He whirled and marched toward me. “I didn’t kill my mother. Do you hear me?Hekilled her with his greed and thirst for power. He killed his own family when he became fucking Capo. He doesn’t get to have another family or live happily with another wife and son.Mywife and the son that should have beenmine.” Murder flashed in his gaze. “Sebastiano Bellomo doesn’t get to live. Not anymore.”
“Where were you the day of your mother’s murder, Leo?”
He stilled, horror paling his face. “It’s getting dark. I have to be on the move.”
“You weren’t at the mansion when they came for her. Neither was he. Why?”
He started putting on his clothes. “Nicky!”
“You were with him, weren’t you? He took you somewhere?”
“Nicole! It’s time to go.”
“The Seppis hit in order to wipe out all the Bellomos. Your father was on the top of their list. He was supposed to be at the mansion. So were you. It had to be an emergency that made him take you and go, leaving your pregnant mother alone.”
“I was sick, all right?” he hissed. “I was sick, and the doctor couldn’t come to the house so my father took me there. She was supposed to take me, but he wouldn’t let her. That’s why she died.”
“Why didn’t he let her take you?”
“He was trying to…” He growled, his eyes bloodshot. “He was trying to take care of her,” his voice cracked with tears, “let her rest because of the baby.”
“He was taking care of her. He was taking care of you. It wasn’t his fault any more that it was yours. But you can’t help it. You have to blame someone, but deep down, you only blame yourself.” I burst into tears myself. “You blame yourself, too, for your mother’s death. Just like I blame myself for my brother’s.”
His gaze returned to me, a question he wouldn’t allow on his tongue. He wanted to know my story, but that meant he’d have to stay and listen and perhaps even care. “Nicole!”
“Don Bellomo had to hold on to Lina to stop his screams, Leo. Let me be the one who stops yours.”
“Did you know how I got the scars on my back and my thighs? Domenico used a nine tail flogger with fucking nails on the ends. With every flog, he took pieces of my flesh, and then he’d just watch as I bled. After that, he would dig his fingernails in the festering wounds and pull my back into his front, physically making me feel how big his motherfucking hard-on was to my torture, telling me how much he’d enjoy fucking me in the ass and then feed me his cum right before he killed me.”
My heart shrank. Even my tears were ashamed of falling. “I’m so s—”
“Nope!” He lifted a warning finger at me, shaking his head rapidly. “Uh-uh. You don’t get to apologize. I haven’t told you the best part yet. When he went on with that routine which was at least once a week, I’d tell him to fucking go on with it, and he’d say yes, making me believe today was the day he finally carried out his threat. Today was the day I’d get fucked in the ass before I died.” He mused. There was no imagination vivid enough to capture what he must have been seeing in his head or feeling right now. “But he wouldn’t. He’d bend me over and just laugh. Then he’d jack off and come all over my wounds right before he’d take a bucket of my piss and pour it over me, only to leave me to relive that horror for another day, every week, for a whole fucking year.”
A heated moan blew out of me, and my head lowered in defeat. There was nothing left to say. No matter what I did, how right I tried to do by him, I’d always be the one who facilitated his torture. That horrific kind of torture that would never leave him. That would always remain between us.
“Do you know how I survived this long, Ravenna? What kept me motivated to stay alive?”
“Lina,” I whispered, my heart in pieces.
“Yes, but not just her. Beside my wild fantasies of reclaiming her, there was another fantasy even wilder.”
“What is it?”
“Revenge.”
My head jerked up, and our gaze locked. The darkness in his eyes exuded horror. A raging fire that would destroy without mercy and abandon everything black and gray like this house.
“On every single person who had a hand in having me locked up in a fucking cage with that fucker.” He approached me and bent his head to my level, piercing me with his stare. “The things that I’d do to them…”
My breath quivered in my constricted chest. Suddenly, even though I’d been naked for a while, I felt cold now. “I guess it wouldn’t be a few spanks and a fucking, right?”
He shook his head slowly. “Do you still want me to stay, Doc?”
How demented and sick would it be if I said yes? After all what I and he had done. After the pain we’d both caused each other. After the stains of shame and the imprints of hatred. After I had no doubt he knew for certain I was one of those people he’d like to have his revenge on. “I did what I had to do to save my family, Leo. You of all people should understand. I didn’t know they’d hurt you like that.”
“And if you’d known, would you have made another choice?”
I gulped. I’d traded his freedom for mine, his safety for my family’s, but what other choice had I had? “Would you?”