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“You’re right, dear, but she was Don Fabiano’s mistress. Our baby is a whore.” He turned to me. “You’ve heard wrong, Pina.”
“This is not about Ariana.” I looked straight into his eyes. “It’s about me.”
“What?”
“You’re a target because you have to pay for what you did to me.”
A vein popped on his forehead. “What the hell did you say to Don Caputo?”
“Nothing. Garon ordered it.”
“That little fucking…”
“You can still leave. Just a couple of people know you’re back and you can make a clean exit. Go wherever Ariana is and don’t come back.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. You don’t get to tell me what to do, Pina Bernoulli!” Hi pushed his finger in my face. “This is my city! Fabiano and I ruled these streets and I don’t take orders from Garon Caputo.”
“Listen to me,” I tried to calm him down, but it didn’t work.
With his big and callous hands, Martino grabbed my arms and slammed me into a book cabinet. I felt my back tightening up because of the pain.
“Let me go!” I struggled to slip away from him but he’d lost control already. He couldn’t see past his own ire.
“I’m your father, I can do whatever the hell I want.” He slammed me into the cabinet again and I heard my mother’s suffocated moan coming from behind him, but she didn’t say anything.
“You’re hurting me and I’m pregnant!” I yelled in his face, my hands on my stomach so I could protect it.
“What did you say?” My father’s eyes scrutinized me. “Pregnant?” To my horror he didn’t let me go, but his hands let go of my arms just so he could struck me across the face and clasp my jaw. “Is this why Caputo is buying your pity story? Because you opened your legs and were stupid enough to get pregnant?”
“Get away from me.”
“You went to them and cried that you’re a poor little pregnant girl, of course that little tramp, Grazia, backed you up and now you’ve turned them against me. You want to see me dead.”
Finally, my mother got the courage to speak. “Martino, you should let her go. Maybe we should leave.”
“Shut up! You and your daughters have ruined my life. Ariana destroyed our entire lives because you got into her head that she can do whatever the hell she wants, and now Pina…” He breathed in my face like a dragon, “Pina marked me for death.”
The next thing I knew he slammed my head into the wood I was backed up against. I don’t know what Martino was thinking, or what he wanted to do to me, but when I felt his hand moving down, getting dangerously close to my baby girl, a rush of adrenaline took over my actions. I pushed him off and he flew across the room until he bumped into the couch.
He hit my head hard enough to make me bleed from my lip and my nose, but I didn’t feel any pain.
“You should really leave now.” I warned them both. “Garon must have wanted you beaten before, but when he sees what you did to me, he’ll order your death.”
“Why? Because the Caputos are your friends? You’re nothing to them. I was a friend of the family and look at me now.”
“Because he’s the father of my child!”
Now that was enough to make both my parents shake with fear. They froze like statues and watched me with wild, almost desperate, eyes until the door opened and the Caputo twins—Gaspino and Goliath—walked through the door. Gaspino’s eyes locked on mine and he came straight to me while Goliath shadowed my father with his massive body. I’ve seen Martino scared before, but now? He was staring in the face of death and was absolutely terrified.
“Bernoulli.” Goliath’s baritone voice boomed through the house. “Don wants to see you. Now.”
Chapter 16
My mood was reflected in the sky where thunders were rolling behind thick clouds. The sun that was peeking earlier was hidden now, leaving place for a vicious storm to roll over the city.
After Pina turned me down, stepping on my pride, I walked the streets for a while, trying to gather my composure, but failed. Everything felt like she took a butcher knife and cracked open my chest. My first instinct was to hurt her back, maybe find a woman—a faceless, nameless body willing to accept what Pina turned down—but it didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have it in me to do that to her. I was already regretting the harsh words I’d said to her, so I ended up drinking a bottle of whiskey on Giorgio’s couch while he listened to me bitch about my failed proposal. He tried to talk me out of my feelings, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t make sense of Pina’s answer.
I took a leap last night and instead of catching me, she let me slip into the abyss. I’d decided she was mine before I had a clue she was pregnant, because I craved the way she made me feel; like I finally belonged to someone. Then the baby came into the picture and things fell into place. The only reason I didn’t take her straight to church when we returned to Palermo was that a lot of things were changing fast and I didn’t want to stress Pina any more. Last night changed everything. She was the mother of my child—of my daughter, a little girl that will have my eyes and her golden hair—of course I wanted her to be my wife when that kid came into the world. When she told me her news last night, I couldn’t contain my happiness. I finally got over that part of me that was terrified of the future and said fuck it. For a woman that looked me dead in my eyes and swore she loved me, she was quick to pull back when things became too real between us.
