I cast my eyes down to Lamorgese, who watched with huge eyes. His expression hardened when our gazes met. “You are too weak to rule. You don’t have what it takes to dish out pain.”
My lips pulled wide as I pushed Amelia behind me. Remo held out a knife, a gleaming silver blade resting on his bloody,scarred palm. “I think you know this blade. It was his.” He nodded at Lamorgese.
He didn’t need to tell me what knife it was. I recognized it the moment I saw it. It had caused me too much agony to ever forget it.
I curled my hand around the cool hilt. Revulsion filled me as I held the very weapon that had ripped agonized screams from my maltreated body.
Lamorgese let out a scoff.
Rage bubbled up in a wave that washed every other emotion away. I dropped to my knees and rammed the blade into the gap between his tibia and the fibula. A heavy sense of power overwhelmed me at the flash of pain on Lamorgese’s face. “I used to be too weak to dish out the pain you deserve, but you turned me into something capable of atrocities I was unable to imagine before your blade cut me the very first time.” I jerked the knife down, parting flesh until I hit bone. Lamorgese howled with pain, then gritted his teeth.
“This blade won’t be your tormentor beyond today.”
Relief mingled with fear in his eyes. “I don’t fear death.”
I laughed hollowly. “Death? You won’t be granted death, Achille. This blade won’t be your tormentor because I’ll carve a dagger from the very bone I’m touching now. And your own bone will be the blade that causes you agony until pain is all you know, until death is the sweet dream you don’t dare to dream. You honed me into the monster that will haunt your days and nights.” I slashed down, separating bone from flesh and sinew. Lamorgese’s screams were the most beautiful melody. His blood pooled over my fingers. Nothing else mattered. His pain was my reward. His scream, a balm to my broken soul.
When I had imagined escaping from our prison with Nestore, it had never unfolded like this. Nestore was turning into a monster, hungry for revenge.
I whirled around, unable to bear the sight of Nestore cutting my father open. The sound of bone splintering and the cries of my father dying in a gurgle made me retch, and bile filled my mouth. I hadn’t eaten in two days, or I would have thrown up too. Instead, I spit out the bile, shuddering heavily. Silence followed. I wished my father were dead. I wished it for Nestore, but remembering his words, I knew my wish wouldn’t be granted. Nestore wasn’t done with my father.
Heavy black boots appeared in my field of vision, and when I looked up, my gaze met merciless, almost black eyes.
Remo Falcone, son of Benedetto Falcone, the man who had commanded my father. Was his son any better? Looking intohis pitiless face, I doubted it. He had freed us, true, but not out of the goodness of his pitch-black heart. He wanted power and revenge, and he knew injured animals were the most vicious. Nestore was wounded in so many ways, wounded in ways I wasn’t sure could be mended after having witnessed his monstrous actions today. Remo Falcone wanted Nestore to become his monster—an army of monsters to conquer a kingdom for another monster.
Remo dissected me with his eyes. Distrust filled his. I held his gaze even as my pulse raced from fear. I had seen too much to cower in front of another monster.
He moved closer and leaned down so his low words only reached my ears. “The path he’ll tread is one you should be certain you can follow. Are you willing to brave the dark? Or will another Lamorgese betray a Romano?”
I cringed at the implication. My father had betrayed Nestore’s father in the worst way. “I would never—”
He raised a palm, his smile hard. “You can’t even bear to witness what he’s become, and believe me, he’s still evolving.” His eyes hardened. “Or is it perhaps pity for your father that makes you close your eyes to what’s happening?”
Evolving. He made it sound as if Nestore was becoming a better version of himself, something to admire. But I wanted to keep my Nestore, the boy who listened to me reading himThe Tale of Peter Rabbitwith a wistful smile. I didn’t want him to lose himself.
I didn’t want to watch Nestore lose more of his humanity with every slice of the blade.
I was consumed by the weight of our past, by the utter darkness clawing its way out from the very depths of where I’d buried it. “I don’t pity my father.”
Remo scanned my arms and the wrist I held stiffly against my chest. “Maybe. Maybe the bruises that he left will give you the courage to become the person Nestore needs by his side.”
“You don’t know what Nestore needs.”
His smile was vicious. “But I know what he craves in the darkest corners of his broken soul.” He didn’t mean love or anything of the sort. He glanced past me at something and straightened, bringing a bit more distance between us. A warm hand on my lower back made me relax, and I sank into the touch. My Nestore.
“That look in your eyes is unnecessary and would have dire consequences under other circumstances,” Remo said, his warning gaze focused on the man behind me. “I have no interest in your girl. I have whores to fuck and don’t need anyone for emotional bullshit. And she’s still a girl.”
“Your father enjoyed them young like that,” Nestore murmured.
I shivered.
“I’m not my father,” Remo said in a voice that sent a spike of fear through me. “I don’t betray the people loyal to me. I reward them. You can have everything you desire.”
Nestore nodded. “If I’m loyal to you.”
“If you’re loyal.”
“You saved me from my prison and gifted me him,” Nestore said, nodding toward my father. I followed his gaze with trepidation and heaved. Father lay unconscious on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Part of the bone in his lower leg was missing. Nino Falcone knelt beside him and wrapped a belt around his upper thigh to stop the blood flow. Another man attached a drip to Father’s hand.
