A Vow of Love and Vengeance

Emilia pressed her forehead to the mattress, her ragged breaths mingling with my own to break the silence.

“Every single shred of you is mine, piccola.” I dragged a finger through my come on her skin before gripping her jaw and forcing her head to the side.

Tears welled in her eyes as I slid my finger inside her mouth.

“Every tear. Every thought. No one else gets to have a single piece of you. Not even the dead.” Before I pulled it out, her tongue wrapped around my finger. “My good girl.”

I released her wrists and used the silk to wipe the mess from her skin. She rolled onto her back and stared up at me. And then, like a fractured pane of glass, my little kitten finally shattered.

A sob wrenched from her chest, so pained, so heartbreaking. Gripping her waist, I pulled her into my lap and held her to my chest. Her arms went around my neck, and the sounds that left her lips clawed at me. I would take her pain if I could, but I could only make her face it. Hiding away wasn’t helping; it was destroying her.

“He doesn’t deserve your grief, piccola.”

She clung to me like I was her lifeline, and I would have been lying to myself if I said I didn’t like it.

I laid back on the bed and held her until her sobs turned to hiccups and her tears evaporated. Silence fell between us, and I stroked my hand down her back, fully expecting her to retreat into her head at any moment. Not like I thought I had some magic dick that could fix her. Emilia was stubborn, and though I knew she needed this, that I’d seen a spark of my little kitten, pulling her from her grief would take a lot more than one fuck.

I would repeat this process as many times as I had to if need be. Not that fucking her was a hardship, but I didn’t enjoy her emotional turmoil. The entire notion of her suffering over Roberto angered me beyond reason.

Emilia turned her cheek to my bare chest. “He thought I’d run away from you,” she said, her voice detached, quiet, “that I was asking him to help me.”

I remained silent, not daring to interrupt her.

“He told me to go back.” Her finger traced a line over the tattoo on my shoulder. “I asked him if Chiara ever came to him for help…” Her voice cracked on the last word, and I inhaled a deep breath, knowing the answer, hating it for her.

Emilia had done nothing to warrant her father’s blatant neglect, and the idea that anyone could hurt her made me wish the man was alive, just so I could kill him slowly, painfully.

“Your father wasn’t a good man, Emilia.”

“But I killed him. My own father,” she rasped. “What does that make me?”

“It makes you strong.” It made her a queen. “It makes you someone who took justice for your sister.”

“You know the worst part? He apologized.” Her voice hitched. “He said he loved me. While he was dying, when it was too late.”

And that was why she harbored so much guilt. Because right at the end, he’d given her a glimpse of a man he could have been, the man an innocent girl had wanted him to be. It was a lie, and it was cruel.

“A man will quickly find remorse when he’s staring death in the face.” In those final moments, a man would barter with the devil himself, say whatever he needed if it might buy him but a few minutes. I’d seen it time and time again.

I didn’t know what would bring her more peace, though, to believe her father did, in fact, love her or that he was a soulless, selfish creature who didn’t care for her.

I didn’t know what to say to make this better. So I gave her something that might, at the very least, absolve her of some blame.

“Your family deceived and betrayed me. If you hadn’t killed him, I would have, Emilia.” The moment I found out about Andreas, I would have taken Sergio’s brother. He was right there in my city, after all. “And I would not have made it so quick. At most, you took hours from him. And those hours would have been painful. Trust me.” Men without honor did not deserve honorable deaths.

Fresh tears dropped onto my chest. “Do you think… that my father knew?” she asked, the vulnerability in her voice making me tighten my grip on her.

“Knew what, piccola?”

“That Sergio deceived you. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have let me marry you…” Her voice trailed off.

Even now, when she knew the man was a piece of shit, she still wanted to believe he’d had a slither of redeemability. That he wouldn’t have left her at my mercy, a man they believed to be truly merciless.