by Bethany-Kris
He shrugged.
“Good, you’re ready.”
In the mirror, Aria saw Nico stiffen. She, too, felt like a rod had been thrust into her spine as she turned to face the man standing in the doorway of the bedroom she’d picked to use. It was the first time she had seen Caesar in days, and yet, he still looked the same.
Like sin, and hell, and the hate in her heart.
He wore one of his tailored, black Armani suits, and Tom Ford loafers. He checked the Rolex on his wrist, and then dragged his fingers through the dark blonde hair on the top of his head. His ice-blue gaze drifted over her, and then to Nico.
“Do you want to come to dinner?” he asked.
Nico’s upper lip curled a bit. “Not particularly.”
Caesar tipped his head in Aria’s direction. “Not even to keep an eye on her?”
“Do you think she needs protecting?”
A laugh answered Nico back.
“Not at all,” Caesar murmured. Then, to Aria, he gestured for her to move with a single hand. “Let’s go—people are already sitting down to eat, and we don’t want to be rude.”
Right.
No being rude.
“I promise nothing,” Aria said, passing him by in the doorway.
Caesar sighed. “I figured you would say that.”
Fifteen guests.
Fifteen faces Aria didn’t recognize.
Fifteen people she didn’t give a single shit about.
And yet, they couldn’t stop staring at her.
She had a good mind to give them the show they must have been expecting what with the way they kept watching her like she was some kind of wild animal in a cage. Being their little amusement for the night wasn’t even the worst part of this whole goddamn dinner.
No, the worst part was where she was sitting.
At one side, Angelo headed the table as people worked through yet another course of food. At the other end, his horrible, vile wife sat in another captain chair like the queen of the room.
And Aria?
She sat next to the bitch.
Caesar sat directly across from Aria, but for the most part, his attention was on just about anything but her. Small blessings, she supposed. One less thing for her to seethe about right then.
The queen bitch, however, was working on her fifth glass of wine, and already starting to laugh a little too loudly, and slur her words. Despite how pissed Aria was with Caesar, she could tell that the more vocal his step-mother became and the drunker she got, the more uncomfortable he was with his current seat.
He didn’t want to be there at all.
Neither did she.
Aira wished—God, more than anything, she wished—that Caesar’s discomfort didn’t affect her. After everything, she shouldn’t care about him. Not after what he did, and was still doing.
And yet, she did.
She hurt for him.
Fuck him for doing that to her, too.
“And we have good news to share tonight,” Angelo said from his spot at the head of the table. Aria hadn’t even been listening to the man drone on throughout the dinner, but he had her attention now. Especially because he was looking right at her. “As you can see,” he added with a gesture at her, “we have an unusual guest at our table tonight. Certainly not one you all expected to see, and yet here she is, as beautiful and docile as ever.”
Hesitant chuckles passed over the table. These people had to know that at the very least, she was far from docile. She had more blood on her hands than a lot of these men, likely.
Aria’s rage festered a little deeper.
Caesar’s gaze drifted to Aria, but he said nothing.
Angelo was still speaking, after all. “We’ve finally come to an … agreement, we’ll say, with the De Rose Camorra. Isn’t that right, Aria?”
Her mouth was damn dry.
Her throat protested.
And still, she spoke. “Yes, it is.”
Angelo offered her a thin smile. Like he was praising her.
Fuck him.
She didn’t need it or want it.
Angelo nodded, and wagged one finger between her, and Caesar. “They’ll be married within three months—preferably sooner, if I get my way—to solidify this new arrangement we’ve made. The business will be good, and the streets will be quiet again. I look forward to seeing my son follow through on this agreement.”
A quiet laugh echoed from beside Aria.
Martina.
The bitch.
Nasally and slurred, the woman asked, “And do you honestly think Caesar will follow through with this one, Angelo? How many marriages have you tried to arrange for him so far? Five … six? A bit pointless by now, isn’t it?”
“Martina,” Angelo started.
The woman set her now empty wine glass to the table, and gestured for the bottle that was just out of her reach. It was passed to Aria first, but she hesitated in handing it to the already hammered woman beside her. It wasn’t like the cunt needed more alcohol.
“Oh, whatever,” Martina said with a wave of her hand, and a higher laugh. “You almost have to feel sorry for any poor woman who gets saddled with Caesar’s mess, don’t you?”
Martina gave Aria an apologetic smile, and shrugged her velvet covered shoulder, saying, “He’ll fuck anything that’s warm and wet enough to call his name, sweetheart, and you might as well just accept it now. Everyone at this table has already gone through the rounds.”
First, it was disbelief.
It saturated Aria.
Silenced her like it did the table.
And then the fury came.
Fast.
Destructive.
Painful.
That pain was echoed from the man sitting across from Aria—oh, he hid it so well, but Aria could still see it in the dimming of his eyes, and the way he tensed all over.
How dare she?
After everything she did to him … after it all?
“Like you, too, right?” Aria asked softly before she could stop herself.
