Page 102 of Fall Before Her Throne

I couldn’t even bring myself to ask. How could it get worse?

“It’s okay. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore, Max,” Cas said, gently encouraging him to continue. “We’re here.”

Max’s fingers tangled in his hair. I inched closer, and he pulled away, like he couldn’t even bear to look at me. “The car bomb that killed both our mothers wasn’t for them. It was an accident. Luciano meant it for my father—once he realized how close Massimo was getting to uncovering his crimes. When he found out, my father was devastated. He wrote in his journals that he was going to confront Luciano. That was right before he died.”

“What?” I breathed. No, no, no. That couldn’t be true. “It was another gang. I remember. He said it was a turf war. He and Massimo hunted the whole gang down until they had killed them all.”

Max’s voice was dead. Lifeless. “Luciano was just covering his tracks. They did wipe out an entire street gang, but they hadn’t done anything wrong.”

A rock sat in my throat and moisture stung the corners of my eyes. My stomach pitched and rolled so much I thought I’d be sick. I closed my eyes and held my head in my hands. “Oh, my God.”

Cas’s warm palm spread over my back. “I’m so sorry.”

I could barely breathe. Everything in my chest felt tight, but we couldn’t stop now. I needed the whole truth. I had to know. “What else happened?”

Max kept talking. Kept explaining. And my heart kept breaking.

At fifteen, Max had felt the entire weight of my father’s corruption on his shoulders. He’d wanted to kill my father, but he feared what would happen if he did. And he was afraid that if he told me or Cas, Luciano would find out that he knew—and somehow he’d hurt all of us.

So he kept it to himself and planned. For years, he’d worked against my father. He carried the weight of our dead mothers for years so that I didn’t have to. He had gained allies and waited to take my father out until he was strong enough to fill the power vacuum and lead the Family in his place. He’d made plans to get me and Cas free so we could live a life of peace.

“Everything went wrong when I turned twenty-one.” He rested his forearms on his knees, but he still wouldn’t turn around and look at us. “Do you remember that night, Leona? When you followed us and got drunk at the nightclub?”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment from the memory. “Yeah, I remember.”

I’d just wanted them to pay attention to me. I was so lonely in that big empty house, all by myself, and I thought that if I snuck out, if I made him pay attention to me, maybe he’d see how alone I was. I’d wanted him to love me. But he was dealing with this, and I had no idea.

“That night, after he scolded you, your father moved against me. He said he knew what I had been doing, how I’d planned to take him out. He pulled the rug out from under me, and he caught me by surprise.”

“How?” I asked. Cas moved his hand to loop around my back to my waist.

“He threatened you and Cas.” His voice broke, and he paused. He wrung his hands so much I thought he might pull his fingers from them.

My father threatened us. Both of us? How?

“Keep going,” Cas said. “It’s time.”

Max nodded with a heavy sigh. My heartbeat thundered in my chest. “He told me that if I didn’t fall in line and help him, he could easily kill Cas and no one would know or care.”

Cas’s jaw clenched, and I reached up to brush my hand against it. My father would have killed him, like he were nothing. Like he wasn’t a boy he’d taken in and cared for when no one else would. Like he wasn’t one of my best friends, and had loved me since he was a child. My gut churned at my father’s vileness. At the depths to which he would have gone, and how I never knew the truth.

If Luciano stood here in front of me now, I would have killed him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Cas.

He gave me another sad smile. “Not your fault.”

“What else?” I asked Max. He’d said my father had threatened me, too.

He dragged his hands through his hair. “Your father tried to force me to marry you.”

“What?” I gasped as my eyes went wide. My brain stuttered, trying to make sense of it. He had the chance to marry me all this time. But he didn’t. Why? The hurt I’d thought I’d moved past was suddenly jagged and raw again. “You said no.”

His eyes were rimmed in red. “It’s not what you think. I said no because it was a trap. He was going to use you against me and use me against you. I couldn’t do that to you. I wanted you free.”

My lips pressed together as I fought back the urge to cry. The weight of what he said settled over me. The years of rejection. The way he pulled away from me, from us both. It was because he wanted a different life for us.

“He was manipulating you,” I choked out. “You didn’t want to give him more control over you. And you knew that if you married me, neither of us would get free.”