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My thumb moved over a knuckle on my right hand, the knuckle that always ached in the cold because I’d dislocated it so many times. “It won’t change anything, chérie.” I knew she believed I was capable of change, but she was dead wrong about that.
“Then you should tell me, so I’ll understand.”
I massaged my knuckle again as I kept my eyes on her. My future wife. The future countess. The future mother of my children. My future widow. With every day and every week, I let her in, let her deeper inside, shared my life with her without barriers. The night she left me never happened. Those months apart had been erased. For the first time, I didn’t live in the past. I cherished the present. “My family was murdered.”
She inhaled a deep breath, her eyes instantly watering.
“Mother. Sister. Brother. All of them.” So much time had passed that their images had faded from my mind. Their pictures were in my safe, and sometimes I would look at them and remember my childhood with my siblings, the cookies my mother would make every Sunday, the house at Christmastime.
“Magnus and I are the last of our line.” I spoke without emotion because I was numb to the loss. It was factual at this point. Grief was complicated, and sometimes it would arrive at my shores like a hurricane, and other times, it was silent for years. Right now, it was silent. Probably because of her.
“I…I’m so sorry.”
I gave a curt nod.
“Your father?”
“He was the one who killed them.”
A quiet gasp left her lips as her hand cupped her mouth. The watery film over the surface of her eyes increased, reflecting the sunshine coming through the windows behind me. “Why…?” Her voice broke, and she gave a loud sniff. “Why would someone do that?”
“Because he’d rather kill us all than suffer the public shame of his financial ruin.” I hadn’t talked about this in years. My voice was sterile. Emotionless. It was just a story to me now, not something I’d lived through. “He gambled our wealth on bets he could never pay. Then he gambled more to recoup those losses. Just went deeper into the hole.” It was the reason I never gambled. I went to the horse races for sport, not for money.
She was silent in her disbelief.
I let her soak it in before I continued. “I came home later than I was supposed to. He must have assumed I was already in bed or thought he could just shoot me when I walked in the door later. He’d drugged everyone during dinner, and in their sleep, he shot each one in the head.”
She inhaled another strained breath, on the verge of sobs.
“By the time I got there, it was too late. Mom was dead. My sister was gone. He was executing my other brother when I discovered Magnus was still alive. He was the last on the list because his bedroom was the farthest down the hall. I was young and weak at the time, so I struggled to carry him.” I could still remember the way he felt in my arms, the way I clenched my teeth together so tightly as I strained my arms. It was the last time I allowed myself to be physically inadequate. I hit the gym every single day, no exceptions. “I dropped him on the stairs. He hit his head and woke up. Thankfully.”
She continued to breathe hard, hanging on to every word of the story.
“That got my father’s attention, so he came to the top of the stairs. Gun in hand. Hatred in his eyes.” I’d never forget the way he looked. It was forever seared into my brain. He was actually angry that I’d halted his plan. Angry that I got my little brother to the door. Angry that we wouldn’t die like he wanted. There was no love. There was no remorse. Nothing. When I tracked him down later, I showed him no remorse too. “Magnus and I got out the door and missed the bullets. We ran for our lives down the street in the pouring rain, the sound of gunshots following us until we turned into an alleyway.”
With wet eyes, she was completely absorbed in the story. “Then what happened?”
“Magnus and I lived like rats in the street. We couldn’t go to the police because they would just put us in an orphanage, which would make it easier for our father to find us. We took food out of the dumpsters so we wouldn’t starve. We stole from people so Magnus could get me to the doctor when I got pneumonia. We lived that way for a long time, scrounging for food, trying to survive, growing weak and emaciated.”
Tears broke and dripped down her cheeks.
“We eventually got into the drug trade—and the rest is history.”