That silence echoed louder.
Sharp as a blade and ready to injure the way this woman had, Aria said, “Like you did to him when he was a boy—how you dishonored him when he was a child?”
Martina’s gaze cut to Aria and widened.
Fear and anger stared back.
Aria didn’t care.
“Deny it,” Aria urged a little louder. “I dare you.”
“Aria,” Caesar murmured. “That’s enough.”
She didn’t even look at him.
Didn’t look at anyone.
Except Martina, and her reddening face.
“You’re a stupratore,” Aria said, standing from the table, and still holding the neck of that wine bottle in a death grip she wasn’t letting go of. “A pedofilo, Martina.”
Rapist.
Pedophile.
She’d all but hissed the words, and let them snake down the table like the poison they were.
Like the truth that had to be said.
A truth that had never been said.
“Aria!”
Caesar’s response was a shout this time—thick, and loaded with an ache she hadn’t heard from him before. It was too late. She’d already swung that bottle before someone—including the bitch she aimed for—could react.
Green glass shattered over Martina’s face, and red wine mixed in with the blood that poured from the woman’s busted nose and mouth. Martina’s cries for help and pain was a song like no other, but the bitch was going to have to sing it for years before Aria would ever grant her mercy.
Aria wished that was enough—wished the sight of this woman bleeding and failing to get her arms up to prevent the second hit was enough for Aria to feel even remotely better.
It wasn’t.
Nothing short of death would be enough.
Someone did pull Aria away before she landed a third hit—Caesar. His arms wrapped tig
ht around her like a cage, and he pulled her further away from the destruction she had caused. The rest of the guests at the table still seemed too shocked to react, or maybe they didn’t know what to do.
What did it matter?
Aria kept fighting regardless of Caesar’s efforts, even as she kicked the table, and at the woman stumbling out of her chair while holding her broken and bleeding face. The scars that wine bottle would leave behind would be a nice reminder every time Martina looked in the mirror.
And it still wouldn’t be enough.
It was nothing compared to the scars this woman had left behind.
Martina’s time would come.
Aria would make sure of it.
Caesar finally dragged Aria out of the dining room, but not before she got the last word in.
“Karma is a bad bitch, but she’s never met me. Remember that, cagna.”
SEVENTEEN
ANGELO RAGED ON.
Caesar was numb.
He felt nothing; heard nothing; seen nothing.
“Get rid of that woman! Get rid of her right now!”
His father’s words echoed from the dining room he’d just left, but they bounced off his shoulders like rubber bullets missing a target. He could hear footsteps behind him, but no one followed. He figured people were leaving.
That usually happened when a party ended badly.
It was only once they were far enough away from the dining room that he could no longer hear his father’s shouts that Caesar finally let Aria go from his hold. He pushed her away from him a few steps, but the woman spun around to face him anyway.
He stilled in place.
Caesar wasn’t sure what to say, and he sure as hell didn’t know what to expect when she faced him. Maybe haughtiness and anger—those were things Aria knew all too well when she aimed to kill a person.
He found none of that.
Instead, she stared at him silent and resolved—calm, yet still empathetic. The other shit, he might have known how to deal with.
Not this.
“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly.
It was the only thing he could think to say.
“Did you hear her?” Aria asked back. “Did you hear the things she said, and how she spoke about you like it was nothing at all? Didn’t you hear her?”
Caesar blinked.
His step-mother, she meant.
And yes, he had. But this was his whole life in a nutshell. This was the kind of thing he had learned to deal with, or punch back hard when it happened. That was how he dealt with this kind of problem.
But damn.
How he wished for years that he could have done what Aria just had. That somehow, the shame he constantly felt would lift just enough for him to speak the fuck up, and do something. That it wouldn’t terrify him more than anything in life ever had just to point at the bitch who molested him for years and say what she did.
Except he couldn’t.
He didn’t want to be weak.
Didn’t want to be shamed.
Could not be disbelieved.
“I’m not going to apologize for that,” Aria said when Caesar stayed silent. “She deserved a hell of a lot more than what I did tonight.”
“She does,” he agreed.
Aria’s brow furrowed. “I …”
“What?”
“You don’t seem angry. I’m not sure where to go from here.”
Caesar managed a smile, as faint as it was. “Was that what you were expecting—my anger? Is that why you did it … to piss me off?”
Aria’s head snapped up at that statement. “No.”
“Don’t act like it would be a far stretch for me to think that, Aria. We both know you’re willing to use whatever you have at your disposal to get what you want from someone.”
“Except that’s not what this was.”
Yeah, he could tell.
“And yet, you’re still going to get something you want,” Caesar said dryly.
And he would be left dealing with the aftermath here.
Something he’d been dreading for a lifetime.
“What is it that you think I want?” Aria asked.
Wasn’t it obvious?
“Not to be here,” Caesar said. “Let’s go find your friend while we still have time to.”
