Adriano’s face revealed more than Milan’s did. He was pure stone while Adriano’s expressions were trying to hold back the emotion, trying to contain it. His scrunched brows frowned like they were comfortable there. He had dark, almost black hair, and it flopped in unkempt strands that told me he didn’t care much for perfection like Milan did. His eyes—dark but not like shadow—revealed depth; they explained the most, that he was thinking too much, holding too much, just like me.
How could he be a person of pure emotion while his counterpart was numb and gray inside?
“What happened?” he asked again, this time sterner.
I blinked for a moment, noticing the crowd of stray guests beginning to form around me and the open balcony door. Whispers swept through the gathering, seeming to chill the entire upper floor. Adriano must have felt it too; he gripped my wrist, turning instantly, almost frantically, and dragged me back toward the balcony door, stopping only when we reached the doorway and the cold wind spat the tang of copper into our faces.
Milan was kneeling beside the body he’d quartered, running his bloodied hands over one another, whispering to himself. Hewas kneading the blood into his wrists and palms like he was worshipping it, but the way he stared through the body told me that he wasn’t worshipping anything at all, that he wasn’t even reallyhere.
“Shit,” Adriano whispered. He looked down at me, his grip tightening on my wrist. “Tell me what the fuck happened. Now.”
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes flickering between Milan and the broken body. “These people in masks just attacked us, and he was killing them, and then one stabbed me, and he just startedtorturinghim.”
Adriano twisted to his side, finding the other man, the one with the earring. “Control these people while I deal with this, Francesco. Don’t let them see him like this.”
Francesco swallowed, staring at Adriano like there was more he was waiting for, but quickly blinked the contact away and retreated into the growing horde to begin steering them away from the sight of my new, utterly unhinged husband.
Adriano pulled me into the night air, directly in front of the body.
Milan didn’t notice us when Adriano crouched before him. All he seemed to be able to do was repeatedly mutter, “You are capable, Milano. You are capable, Milano. You are capable, Milano. You are?—”
“Milan,” Adriano said gently, clutching Milan’s hands in his own. It was a tender gesture, one that made the cold feel less biting, and the entire scene feel less like an animalistic maiming. “It’s done; it’s not happening again.”
I wanted to ask what they were talking about, whether what had happened was something to do with his mom and sister, whether his breakdowns were a common occurrence, but the breeze picked up, sweeping the balcony with the sickening scent of the blood and the thick smell of body.
My stomach churned, forcing me to kneel on the hard stone as my body retched. My head was dizzy, my belly sick with the sight of the knife and the heavy texture of flesh against the stone. My father had ensured that we’d stayed away from not only his violence, but the violence of the world around us. Fiorella and I were sheltered, not raised for the life he gave us.
When the heaving stopped, and my body left me panting, the sound of my breath was the only sound I could hear. I turned my head to find a pair of eyes staring back, eyes that belonged to the devil himself.
“You remained alive,” Milan said through a hoarse voice. “Good.”
My gaze drifted to the body, to the someone who hadn’t remained alive so I could. The closer I looked, the more brutality I saw. There was broken bone piercing organs, chunks of flesh shaved away from the muscle, insides that I couldn’t name torn away from where they should be, and theblood,god, there was so much blood.
He’d deserved to die, but did anyone deserve to die likethat?
I pushed myself to my feet, swaying on my legs as I whispered, “You’re a monster.”
Milan rose instantly, his face frowning but softly, like he’d never heard that before. “I protected you.”
“That is not protecting me,” I tried to say firmly, but the words came out strangled and soaked in my tears. I chanced one more glance at the blood, torturing myself as though this was my fault and not his. “That’s—that’s—”Evil,I wanted to say, but I swayed a little too hard, and my eyes blurred in and out of focus until I felt myself topple, and my eyes didn’t refocus again.
There wasa dull ache in my palm, a sharp pounding in my head, and the grinding of wheels against the road when I came to. I lifted my neck with a groan, only to flop back down onto something leather when it was too heavy. When I did manage to blink awake, I looked down at my body splayed out across the dark leather seats, at my bloodied wedding dress, at the world passing by the window—I was in acar.
I bolted upright with a gasp, using the front seats to yank my numb limbs upright.
Was I being kidnapped by the assassins who had come for me?
“Easy, easy.” Adriano twisted in his front seat, his face not as worried as it had been at the church. “You okay?”
I blinked, unsure if that was a real question. We had just beenattacked. Milan tortured a guy to death, had a mental breakdown, and he was asking me if I wasokay?
That was a firm fuck no.
My throbbing wound had been wrapped in another tie. It wasn’t as blood-soaked as Matteo’s had been, so the bleeding had slowed, but it was aching and sticking to the fabric still. It needed stitches, but I doubted Milan would want to explain what had happened to a hospital.
“Am I dead?” I groaned, clutching my temples. “Is this hell?” I half-hoped I had died so I didn’t have to be caged inside Milan’s torture dungeon house for the rest of my life.
“If you were deceased, you would not be speaking.” It was the same, monotone, lifeless tone that Milan had used before the attack, but now he was justdrivinglike nothing at all had happened, like the lights of the street weren’t illuminating the blood caked on his shirt. “Adriano would also not be in hell, so be rest assured, this is reality.”
