Page 35 of Banished and Pregnant by Her Sicilian Billionaire Husband

The look in his wife’s eyes.

No, dammit, no.

Marcello willed her to look at him even as he continued talking without missing a beat.

“The only thing I can’t promise you is to forget what you’ve done.”

He could already tell Chisa was considering doing something.

“You’re our own flesh and blood—”

Vico shook his head with a smile that was almost eerily...bright. “That’s the thing, though. I’m not who you think I am. None of you realize that you have what should be mine, being the oldest.”

“Stop talking in riddles,” Marcello growled, “and just say what you have to say.” It killed him to keep speaking like this while doing nothing, but he also knew he had no choice. Chisa still wouldn’t look his way, and the determined expression on her face was driving him insane.

“I’m not your cousin.”

“What the hell are you talking about now?” Marcello managed to look impatient even as he clenched his fists against the urge to do something—anything!—that would get Chisa out of harm’s way.

“I’m your half-brother. Your father’s real firstborn. And that’s why, if I have to kill Rica next—”

No!

But it was too late.

Marcello knew, even before Vico was done speaking...

The moment the other man had mentioned their daughter’s name...

That was it for his wife.

Chisa, who always thought she was ordinary and weak...

But when it came to Rica, it was like she was Ana’s very own protégé, with how she turned into a lioness the moment she realized her little one was in danger, and after that, everything happened in a blink.

Chisa threw her whole weight sideways and took the chair down with her—

Vico’s gun hand swinging after her, his mouth already open—

BANG!

The kitchen window came in.

Glass went everywhere, across the tiles, across the table, across his wife on the floor, and Vico dropped where he stood without ever finding out what had happened to him.

Marcello looked up through the ruined window.

Camillo was standing on the grass outside in his shirtsleeves, perfectly still, the pistol he’d been cleaning an hour ago still up at his eye. Stealthy as an assassin—since that was what he had been, once upon a time.

His brother lowered the gun and said, through the hole where the glass had been, in the same voice he used for shipping contracts:

“Get her out of there.”

Chisa

VICO’S DEAD.

Dead.