The mansion had quickly emptied of guests—other than a couple of stragglers, but those were people Caesar expected to find when he finally made his way to his father’s office upstairs. For once, Angelo didn’t sit behind his desk. Instead, he stood by the windows and stared out over his property.
His underboss, Christoph, was in the midst of pouring two glasses of whiskey when Caesar came through the doorway. One of which he handed to the organization’s consigliere, Davide. His half-brother, Daniele, sat in a chair closer to their father.
No one noticed him standing there.
It was strange.
It felt insulting.
His whole life had been people overlooking things that should have been noticed. At the very least, someone should have thought to ask.
No one ever had.
None of these people, anyway.
Christoph glanced up from his drink, asking, “Angelo, do you want a drink?”
“Not right now,” Angelo replied, glancing over his shoulder. It was then that his gaze landed on Caesar. There was no sympathy in his father’s eyes, but the rage was gone, too. Angelo looked entirely done with the day. “There you are—come in, and we’ll have a chat.”
Yes, a chat.
That was a funny way to describe discussing what had happened.
All things considered …
Caesar only came far enough into the office to pass the threshold of the door. Right then, he didn’t want to be any closer to these people. He didn’t like the way their gazes drifted to him, and then lingered a beat too long.
He was the troublemaker.
A sinner.
The issue.
He caused problems because that gave people enough shit to focus on where he was concerned. It was what they could always expect from him—guaranteed.
Now … now they were looking for something else.
And he hated that.
Angelo turned away from the window, and sighed. “Where is the woman?”
“She has a name,” Caesar said, knowing exactly who his father was referring to. “And she’s gone. I sent her away with someone I picked—not your guard—and the man from her family.”
Angelo’s expression hardened. “You sent her away.”
“You said to be rid of her. Did you want her to stay?”
“I meant I wanted her—”
“Dead,” Caesar interrupted coolly. “Yeah, I figured that, but it’s not going to happen. I made an agreement, and I intend to see it through.”
His father scoffed, and wagged a finger at him. “Come on, now, figlio. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you why you won’t be marrying that woman after tonight. You can’t honestly expect me to allow a marriage between you and her after the things she said, and what she did to my wife.”
Silence echoed in the room.
Thick.
Brutal.
And suffocating.
No one said a fucking thing. No one even wanted to look in Caesar’s direction, but he was used to that. Usually for different reasons, sure, but he was coming to find it really wasn’t all that foreign to him.
“And what about what your wife did to me for years?” Caesar asked. “Doesn’t she have to answer for that?”
He said the words easily. Far easier than he thought he would when the day finally came for him to open up his mouth, and say something about Martina’s abuse.
“That’s a lie!” Daniele was up out of his chair in an instant, and looking like he might come Caesar’s way any second. His fists clenched at his sides in tight, shaking balls, and his gaze burned with every ounce of
hatred he had always felt for his older brother. “My mother would never—”
“Why,” Caesar asked, “because she never did it to you?”
Daniele snapped back like Caesar had punched him from all the way across the room. The two stared at each other for a long while, but Caesar really didn’t give a shit about his half-brother. Or what the man thought about the things he had learned.
It wasn’t about Daniele.
It never was.
“Because she never climbed into your bed when you were a kid,” Caesar continued, refusing to be silenced by anyone, “you feel safe enough to say it didn’t happen, right?”
“My mother loved you,” Daniele snapped, “and you’ve been nothing but horrible to her, Caesar. Everyone knows it. Everyone has fucking seen it.”
“But did you ever wonder why?”
Daniele’s gaze narrowed. “I—”
“Never cared to ask. Yeah, I got it.”
With a nod, Caesar turned back to his father. Angelo looked even more passive than he had before. Like none of this was surprising, and he’d heard it all before.
Caesar knew then.
He knew.
Everyone else in the room was in various states of shock, or disgust. Maybe because they hadn’t known, or they didn’t want to believe.
“It’s never a woman, right?” Caesar asked his father. “We always just assume it’s a man.”
Angelo’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “Son—”
“When did you know?”
“I can’t say I knew.”
“You did,” Caesar said confidently. “I can tell you did. So, when?”
Angelo cleared his throat, and gestured with a hand at the other men in the room. The three men were quick to scatter, and close the office door behind them as they went on their way. It was only once the two of them were alone that his father turned to him again.
“You were ten,” Angelo said, “and one of the maids you took a fancy to had found something in your room as she was cleaning. Something of Martina’s—I don’t remember what it was now, but she mentioned she was concerned, and it wasn’t the first time someone had said something.”
His father fixed a cufflink on his shirt. “And then again when you were fourteen, we were having a Christmas party, and one of my men happened to see Martina … crowding you in a hallway, but he didn’t say anything else. They were things that didn’t draw my concern, Caesar. It could have been a lot of things—she drank too much, and got a little too handsy. She was your step-mother; her things could be excused if they were found in your room. I never thought to look at something like that until you were far older, and by then, you were gone out of the house and it didn’t matter.”