Rocco punches him square in the jaw, sending him crashing to the floor.
“Rocco,” I breathe through my tears.
He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.
His gaze softens the second he lays eyes on me. “Angioletta.” Relief, pain, and worry lace his tone.
He’s by my side a second later, knife in hand. He plants a gentle kiss on my cheek as he reaches around to cut away my bindings. “I thought I’d lost you.”
A cruel, near-hysterical laugh booms from behind us, and we both tense in unison as Claudio rights himself from the floor.
“You thinkI’mthe monster?” Claudio’s manic eyes glance between the two of us. “I guess he didn’t tell you, then.”
“You’re dead, Lazzaro,” Rocco snarls.
“Ask him, Cas. Ask him what happened the night your father died.”
Something numbingly cold begins to fester around my heart. Nothing Claudio said about my father could be true because that would mean Rocco would have lied to me.
And Rocco had never lied to me.
Yet…Rocco is shaking, visibly angered by Claudio’s words.
The numbness only grows.
“Rocco?” I whisper.
But Rocco just cuts away my last binding and stands, looming over Claudio with his knife now pointing at his throat.
“Consider your next words carefully.”
Claudio steps back, but that manic grin doesn’t fade. “He’s been lying to you, Cas.”
“Rocco,” my voice is desperate. I’m teetering on the edge of my own mania.
“He’s the one who killed your father.”
25
ROCCO
“Iwanted to see it for myself.—that you would do for the Guild.”
“You are a hundred times the man your father ever was.”
“You are going to do great things, Rocco.”
Carmine Bellini’s final words echo through me as I watch his daughter collapse in on herself.
The grief is insurmountable. Regret laces my every emotion, every fiber of my being, as Cas looks up at me.
She’s finally seeing me for what I truly am: a monster.
“Please,” she begs, but I already know it’s too late. The truth is out now, and there’s nothing I can do to take it back.
I should have done more to save Carmine. I should have torn the gun from his hand the second he drew it. I should have said something, anything, to stop him from pulling that trigger.
But I failed, and I will have to live with those consequences for the rest of my life. Even if that means losing Cas in the process, I know in my heart that I deserve it.
