Page 128 of Dishonored

Rapist.

Pedophile.

She’d all but hissed the words, and let them snake down the table like the poison they were.

Like the truth that had to be said.

A truth that had never been said.

“Aria!”

Caesar’s response was a shout this time—thick, and loaded with an ache she hadn’t heard from him before. It was too late. She’d already swung that bottle before someone—including the bitch she aimed for—could react.

Green glass shattered over Martina’s face, and red wine mixed in with the blood that poured from the woman’s busted nose and mouth. Martina’s cries for help and pain was a song like no other, but the bitch was going to have to sing it for years before Aria would ever grant her mercy.

Aria wished that was enough—wished the sight of this woman bleeding and failing to get her arms up to prevent the second hit was enough for Aria to feel even remotely better.

It wasn’t.

Nothing short of death would be enough.

Someone did pull Aria away before she landed a third hit—Caesar. His arms wrapped tight around her like a cage, and he pulled her further away from the destruction she had caused. The rest of the guests at the table still seemed too shocked to react, or maybe they didn’t know what to do.

What did it matter?

Aria kept fighting regardless of Caesar’s efforts, even as she kicked the table, and at the woman stumbling out of her chair while holding her broken and bleeding face. The scars that wine bottle would leave behind would be a nice reminder every time Martina looked in the mirror.

And it still wouldn’t be enough.

It was nothing compared to the scars this woman had left behind.

Martina’s time would come.

Aria would make sure of it.

Caesar finally dragged Aria out of the dining room, but not before she got the last word in.

“Karma is a bad bitch, but she’s never met me. Remember that, cagna.”

SEVENTEEN

ANGELO RAGED ON.

Caesar was numb.

He felt nothing; heard nothing; seen nothing.

“Get rid of that woman! Get rid of her right now!”

His father’s words echoed from the dining room he’d just left, but they bounced off his shoulders like rubber bullets missing a target. He could hear footsteps behind him, but no one followed. He figured people were leaving.

That usually happened when a party ended badly.

It was only once they were far enough away from the dining room that he could no longer hear his father’s shouts that Caesar finally let Aria go from his hold. He pushed her away from him a few steps, but the woman spun around to face him anyway.

He stilled in place.

Caesar wasn’t sure what to say, and he sure as hell didn’t know what to expect when she faced him. Maybe haughtiness and anger—those were things Aria knew all too well when she aimed to kill a person.