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“I humiliatedhim?” My voice rose over the music, and I didn’t try to contain it. “Oh, that’s rich.”
Her eyes were past my shoulder again. “I-I have to go.” She rose from the chair and left the table, leaving me to sit there alone.
I grabbed her abandoned wineglass and drank the rest of it before I looked behind me.
Catherine was at my father’s side, his arm around her shoulders, like he’d just beckoned her to come over and she’d obeyed—like a fucking dog. He continued his conversation with the Barsetti brothers.
I excused myself from the shitshow and entered the house. It was the same house I’d grown up in, so I knew my way around, knew the parlor was down the hallway past the kitchen. The cigar smoke announced the men in the room before I stepped inside. Four guys sat in the armchairs, making themselves at home with my father’s cigars and scotch. One of them was Victor, and the smile that was on his face just moments ago was wiped off as if I’d slapped him. I didn’t pay him much attention, though, because my eyes were reserved for my brother-in-law.
He stilled when my gaze settled on him, quickly realizing the bullets in my eyes were meant for him.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” I said as I sauntered across the room toward him. “I’m Laura.” I plucked the cigar out of his fingers and stabbed it down onto his exposed forearm.
He screamed before he swung his arm, getting the hot ash off his skin. There was already a distinct burn in his dark skin, a scar he would now carry for the rest of his life. “You cunt.” He was on his feet, facing off with me like he would swing at my face.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Bartholomew’s face came into my mind, granting me his protection even though he wasn’t even in the room. “Because my boyfriend will skin you alive then hang your body outside the Duomo.”
That made him falter, but only momentarily. He grabbed me by the shoulder and raised his fist to pummel me in the face.
“Oh good, now I’ll have a black eye to match my sister’s.”
Victor put himself between us, his hand on the arm of his friend. “Let it go.”
The guy huffed and puffed, like an angry bull in the streets of Pamplona.
“I’m not gonna let it go,” I snapped. “Hurt my sister again, and you’ll regret it, I promise you.”
He spat at my feet. “Why don’t you take a walk down a dark alleyway and get raped again—”
Victor punched him so hard in the face that he was knocked out cold. His body fell on the rug in front of the two armchairs. Then Victor looked at me, breathing hard, studying my face to make sure I was okay.
I kept a straight face as I walked over to his unconscious body, feeling Victor’s angry stare on my face. I lifted my heel and stepped down right on his crotch. He was so out of it he didn’t feel it, but when he woke up, he would definitely feel the bite of my heel then.
* * *
Victor walked beside me as I exited the property.
“I don’t need an escort, Victor.” I didn’t say goodbye to my father, to anyone else I’d made small talk with. It was the strangest feeling—to feel welcomed and cast out at the same time.
I was on the sidewalk outside the estate, and for the first time, my heels started to bother me. It’d been a long day—a very long day. Instead of taking a cab, I decided to walk, because I needed the time to process all that bullshit before I walked into the room with Bartholomew.
I wasn’t sure what I would share and what I would omit.
“That was a really fucked-up thing to say—”
“I don’t care what he said, Victor.” Now I knew how everyone saw me. Damaged. Irreparable. Dirty. Did they expect me to take on four men by myself? A little hard without a gun.
“Well, I do. I’ll handle it.”
“Like the way you handled our divorce?” I asked, rounding on him.
He gave a little cringe.
The guilt swept through me, because in that moment, I realized Victor was the only one on my side. He was the only one being remotely nice to me. Everyone else, my own family, basically told me to fuck off. “I shouldn’t have said that…”
His eyes remained averted for a while.
“Why would my father choose him for his daughter?”
