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Wolfe strode to a black duffel bag near the foot of the bed and unzipped it, producing a small Swiss knife. He turned around.
Papa stood tall and proud despite his dire situation and being completely wasted and in desperate need to support himself. He leaned against my old closet, his nostrils flaring.
“You’re dead. Both of you.”
“Open your hand.” Wolfe ignored the threat, flipping the knife open and producing a sharp edge.
“Are you going to cut me?” my father taunted, his lips twisting in revulsion.
“Unless my bride will do me the honor.” Wolfe turned his head around to look at me.
I blinked, puffing off my cigarette to buy time. Perhaps it was true that I no longer felt despair and anger toward these two men.
They’d ruined my life, each of them, in his own unique way. And they succeeded in such a way that I had felt positively damaged. Enough to sway my hips nonchalantly on my way to them.
Whereas my father looked content with Wolfe cutting him open, when he saw me nearing him, his teeth slammed together and his jaw locked.
“She wouldn’t dare.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The girl you gave away wouldn’t. Me? I might.”
Wolfe handed me the knife, leaning back on the wall as I stood in front of the man who created me holding a weapon in my hand.
Could I do it?
I stared at my father’s open palm, outreached and staring back at me. The same palm he’d used earlier this evening to slap me in the face. The same palm that was directed at my mother.
But also the same palm that braided my hair during bedtime after Clara washed it. The same hand who patted my own not too long ago at the masquerade, belonging to a man who stared at me as though I was the brightest star in the sky.
I held the Swiss knife with quivering fingers. It nearly slipped from between them.
Dammit.
I couldn’t do it.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
I shook my head, handing Wolfe the Swiss knife.
My father clucked his tongue in satisfaction.
“You will always be the Francesca I raised. A spineless little lamb.”
Ignoring him and the churning in my stomach, I took a step back.
Wolfe took the knife from my hand, his face placid, grabbed my father’s hand, and sliced it open vertically, cutting shallow and wide.
Blood gushed out, and I winced, looking away. Papa stood there, staring at the blood pouring from his open palm, oddly tranquil.
Wolfe turned around and pulled the linen from my bed, then threw it into my father’s hands. His blood soiled the sheets as he clutched them.
“Bastardo,” my father mouthed. “You were born a bastard, and no matter your shoes and suits—you will die one, too.” He stared at my husband with sheer hate in his eyes.
“You were the original bastard.” Wolfe grinned. “Before you became a Made Man.”
Whoa.
My eyes ping-ponged between them, shooting to my father.
