Page 121 of Dishonored

She had got what she wanted the second Raffe stopped breathing. She could go back to her life before she had become his wife, and regain some semblance of the normalcy she had lost. She could heal. Finally, really heal from the hell she had needed to endure.

She didn’t want war.

And these men didn’t care.

Caesar lifted a single finger high, drawing every eye in the room to his seat beside Aria. “I have another option.”

Angelo’s lips flattened into a grim line. “I can’t say I am particularly interested in hearing it, but go ahead and try me anyway. It can’t be any worse than the ones that are already on the table. Dio knows we could argue the semantics of this bullshit all night.”

“I think you might like this one, actually.”

“I rarely like things you do or want, Caesar,” Angelo grumbled. “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

His father’s barely-hidden insults didn’t even seem to faze Caesar. It was like they simply rolled off his shoulders with every single one, as though he were used to this, and it had become second nature for him to be the verbal punching bag.

Or maybe …

Shit, maybe he liked this.

Maybe this was part of what made him who he was.

Beyond the rest …

“Do tell,” Angelo said, waving a hand dismissively at his son. “Before my patience wanes, and I just take the easy route by killing her.”

Aria’s spine stiffened like someone had driven a stake into the bone, and forced her to sit a little straighter in the chair. It infuriated her to no end how she could be sitting right there, and yet these men talked as though she wasn’t in the room at all. Her opinion—despite having shown her muscle against them at every turn on the streets—counted for absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.

She was still just a woman.

And women were less than a man.

At least, to these people.

A shame, really.

It was their mistake.

“Well, it is something you’ve wanted for a while,” Caesar said. “And you don’t need to be rude about it, that’s all.”

“Caesar, don’t test me tonight.”

“You’re no fun.”

“You’ve made me this way, figlio.”

“Have I, really?” Caesar asked.

Angelo simply stared at his son.

Caesar looked right back.

“Get on with it,” Angelo barked.

“Fine,” Caesar said under his breath. And then, louder, “I marry her—she’s a widow, and we don’t even have to pretend to wait for a period of time like we might if it was another Cosa Nostra woman. She’s not Cosa Nostra, but she is Italian, and that’s what counts to you, isn’t it?”

Aria’s head snapped to the side, and she stared dumbfounded at Caesar.

No.