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“What happened to my sisters?” Dario asks me.
“I’m not sure,” I lie, not wanting to reveal where they are in front of my father and his men. Adelina and Serafina might be our only chance. If they can get word to Dario’s men, maybe they can help save us. “Just trust me, ok?”
Dario searches my eyes and relaxes once he’s found what he’s looking for. “I do trust you. I love you, Pia. So fucking much.”
A small smile crosses my lips. “I love you, too.”
“How romantic,” my father says from the front seat. “If you two love each other so much, you can die in each other’s arms. It’s a better ending than either of you two deserve.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” I ask my father. The question just blurts out of me. “What have I done to deserve your vitriolic hate?”
I expect him to deny it. To tell me that I messed up a lot as a kid, and that’s why I deserve to be hated. But that’s not the answer I get.
“You’re just like your mother, that’s why.”
I flinch. “My mother was a good person.”
“Your mother was a whore. Caught her screwing around with the gardener, of all people. She had to die after that.”
“So that’s why you killed her.” I never knew that about my mother. While cheating is bad, I’m pretty sure murder is a whole lot worse.
“She needed to know who was in charge.”
Dario snorts. “You don’t murder a woman to show her you’re in charge. That just makes you a fucking coward.”
My father chuckles darkly. “We’ll see who’s the real coward tonight. I’ll have you screaming, Dario Santoro. Trust me. And my daughter will see that you’re not the tough and brave man she thinks you are. Now, I’ve had enough of all this talking. Shut them up.”
I frown, not understanding what he means, when the man beside Dario punches him and knocks him out cold. I gasp right as the man next to me does the same thing.
Everything after that goes black.
I jerk awake, feeling like only seconds have passed. But when I open my eyes, I know it’s been more than seconds.
Because I’m not in the car anymore. I would recognize this place anywhere. The shower and toilet in the corner. The lumpy mattress underneath me. The lone, little window that looks out onto a grove of olive trees.
After all, it’s where I was locked up for ten years of my life.
I’m in my tower.
CHAPTER19
Dario
I’m woken up by another punch to my face. The scorching pain is almost unbearable, and I’ve been taught to handle a lot. But this pain, this unrelenting pain, is taking its toll on me. It doesn’t help that I have a gaping hole in my shoulder from where I was shot. Thankfully, the bullet went all the way through, but I’m still fucking bleeding. The blood in my mouth also tells me I’ve taken a serious beating to the face, stomach, and ribcage.
If I don’t find a way out of this, I’m going to die. And Pia will die if she hasn’t already. I can’t let that happen.
As I blink my eyes open, someone hits me in the face again. I jerk back from the force of it.
“He’s awake,” someone snaps. “Stop hitting him.” I recognize the voice. It’s Tommaso.
I shake some of my pain away and open my eyes wide to see Tommaso kneeling in front of me. He’s just as ugly as I remember, even with my fuzzy vision.
Glancing around, I see I’m in a large, cavernous room. It dawns on me. It’s the ballroom in Tommaso’s house. I almost didn’t recognize it because the last time I was in here, I was stealing Pia for myself.
So Tommaso brought me back here. To kill me, presumably. Though it seems he’s going to torture me first. Great.
There are three other men in the room with him. One has bloody knuckles. Clearly, he’s been the one hitting me.
