Page 147 of No Greater Oblivion

“S-stillborn?” My voice catches. “It was…he…we had a son.”

Regina drags her hand across her tired eyes. I spring to my feet, unable to remain in a stagnant position any longer, and pace the short length of the pew.

“Alejandro…there’s more.”

“More? More than a secret son you never told me about and Sandro being a perverted, incestuous degenerate?” I seethe. “What I had planned before isn’t enough. Death isn’t enough for him.”

“Listen to me first because there’s still more.” She expels a short breath. “It wasn’t Sandro who put the hit on you last summer.”

I stop dead in my tracks.

“It was Monse.”

“Monse?” Disbelief colors my tone. “Why?”

Regina doesn’t answer at first. It takes her a while to muster up the courage. “Because fate has a sick sense of humor.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What Sandro was never able to take from me, he already had in Montserrat. Willingly.” She cries freely and openly. Too many tears roll down her pale cheeks to be stopped. “I used to think she was jealous because she wanted more love and attention. On our wedding day, after I’d realized she’d betrayed me to our brother, it all just…it made sense. It was horrifying to witness; the lengths my sister would go to in order to please him. She maintains that Sandro never reciprocated her feelings or treated her as anything more than a little sister but…”

She gives a weak shrug and shake of the head. “Who knows. I thought she was a victim of his abuse. Manipulated and groomed by him. But no. She’s just obsessed. Sandro’s never looked at her the way he looks at me, I know he hasn’t. My entire life he’s used Monse as a way of beating me into submission. I’d have disappeared years ago but I can’t leave Montserrat behind. She’s still my sister and we depend on him. At least financially. He uses his financial control and his influence over Monse to keep me exactly where he wants me.”

Head swimming with a million questions, I can’t sort through them fast enough. Dead son, traitor sister, incestuous brother. All of it hits me at once and I collapse onto the pew, my legs giving out under my own weight.

This is too much for one person to carry. This is too much for me.

“Alejandro.” She places a tentative hand on my shoulder. “About the baby⁠—”

I flinch away from her. “No. I can’t. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

I drag my hands down the length of my face and massage my temples. Any minute now my skull is going to split in two.

“I need to focus. Please.”

She nods quickly. “Okay.”

“Just…I need to think.”

I need to shut everything out and focus.

“Why did Monse put the hit on me last summer?”

Regina chews on the inside of her lips. “Sandro and I have no idea. When we found out what she did, we were furious and tried to undo it but we were too late. I think Sandro suspects that Monse…how she feels about him…” She leaves the sentence unfinished. “She did it in a desperate attempt to please him, and it blew up in our faces.”

A thought occurs to me. Last year in Italy during my interrogation of Ibanez and Montenegro they told me they’d only spoken to a woman. One who promised to protect them if they stayed hidden for a few weeks.

Montserrat.

It was her all along. No wonder the attempt was so disorganized and scattered. Montserrat had no idea what she was doing and was giving blind orders to kill me without understanding there’d be consequences later on. Like when her siblings eventually found out and when after my inevitable survival, I’d bring the issue before the apostles.

This is a fucking disaster.

“What’s Sandro’s plan right now?”

“He doesn’t have a plan. He’s falling apart,” she says. “Alejandro, he can’t take any more of this for much longer, and neither can I. Please give Monse back to me. When this is over you can have whatever you want. Our territory, our businesses⁠—”