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.
Instead of gracing the accusation with an answer, my father had told me that his own parents died in a car crash when he was eighteen, but I’d never seen any pictures of them. He pinned me with his narrow, indigo eyes.
“Vendicare me.”
Avenge me.
“Take the sheets and get the hell out. Tomorrow morning, you may present them to your very close family members. No friends. No Made Men. And if this leaks to the media, I will make sure to personally put that knife to your neck…and twist hard,” Wolfe said, unbuttoning the first buttons of his dress shirt.
My father turned his back on us and stalked out of the room, slamming the door in his wake.
The thud of the door banging still rang in my ears when I registered my new reality—married to a man who did not love me but enjoyed my body frequently. Betrothed to a man who did not want to have kids and hated my father with passion.
“I’ll take the couch,” Wolfe said, grabbing a pillow from the bed and throwing it over on a settee by my window. He wasn’t going to share a bed with me. Even on our wedding night.
I scurried into bed and turned off the light.
Neither of us said good night.
We both knew it was just another lie.
A WEEK TICKED BY AND Wolfe and I eased back into our usual nighttime routine.
There was plenty of kissing, touching galore, licking and moaning and taunting each other with our mouths and fingers alone. But every time he went there—really there—I recoiled and asked him to leave the room. He always did. The pain I endured my first time left me scarred and scared. Not just physically, either. The way he hadn’t believed served as a reminder that we didn’t share much more than physical attraction. There was no trust. No love.