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How do I tell Alessio that his brother kissed me?
Will he believe me when I say I didn’t want any of it? No matter how many times I write it out, no matter the scenario, it doesn’t end well. Men. Boys. Uncles… I have been called pretty by them my entire life as if a compliment from them is the best currency. Most days I contemplate burning my skin so they don’t look at me.
Now both the Pavoni boys are looking in my direction. This will not end well for me. I know the rules. I’ve been told them since I was young enough to remember. I still remember Mama wagging her finger at me the day I let my tongue slip and confessed my attraction for Alessio.
This kiss is something I need to put inside of me and hope doesn’t resurface.
If Alessio finds out, I know he’ll kill Emilio.
At the sound of footfalls outside my room, I closed the journal. Quickly I stashed it under the loose floorboard and threw the blankets and pillows in the closet. It was a haphazard attempt at hiding but it would have to do. I was pretty sure it was just going to be Nikolai with the tea I’d requested. He’d told me I had three hours until the Beast would be back. Even so, I could never be too sure.
I ran back to the bed and sat on the edge, running a finger through a stray lock. A moment later there was a knock on the door. I released a small sigh of relief, feeling my tense joints relax. The Beast never knocked.
“Come in,” I said, going back to the closet to grab the blankets and pillows. As I was setting back up, he placed the tea on the ground beside me. I picked up a beautiful china cup, inhaling the fragrant, steaming herbs. The liquid was hot on my tongue—just the right temperature for sipping.
When I set it back down on the silver tray, I paused. There was a flyer in the way.
“Wait,” I asked, stopping Nikolai from leaving and picking it up. “What is this?” I turned the thin paper in my hand, reading the bold text: The Pavoni Princess Lives.
Nikolai didn’t turn around when he answered. “The future.”
The Pavoni Princess Lives. I lifted up the cheap colored paper, which felt smooth yet scratchy in my hand, and stared at the big, blocky letters. They demanded my attention, demanded to be read. Believed. My brows wrinkled as I tried to assign meaning to them. Sofia had mentioned something about a Pavoni Princess in the journal, but that didn’t help me understand it any better.
I was still trying to make sense of it when a soft knock sounded on the door. I looked up to see Gabby gently push it open, inching her head through.
“Is this a good time?” she asked. “Nikolai came and got me but I can come back later…” Gabby pushed the door open the rest of the way. She stood in the doorway, fidgeting with her oversized sweater.
“Of course it’s a good time,” I said, setting the flyer back down, still absorbed by it and Nikolai’s mysticism. “Nikolai came and got you?” I asked as Gabby took a seat among the soft blankets in the blind spot of the camera.
“He said you’d probably want to see me.” She pulled in her lip, uncertain. “If that’s not the case, I can go.” My eyes narrowed. I mean I did want to see Gabby, but what business did Nikolai have guessing at my intentions, especially without asking first? Nikolai had shoved the two of us together before Gabby had murdered her husband, too. I looked down at the flyer. Now what was he up to?
“Gabby, what do you know about Nikolai?” I asked. Giving the flyer one last look, I stashed it back under the tea.
“Not much,” she said. “I know of him. He’s been a slave to the Beast since he was a little boy.” Beast had said as much, but he’d phrased it very differently, had made it sound like he’d saved Nikolai’s life.
“So you didn’t know him? You weren’t friends?”
“Frankie…” Her face transformed as if thinking about something powerful. “Frankie, before you, I didn’t know anyone other than Giovani. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to kill him if I hadn’t met you at the park.”
“But that was Nikolai,” I pointed out. “Nikolai brought us together.”
“I suppose…” She didn’t seem very convinced, but I wasn’t letting it go. Something about Nikolai wasn’t right.
“Do you think he wants something?”
“From me?” She was shocked. “What could I possibly offer him?”
“From me then?” I asked. Gabby chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking. It was a little while before she spoke again.
“You know everyone said Beast should have killed him?” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “He killed his entire family but saved Nikolai.” I thought back to what Beast had said: I saved him. He’d killed Nikolai’s family but not him. Why?
“That was probably a mercy,” I said.
“I think it would have been mercy to kill him,” Gabby said flatly. I glanced at her. Occasionally she said things like that, things that belied her submissive exterior and gave way to the darkness inside of her—a darkness that living your youth as a virtual sex slave to a man twice your age will beget. “And I think Nikolai would agree with me.”
In the silence that followed, my thoughts drifted. To what Nikolai wanted. To what I would want if someone killed my family and then enslaved me for ten years. I knew immediately: revenge. I just wasn’t sure how Gabby and I fit into his plans.
I exhaled, changing the subject. “Are you going to tell me what really happened with Giovani? I had a cop show up and say some pretty interesting shit to me at the funeral. Beast was right there when he talked to me.” Ever since the funeral, I’d been dying to know what had actually happened after our meeting at the park. At my question, her entire body transformed, glowing bright. It wasn’t really the reaction I’d been expecting when asking her about the murder of her husband.
