“Your father had you killed because you let an innocent child go?”
“Yes and no.” He sat forward some, pressing his palms together. “Yes. In that world, you leave no member of a rival family alive. For example, if you would’ve found out later on what I’d done to your parents, you might’ve wanted revenge. If you no longer existed, that takes care of that. The yes also includes disobeying his orders. I was instructed to make your father watch as I killed you and your mother in front of him. Arturo wanted him to suffer for challenging him, for trying to slit his throat. Your father had that same ruthless streak about him. He was hungry to lead and thirsty for blood. He wanted Arturo’s place in that world. If I wouldn’t have killed Palermo, even knowing you and your mother were in danger, he would’ve gone after Arturo again.”
“Why else?” I said when he stopped talking. “You said yes and no. You gave me the yes.”
“It was only a matter of time before I did something to get myself executed. Achille wanted the throne for himself. Time and time again, I proved myself as ruthless as him, even smarter, and he couldn’t stand it. No matter what I did, he’d run back and tell Arturo how I somehow fucked it up. I was ‘too pretty to rule.’ No one would take me seriously. Arturo gave me an out, and I refused to take it. I even told him I’d challenge Achille to a fight, if that’s what it took. He told me there was no need to fight Achille. I’d rule beside the king, and after he was too old to rule, the kingdom was mine.
“Then one night we were at a party. All of these powerful political figures were there. Arturo had been out to get this one guy in his pocket but never could. Arturo saw the two of us talking and came over. Political told Arturo that he wanted someone like me to work for him. I was smart. Had a plan. ‘As charming as they come.’
“After that—” He paused, stretching his shoulders, like the custom-made suit had grown too tight all of a sudden. “—I noticed a difference in him. He talked down to me more and gave Achille more to do. And when Achille complained about me, the pretty-boy prince who got everything he wanted, Arturo ate it up. He was starved for it. He was worried that once I married Angelina Zamboni, an arrangement he made, I’d take over his kingdom without him handing it to me. Angelina could charm a vagabond out of his last penny, if she wanted to. She had high expectations for her life, for her husband.”
For her husband. The man sitting beside me. My husband. “Why did they kill her?” I asked softly.
“Punishment. They did to her what I was sent to do to your mother and you. Kill you in front of your father. But Angelina’s fate was worse. They didn’t just kill her. They violated her from every side until they tore her in two. I couldn’t stop it. There were too many of them and only one of me. The man they sent to slit my throat had already started cutting—sometimes the moments are a blur. Other times, I can still smell the blood.”
“That’s…” I didn’t even have words.
“They probably would’ve raped her and let her go, if it was only me they meant to punish. But she was fucking Achille and me at the same time. She told me she was pregnant the night it happened. He admitted, right before he left us to be slaughtered, that she’d been telling him things about me. Loyalty is valued in that world, Mariposa. Valued above anything else, even money and gold. Achille had the woman who was pregnant with his child killed because she had double-crossed me. The man he was about to send to his grave because he threatened to take all that he wanted.”
“The baby wasn’t yours,” I breathed out.
“No. His.”
Click. Click. Click. The pieces started to fall into place.
“It happened right outside of Dolce.” I bit my lip, hard. “And she told you she was pregnant on the way.”
“Right after a Broadway show,” he said.
“She set you up.”
“The Zambonis have gone down in history as traitors. None of them were ever truly loyal. They were all out to rise above the rest, no matter the cost. Shiny things. They loved shiny things to collect. If you would’ve searched a little more, you would’ve found that most people have dubbed them the family of Judas.”
“You were controlling the results of my searches.”
“I control everything,” he said.
That’s why there are no pictures of him. He took them all down.
We both became quiet, but a burning inside of me refused to allow me to keep quiet.
“Did you love her?”
It took him a moment. “Who?”
“Angelina,” I said. “Your fiancé.”
He smiled and it gave me chills. “No. It was an arranged marriage. Love kills the soul quicker than a sharp dagger to the heart.”
I swiped at my eyes, hating that tears were on the edges, blurring my world. I didn’t know how to feel about all of this. I softly got out of the bed, afraid that if I made any sudden movements, it would disturb something. Him. And all of the fight had drained out of me. I needed time to think, to process all of this.
I stood by the door, and he tilted his head to the side, watching me.
“Why weren’t you honest with me before? Why didn’t you tell me from the start that you killed my parents? You gave me no choice! I had no idea…I thought you maybe ran with the Scarpone family. I had no idea you were one of them. The king’s son. His prince.”
He was on me in a minute. I tried to back away, but I couldn’t. The wall pressed against my back and I was forced to look up into his cold, cold eyes.
“I let it slide when you called me Vittorio. I’ll let that last comment slide this time, too, since you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I’m not his son. I’m not his prince. When you call me the king’s son. When you call me his prince. When you call me Vittorio. When you call me anything that has to do with that life, you’re speaking the ugliest words of all to me.”
Suddenly, an ember seemed to burst into flames out of nowhere. The last fight I had in me. “The ugliest words? No, I don’t think so. You want to hear three ugly words, my husband? Words that are nastier, and more twisted, than all of those words you strung together? I love you, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. And what’s even better, I don’t want to! I don’t want to love you, but I do! I love you. I love you. I love you! You’ve damaged me with this…love! That dagger? You stuck it right in my heart. You made me fall in love with you before you were honest with me—before you used the dagger on me.”
Without taking any of my stuff, I started for the spare room, the room I planned on decorating for the baby. My husband followed me, no expression I could make sense of on his face. But I didn’t want to see his face. I wanted nothing to do with him.
He killed my parents.
He saved me and then he hid me.
And the Scarpones had killed him for it. Made him watch terrible things. They were going to throw him in the Hudson after he bled out on the cement right in front of a bunch of dumpsters. The Prince with Scarpone blood running through his veins. Blood that belonged to them.
Then I found him years later.
Then he saved me, again, from a fate he’d put me on a path to. His father and mine both at fault, too.