Giovanni (Benedetti Brothers 4)

“Vincent,” I call out, my voice hoarse.

Vincent is at the door in a moment.

“Find out what my father used to bribe Russo.” I look up and meet his eyes. “Then kill him.”

He glances at the desk, but I doubt he can make out what I’m looking at. He nods his acquiescence and walks away.

I return my attention to the book, make myself read the headlines. I haven’t seen most of them, but they all tell the same story. A years-old love triangle. Father and son as rivals over the affections of the beautiful, innocent Angelica. A son who could not let go of the past, long after the tragedy.

Angelica. What I feel at the mention of her name is sorry. Sorry for her.

Although the name didn’t always fit the woman. Angel. No, she wasn’t that. Not when she started our affair—my education, as she called it—not when she ended it in his bed.

But my father soon showed her his true face. By then, it was too late for her. She was pregnant. Just another woman in a string of affairs my father had had. But this one, I think she did love him. I wonder if he realized it. If he cared.

I didn’t know about the pregnancy until years later. Until I found the letter she wrote me before she killed herself. She had reached out to me for help, help against my father, help to keep her baby. But I never responded because I never received the letter. My father intercepted it. He read it and, even hearing the desperation in it, he’d kept it from me. She paid a heavy price for his deception.

That was the letter Emilia found in the library the other day.

When Angelica told my father about the pregnancy, he’d rejected her. Told her she needed to get rid of the baby. Made her go along with it. And the guilt killed her. She’d jumped from the window in the attic of our home in Calabria a few days after the abortion. Four stories. A cliff. Instant death.

After her death, I was sad. Not angry. The anger didn’t come until I discovered the letter among my father’s things. Then I was angry. Enraged. But it wasn’t how the papers printed it—not what Emilia would have read in this book. That’s fiction. The story my father told. The real tragedy is in that letter. If it was in English, she’d have read it and understood and this book wouldn’t carry the weight it must for her.

I took everything from my father when I learned the truth. Took it all, and put him in a wheelchair to watch life pass him by.

I’m calm when I close the book. Calm still as I climb the stairs to my bedroom.

Emilia is innocent, I know that. But she lied to me. And she still doesn’t trust me.

The lights are out in the bedroom, but I know she’s awake. I take off my clothes, watching her in the strip of moonlight coming in between the curtains.

“I changed my mind,” she says.

“About what?”

“Those men. You’re right. It won’t do any good for me to see them. I don’t want to see them.”

“I’ll take care of them.”

She sits up, meets my eyes. The sheet falls to her lap. She’s naked, her hair covering one of her breasts, leaving the other exposed. She’s so beautiful. And still, after everything, so out of reach.

“You mean you’ll kill them,” she says matter-of-factly.

I go to her. Stand over her. “Yes.” My gaze settles on her breast, then lower to the crease of her thigh. Her sex is covered by the sheet.

She looks up at me, then down over me, over my chest, abs, her eyes coming to rest on my cock.

“Get on your hands and knees.”

I hear her breath quicken, and she licks her lips. But then she turns her gaze up to mine and asks me a question that shouldn’t surprise me.

“Are you going to hurt me, Giovanni?”

I study her, this strange, beautiful, damaged girl. She must know I’ve gone through her bag.

“I said hands and knees, Emilia. Facing me.”

She climbs up on all fours, and I take a handful of her hair in my hands, make her look at me while I look at her like this.

I take my time before returning my eyes to hers. “Are you a liar, Emilia?”

She swallows, tries to shake her head no, but I don’t give her any room to because that’s the wrong answer. I bring her face to my cock, push into her mouth, pump in and out twice, three times, then pull out.

“Are you a liar?”

“No.”

“Then why do you lie to me?” I push in again, all the way this time, making her choke, keeping her down when she tries to push back, pumping, touching the back of her throat.