Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“She doesn’t belong to him!”
A beat passes. “You know what I mean. She belongs to the family. She’s Alaric Moretti’s only daughter. Put two and two together.”
“I’ve already put it together.” I start the engine.
“He’ll use her to take over the family, the territory, all of it.” There’s a pause before he adds. “He has more right than you and you know it.”
“No.”
“Cassian—"
“She’s mine.” Silence crackles. I can almost see Angelo biting his tongue to keep from telling me what I won’t hear. That she isn’t mine. That she never was mine. “I want her back. I’m going to get her back,” I say more slowly, letting fury fill me. Letting rage banish the terror of thinking that I’m too late. That she’ll be gone too. That he’ll kill her like he did her brother.
He can’t. Not yet. He needs her.
“Are you ready to start a war?” Angelo asks.
“You advise. You do not dictate,” I remind him.
Silence followed by a sigh. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need men. Get them to the house. I want a fucking army. Arrange it.”
3
ALLEGRA
It’s so dark down here. The kind of dark where you can’t tell if your eyes are open or closed. The kind of dark that turns me into a claustrophobic mess. It’s like I’m suffocating in a box. A box under the ground.
Sobs come as I scratch at that door, trying to find some way to open it. I’m mumbling, muttering. There is no way out. I know that. And with every breath I take I smell that old smell of wine bottles broken years ago. I don’t know if it’s my mind playing tricks on me, if they’re memory or if the smell is real.
Focus. I need to focus. I need to not go mad.
Before Rami left, he switched out that one lightbulb. They’d left the light on before. We’d only been plunged into darkness that first night. Then, the man in charge had said we could have the light.
My mom was missing the first of her fingers by then and even then, she was thanking him. Cradling her hand in a filthy, bloody cloth, she was thanking him.
My breath trembles as I press my back into the metal and let myself sink to the ground. There are shelves in the room. A wine cellar. Are any bottles left? I’d wanted to make a weapon out of one, but my mom, she knew what was coming. She knew it was pointless. I think she was trying to save me. I know she was. She knew what they’d do to her, and she was trying to save me.
Had they killed the Maestro by then? I don’t know. No. Malek said he burned alive. But Malek’s a liar.
In the end, I was in this room for a total of ten days. On the eleventh day, my father came for us. I didn’t know the count then, only after. I didn’t know until after that that they took one finger for each night. The little hope she had they broke her of. She knew what was going to happen. Maybe it’s like Malek said. For a pianist, to lose your fingers is the worst of fates. She didn’t even try to fight it, not for herself. She only tried to save me.
My throat closes up
That’s probably why they’d taken me, too. If it was just her, she’d have laid down and died. With me, though, she had something to fight for. To stay alive for. To suffer for.
And Malek’s right about who was behind it all.
Cassian was right.
How did he guess it? Or maybe it’s how he thinks. How all men like him, like my father, like Malek, think. Look for weakness. Exploit it. Snuff out any light. Any hope. Crush it underfoot until it turns to ash.
My father ordered her kidnapping.
My father ordered her slow dismemberment.
Did he order her murder? No. He didn’t order it, but not because he didn’t want her dead. He was angry when she died, but it wasn’t because they killed her. It was because she didn’t suffer enough in his eyes. Malek isn’t lying about that. He wanted more from her. He’d already taken her beloved teacher, the man he thought was her lover, but I don’t think he was. He’d already taken all her fingers. It wasn’t enough for him, though. It wasn’t enough for my butcher father. He wanted to steal her soul. Did he know he’d already killed her before she took her last breath?
I think by the end, he hated her.
But to hate, one must first love. I’m not sure my father was capable of love.
Malek was telling the truth.
And it was so easy. Just a whisper here, a whisper there.
Mom had her piano lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays before she came to get me from school. She’d been doing it for a while, and she was happier than I ever recall her being.