I turned, looking into familiar eyes, eyes that were now cold and terrifying, filled with hatred and death. He was holding a gun. There was blood on his shirt.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice a rasp, forcing myself to maintain eye contact.
“I’m getting revenge, my dear,” he said, walking toward me.
I took a step back until he lifted the gun.
“B-but m-my father loves you,” I stuttered, trying to understand how the man I’d known all my life could do this to us. “You love him.”
He laughed. It was cold and humorless, chilling my bones. “Your father does not know the meaning of love. And the only thing I will love is destroying his family and his heirs.”
He was close to me now, close enough to smell the aftershave that had been familiar since childhood. I didn’t dare move. Running could mean he would shoot me in the back. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t shoot me in the face, but I held on to that little bit of hope. He had killed the guards, that’s what the gunshots were. I wasn’t sure of his plan, but he wasn’t going to leave witnesses. So he’d killed them. Men he knew in passing, since guards were at the bottom of the totem pole. But he’d known me since I was a kid, he’d snuck me chocolates after dinner when Mama gave us fruit for ‘dessert.’ He shared a cigar with my father when Lorenzo was born. He was at family dinner every Sunday.
He wasn’t the man we’d thought he was, that was for sure, but I couldn’t believe he was a monster. I wouldn’t.
“I’ve watched you grow, dolcezza,” he drawled, brushing a strand of hair from my face.
I held my breath, not daring to move, to flinch away from his touch, even though it caused me to taste bile.
“You were a beautiful child, one who tempted me many times,” he continued, making my skin crawl.
My eyes were on his other hand, the one holding the gun that had killed so many of my father’s men. I was trying to gauge whether it was going to kill me, staying still was going to save me or make my last moments disgusting and unbearable. But my senses were not sharp enough to make such judgements. My father would know exactly how to act right now. He’d take care of this man and his heinous betrayal.
I had never longed so desperately for my father as I did in that moment.
But he wasn’t there.
It was just me and the man with the gun, the one insinuating he’d found me desirable as a child.
His hand moved down my neck, onto the bare skin of my chest and inside the bodice of my dress. “But you were worth the wait.”
My teeth sank into my lip as I forced myself to hold his eyes and not give in to the need to start crying hysterically.
The only weapon I had in that moment was my stare, my father’s eyes staring into the ones belonging to a man he considered a friend. A brother.
“Where is your brother?” he asked, hand still inside my dress.
I jutted my chin upward, staying silent.
The grip, that had been a wretched caress, turned violent, and I forced myself to hold in a cry.
“It’s not in my plan to kill you, Isabella,” he murmured, moving forward to smell my neck. “If I have time, I do have plans for you.”
My stomach dropped, and my vision blurred with tears.
He leaned back. “I want to end the family line, and no matter how much your father loves his little princess, he’s not going to hand his empire over to a woman.”
The way he spat the word, like it tasted sour, told me everything he thought about me and women in general. This was not a world where women had rights, had power. Not on the outside, at least. My father may have ruled the empire, but my mother ruled my father. My entire life, I’d had a strong, ferocious and formidable woman as a role model and had never thought I needed to be weak or subservient.
But I also knew my place. Knew that my nine-year-old brother was privy to more of my father’s business than I was. That I was to look pretty in dresses, learn how to throw a party and marry a man who would fit into our family.
He was right. Even if the worst happened to my brother—and I would never let that happen—I would not take over the family business. It would go to a cousin, a distant male relative ... if any were still alive. I wondered how deep this betrayal went. How many of my father’s men were involved?
“Where is your brother, Isabella?” he whispered.
“You’ll have to kill me,” I spat, fury trumping my fear. I dared not look at the armoire, at the crack I knew my baby brother could see through.