The sound echoed sharp and final. Blood bloomed at the corner of his mouth.
“Shut up,” I said calmly. “We’re going to talk about Penelope. Everything.”
Isabella’s blindfold came off next.
She shrieked, struggling uselessly against the restraints. Her hair—once perfectly coiffed—was tangled, mascara streaking down her face.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Dmitri, we didn’t—”
“Lies,” I growled, dragging a chair forward and sitting inches from them. “Start from the beginning. Why did you sabotage us?”
They resisted at first. Denials. Tears. Appeals to family. To history.
It took hours.
Threats. Silence. The slow, deliberate sharpening of my knife where they could hear it but not see it.
A calculated blow when words failed. Fear does strange things to people—it loosens tongues eventually.
And when they broke, the truth spilled out like sewage from a ruptured pipe.
That night—the one that destroyed us—Penelope hadn’t cheated.
They’d arranged it.
They’d drugged her with something strong enough to erase hours, maybe days. Paid a man to stage the scene. Positioned him just right. Timed my arrival down to the minute.
“She wouldn’t listen,” Marco choked. “She was obsessed with you. You were nobody. A thug. We were protecting her—”
I slammed his head back against the chair. “You destroyed her.”
And the hill.
God, the hill.
Penelope hadn’t supervised those men out of cruelty.
She hadn’t watched my mother die with indifference. They’d drugged her again, propped her up like a doll at the scene—ensured I would see her, hate her, blame her.
“She didn’t even know where she was,” Isabella sobbed. “We just needed you to believe it. If you hated her, she’d leave you. She’d be safe.”
Safe.
The word nearly drove me to my knees.
The truth hit like a freight train, crushing the breath from my lungs.
Guilt crashed over me in relentless waves.
Every punishment. Every insult. Every locked door. Every night I let her cry alone.
She’d told the truth.
Every time.
And I’d called her a liar. A whore. A monster.
I stood slowly, my hands trembling—not with rage this time, but something worse.