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It’s one thing to think that someone you love has betrayed you, but not really know for sure.
A part of you holds on to a speck of hope that it’s all just a misunderstanding – that maybe you’ve made some terrible mistake –
But now my last bit of hope was gone, incinerated by Giotto’s words…
And the cold, awful certainty of Fausto’s betrayal closed around my heart like a fist made of ice.
This was my uncle –
My father’s brother –
The man who had bounced me on his knee when I was a child.
Who had given me candy out of his pocket…
The one who had comforted me when my mother died and my father was too overwhelmed with grief to speak.
My uncle – a man I had loved and looked up to my entire life – had tried to kill me.
Not just once, but multiple times.
The hit in Florence when I was with Alessandra and Valentino –
The Turk invading our house –
Mezzasalma –
And now this attack on the Widow.
Fausto was my flesh and blood –
And yet he’d paid strangers to try to take my life.
He hadn’t even had the courage to do it himself.
The Widow seemed shaken, too, though not nearly as much as I was.
She lowered the gun and asked, “When?”
Now that he’d broken, all the fight had gone out of Giotto.
Maybe the Widow lowering her gun made him think he was out of danger if only he told the truth.
“I’ve been taking money from him for months,” he sobbed. He glanced down at the corpses of the black-clad mercenaries. “But then Aurelio called out of nowhere and wanted me to let them in.”
And there was the proof of Aurelio’s treachery, as well.
It didn’t sting nearly as much as Fausto’s betrayal.
Partly because I already believed what Bianca had told us in the study…
And partly because I’d always hated my cousin.
Aurelio was a vicious, arrogant bastard, and I’d despised him since we were children.
Now I was beginning to wonder how far the apple had actually fallen from the tree.
“Was it because Signor Rosolini came here today?” the Widow asked brusquely.
