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Vitto keeps staring at me, his face unreadable and yet filling me with fear.
I turn to my brother. He's my last chance now, my last opportunity of escaping Vitto Donatti.
"Did everything go according to plan?" Luigi asks.
"Yes." I nod, looking away.
"Good. We had the place you found burnt down."
"Burnt?" I look up. "What about all the artwork that's in that garage?"
"We got all of that. We're going to sell it," Vitto mutters. "Some paintings and sketches of that Bernardi reietto are in there, too. And some of you, Marzia."
I flush, looking at my hands clasped in my lap. I can't stop shivering. "I painted those."
"You painted?" Luigi raises his brows at me. "Adrian put you up to that?"
"I've always loved it," I mutter defensively. "But papa wouldn't let me do it."
"I wouldn't either," Vitto says firmly. "A lady has better things to do than paint, like taking care of her children."
I glare at him. "I don't have any," I remind Vitto. "What else am I supposed to be—"
"Do I need to warn you again?" he snarls, his hand heavy above my face.
I shake my head and look away. Being near them has made me take a thousand steps back. All the work I've done at the Bernardi Estate, everything I've desperately tried to do to get over the abuse of my family, is meaningless. I'm back to being scaredy-cat Marzia—the one too afraid to ever speak up.
"Back to the matter at hand," Luigi goes on after an awkward silence. "We're trying to get more people who can help us, but those bastard Bernardis have killed nearly all of our allies. What they did was more than cold-blooded murder. They tried to erase us from existence."
"But we're not going to let that happen," Vitto grunts. "The first chance we get, we're going to kill them off, starting with that pretty boy, Adrian. I can't wait to slice his goddamn throat."
I swallow thickly at the sound of his words. I need to warn Adrian. But how am I going to manage that here? I'm alone with them... They won't let me leave and I don't have a phone. Fuck.
At least Luigi is here. I'm terrified of being here alone with Vitto. I don't think he would hold back around me if Luigi wasn't with us. I wouldn't catch a wink of sleep if it were just us.
"The problem with the paintings, Marzia," Vitto says after Luigi's attempted interruption. "Isn't just that you were engaging in inappropriate activity. It's the way you painted the two of you. You look entirely indecent in those photos. Did Adrian order you to do that?"
I might just be signing my own death sentence, but I'm determined to protect Adrian at all costs, so I merely smile and shake my head. "No, I painted them the way I wanted to paint them."
"That's what I feared. Your life with the Bernardis has corrupted you. That Adrian is a fucking prick. He'll die for doing this to you. Who else was around you?"
"Eleanora," I get out through gritted teeth. "But you already killed her."
"Silence," Vitto hisses. "You've really grown quite the mouth on you, you little bitch."
I suck in air at the sound of his insult, glaring at my brother to see if he'll object Vitto's words.
Luigi doesn't react, he just drinks more of his booze.
"Who else did you get to meet in their Estate?" Vitto demands again. "Tell me right now."
"No one." I shrug. He can't hurt them if I don't give him any names.
"No?" He gives me a cold grin. "Then I'll still have to kill them all. You know, just to be safe."
I hate this smug fucking bastard. I want to attack him. I want to hammer my fists against his chest and smack him upside his stupid face. But I don't dare fight back. I've already seen what he does to the people who disobey him, and I'm not going to become another one of the corpses outside.
I don't respond to Vitto. I've already realized the more I say, the more trouble I'll get myself into. Better to play the innocent, meek princess they both want me to be than get hurt. I'll just have to pray they don't find out the truth about my relationship with Adrian.
The rest of the day is tense. I make food for the three of us and am shocked to realize there's no one else up here but my brother and Vitto. When I question them about it, they keep saying the same thing….that they don't have a lot of men left, and that most of them were killed.
They show me to one of the guest bedrooms and I spend two hours scrubbing and cleaning it until I make it livable. At least there's water and electricity from a generator outside.
