Was it the same knife, I wonder? Did I kill him with the same blade he used to kill my mother?
Now comes the emotion. The elevated heart rate. I guess I’m not as much a monster as this man if I can still feel.
He snorts, face contorting a little in pain. “Rinaldi? That’s where you’re getting your facts from?” He raises his free hand when he says facts to make a single air quote. The instant he does, my brother grabs it, sets it beside the other and drives the steak knife through it.
No choked, shocked silence this time. My uncle screams.
“What did you do?” Dante demands with a roar.
“I did it for you, you ungrateful bastard! She would have gotten rid of you, but I told her no! I saved your fucking worthless life!” He draws a deep, shuddering breath in as tears begin to stream down his face. “You think she ever loved your father? Really loved him?” His eyes are on me now. “She loved me first. Me! Until my brother saw her and just like with everything else, he stole her too. And your mother…” he shakes his head, words foaming at his lips. “He turned her head. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.” He shifts his gaze to Dante again. “I made sure you were off the island. I made sure you weren’t anywhere near that charity event. I made sure you were protected from him. From the violence he brings.”
The he my uncle is referring to is me. And the way he says it, the way he nods his head gesturing to me when he does, betrays his hate of me.
“You think that woman wanted to suck off an inexperienced fifteen-year-old boy? I arranged that. For you.”
Dante stumbles backward a step. His face contorts like he’s just figured something out.
“Why?” he asks, so much emotion in those three letters.
“Why? Look in the mirror and tell me what you see,” my uncle says to him.
Dante’s hands fist at his sides.
I take hold of the hilt of the steak knife and pull it out, freeing one of David’s hands. He gasps with the movement. I’m sure it’s as painful coming out as it is going in. He starts to draw his arm back, but I grab it, turn it over and stretch it across the desk. I set the point of the knife at his wrist and push the sharp blade in. It cuts skin like butter and blood pours from his vein.
“You had him rape her. That’s how you knew,” I say.
“What?” Dante asks. He doesn’t know this part. No one knew but me. I was the sole witness.
“You had Rinaldi rape our mother,” I say again, out loud. It feels good to say it to him because he is more guilty than Rinaldi.
I push the knife deeper, feeling my own rage.
“Why?” I ask.
He drags his gaze from the knife up to me. He looks old. Already dead. “She accused me of it. I wanted to be sure she knew the difference,” he spits. He shifts his gaze to Dante. “She couldn’t love you because of it. She would have gotten rid of you. She needed to be punished. They all did. I did it for you. For you.”
Shock registers on Dante’s face. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. “No.” Dante shakes his head, backing away as he does. “No.”
No.
I turn from my brother to my uncle. I stare in disbelief for a long, long moment. Because I’m registering too. “You fucking bastard. You god damned mother fucking bastard.” Rage amplifies my voice. I start to slice the vein open. I want it to be painful. Slow. But I need something from him and all of this, all of what he is saying now, I need to wait to process it. It needs to wait.
“Where is my wife?”
“I loved her, don’t you see?” he asks me, then turns to Dante. “Don’t you see?”
“Where is my fucking wife?” I scream, stabbing the knife through his wrist and pinning it to the desk.
Dante is behind him in the next instant, gun cocked and at his temple. “Where is she, you bastard?” his voice is somehow controlled. “Where. Is. Scarlett?”
Our uncle, my uncle—he’s something else to Dante, turns to Dante, gives him a grin. “You were never worth it.”
My brother pulls the trigger.
36
Scarlett
She leaves the door open so I can see a part of the bedroom and hear clearly. I scrub my hair as I listen to her talk to Mara, chastising her for not being in her seat. She was at the window.
“Let’s get you changed. Mr. Petrov will be here soon.”
“Do you know him?” Mara asks her as she undresses her before dressing her again in a pretty pink dress hanging in a garment bag from the closet door.