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“My God, Gabriel. You can’t do this.” Maria immediately headed toward me, pulling my hand into hers. It was the same one the blade had been pressed again.
The pain was refreshing, the action keeping my anger from getting out of control.
For now.
But I couldn’t allow this to go without retaliation. It was a test, my sister taking the brunt of it. Goddamn my father for promising her hand in marriage.
“Leave him alone,” Theodora whispered. “He was just angry.”
“Angry?” I repeated. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“You’re bleeding,” Maria said. “I’ll get you a towel.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.” As she headed for the bathroom, Theodora confronted me.
“What are you going to do?”
“You heard me. You’re not marrying the freak if that’s what you mean.”
“I have to.”
“Like hell you do. We don’t live in the goddamn dark ages.”
“You don’t understand,” she snapped.
“What don’t I understand? That our father wants you to be married to a monster to build some bridge? That Nico is a primate and nothing else? That he will do this to you any time he feels like it? Over my dead body.”
“Then they’ll force Maria to marry him. I can’t let that happen. I won’t!”
I took a deep breath, staring into her eyes. “Admirable but neither one of you are going to marry into that family.”
As tears trickled down her face, she pursed her lips. “He won’t stop. You don’t know him like I do because you haven’t been around. He’s…” She looked away, chewing on her lip.
“I know I haven’t and I’m sorry.”
She glanced all the way down my torso, noticing the ring. “You took his ring.”
I lifted my other hand, shaking my head. “No. I would never do that.”
Her eyes opened wide with shock. “You’re a member now. The Brotherhood. They asked you to become a member.”
“How do you know about the Brotherhood?”
“Luciano used to confide things to me. He treated me like an equal, not like his little sister, something you couldn’t understand.”
There was so much animosity that an ache formed in my heart. “How many times can I apologize? I can’t erase the past. All I can do is promise that the future will be different.”
As Maria returned, wrapping my hand in a wet towel, I accepted the fact I’d been a shit for a brother. That didn’t make the situation any better or easier to swallow. I need to destroy the Moretti family first. Then I’d work on the relationships.
“Just keep your word, brother. We can’t take another tragedy inside this family. Mother cries herself to sleep every night,” Maria huffed.
“And I plan on doing something about it.”
“By hurting the woman in the accident?” she threw at me.
There were no secrets in this house. “I have no intentions of hurting her.”
