowned, taking in the blood on my clothes. He moved past me toward the bedroom. “Come,” he ordered. I noticed his two bodyguards in the hallway with us. They watched me with a look in their eyes I didn’t understand.
I didn’t move.
“Come, Luca,” Father hissed.
“Please,” I said. Another forbidden thing: begging. “I don’t want to see her again.”
Father’s face twisted with rage, and I braced myself. He was upon me and gripped my arm. “Never again. You won’t ever say that word again. And no tears, not another disgusting tear, or I’ll burn out your left eye. You can still be a Made Man with one eye.”
I gave a quick nod and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I didn’t fight when Father wrenched me back into the bathroom and I didn’t cry again, only stared at the body in the tub. Only a body. Slowly, the roar in my chest quieted. It was only a body.
“Pathetic,” Father muttered. “Pathetic whore.”
My brows drew together. The women Father met when he wasn’t home were whores, but Mother wasn’t. She was his wife. Whores took care of Father so he didn’t hurt Mother as badly. That’s what she explained to me. But it didn’t work.
“One!” Father bellowed.
One of the bodyguards entered. His name wasn’t One, but Father didn’t bother learning the names of low soldiers and gave them numbers instead.
One stood close behind me, and when Father inspected Mother more closely with a cruel smile, he squeezed my shoulder. I peered up at him, wondering why he was doing it, what it meant, but his gaze was focused on Father, not me. “Get someone to clean up this mess and call for Bardoni. He needs to find me a new wife.”
My brain stumbled over what he’d said. “New wife?”
Father narrowed his gray eyes. Gray like mine. “Change clothes and act like a goddamn man, not a boy.” He paused. “And get Matteo. He needs to see what kind of cowardly whore his mother was.”
“No,” I said.
Father stared at me. “What did you say?”
“No,” I repeated in a small voice. Matteo loved our Mother. It would hurt him.
Father glanced at the hand still on my shoulder, then up at his bodyguard. “One, beat some sense into him.”
One pulled his hand away and, with a short glance at my face, he began beating me. I fell to my knees, back to crouching in Mother’s blood. I barely felt the hits, only stared at the red on the white marble.
“Stop,” Father ordered, and the blows did stop. I looked back up at him, my head ringing, my back and stomach burning. He looked into my eyes for a long time, and I stared back. No. No. No. I wouldn’t get Matteo. I wouldn’t whether One kept beating me or not. I was used to pain.
His mouth thinned. “Two!” Bodyguard Two came in. “Get Matteo. Luca will only get blood on the expensive Persian rugs.”
I almost smiled because I had won. I tried to jump to my feet to stop Two, but One gripped my arm hard. I fought and almost freed myself, but then Matteo appeared in the doorway and I went slack.
Matteo’s brown eyes became huge when he saw our mother and the blood, then his knife next to the tub. Father motioned at Mother. “Your mother abandoned you. She killed herself.”
Matteo only looked.
“Get your knife,” Father ordered.
Matteo stumbled inside, and One’s grip on my arm tightened. Father glanced at me, then back at my brother, who picked up the knife with shaking hands.
I hated Father. I hated him so much.
And I hated Mother for doing this, for leaving us with him.
“Now clean up, the both of you.”
Matteo stood stock-still, staring at his bloody knife. I gripped his arm and pulled him out, stumbling after me. I led him into my bedroom, then into the bathroom. He still looked at his knife. I ripped it from his hand and held it under the faucet, cleaning it with hot water to get rid of the dried blood. My eyes prickled, but I swallowed.