Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 144979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“She wasn’t a transaction.” Angelo’s gaze shifts to me. “And she was already mine.”
The fact that he didn’t agree to buy me shouldn’t make my heart feel warm and fuzzy, but it does. Matteo didn’t have the same hesitation about exchanging Vitale cash for me like I was merchandise. I know he was the one who paid the million dollars. But to my knowledge, my father wasn’t helping Matteo with any accounting. So I have no idea what else he’d be paying him for.
“You can tell me now,” Angelo says. “Or you can tell me a week from now when I’ve broken every bone in your body and made you wish for death a thousand times over.”
Again, my father gives him nothing.
Angelo reaches for the short, brutal-looking sledgehammer. “Which hand did he hit you with, cara?”
A crushing sensation presses against my ribs when I meet my father’s gaze and see the unwavering certainty in his. He doesn’t believe I’ll have the courage to say it. He thinks he can still control me with a single look—that cold, calculating evil in his eyes. The same evil he used to wear my mother down until there was nothing left of her.
“You aren’t going to let him hurt me, Abella,” my father says. “So cut the bullshit, get over here, and untie me.”
“Did you kill her?” The words spill from my lips in a voice I hardly recognize.
“Again with this?” He shakes his head, spittle flying from his mouth as he tries to keep his cool. “How many times do I have to tell you? Your mother was sick. She was weak—”
“The right hand,” I tell Angelo.
Warmth flickers in his dark gaze as he looks at me. “Brava, la mia ragazza.”
He swings the sledgehammer into my father’s right hand with so much violence, I can hear his bones splintering as blood spatters his face.
A spine-chilling roar erupts from the depths of my father’s gut. “Goddammit, you traitorous little bitch. I should have tossed you over the cliff with her. You and your worthless sister.”
Angelo swings the sledgehammer again, crushing what’s left of his mangled hand. My father wails, and Angelo grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back until he’s forced to meet his gaze.
“Talk to my wife like that again, and I’ll knock your teeth clean through the back of your throat.”
My father chokes on spit, and Angelo shoves his head away with a snarl. He groans in agony, but I don’t care.
“You killed her,” I say again, voice wavering.
“I did her a favor,” he wheezes. “She was a useless sack of meat who couldn’t do the one fucking thing I asked of her. She wasn’t a wife anymore. She was barely a mother.”
“Because of you,” I cry out. “You destroyed her. Do you think I don’t know that car accident was your first attempt? You blamed her for never having a son, and you tried to get rid of her.”
He stares back at me, blank, and I know I’m right. He can’t talk his way out of this, just as he couldn’t force nature. There’s a certain irony that he wanted a son so badly, and his own biology denied him one.
A heavy silence settles over the room, only interrupted when Angelo walks to the kitchen counter and grabs another folder. When he opens it and starts tossing photos onto the table, my father’s face pales.
I glance at the images of different women—each of them bound and gagged with cold, lifeless eyes. There’s a ligature mark around all of their necks, and their bellies are round. They were pregnant.
“What is this?” My fingers tremble as I reach out to touch one of the photos.
“Your mother wasn’t the only one.” Angelo’s voice softens as he delivers the news.
The horror that washes over me is something I’ll never erase. I always knew he was evil…but this? It’s beyond comprehension.
“All girls?” I croak.
“Yes.”
Closing my eyes, I try to breathe, but rage leaks into my veins and consumes me. I don’t even feel like I’m in my own body when I rise from my seat and approach my father.
I grab the claw hammer from the table, and Angelo says something, but his voice sounds like it’s underwater. Everything else fades to static as my gaze settles on the monster who made me.
My fingers tighten around the wood handle as hatred swirls inside me. I draw my arm back and slam the hammer down on the one good hand he has left. It lands with a sickening crack, offering me a reckoning I never knew I needed.
If he makes a noise, I don’t hear it. I can’t seem to stop myself as I smash his fingers over and over until a sob wrenches free.
I feel myself being pulled back against Angelo’s warmth as he pries the hammer from my hand and tosses it to the floor. He shelters me in his arms as I cry—finally unleashing two decades’ worth of agony. It’s painful and ugly, but Angelo weathers the storm right beside me, never telling me to stop or pull myself together. He lets me get all of it out until there’s nothing left. Only then does he speak, his voice rough, almost broken.