Chapter 4

The man's trousers were gone. If they found his blood or his seed on me, it would damn me straight through in whatever reckoning came next.

Salvatore's face flickered, and something that dared to call itself "concern" lingered in his eyes for a few seconds.

But I was furious, the grievance and all the pent-up sense of betrayal surging up at once.

I raised my hand and slapped him hard across the face.

Crack!

I pulled the blanket tight around me, the scream tearing out of my chest. "I'm asking you why you didn't just let him rape me? Salvatore, do you actually think you were being merciful to me? Well?"

"Six years I've spent at your side, in your house, under your name, and this is the debt you wanted me to repay?"

"One second you're saying you can't bear to let me lift a finger, the next you're drugging me and throwing me to a drunk animal! How the hell is that any different from ordering me dead in a ditch?"

Scalding tears fell with every shout.

Salvatore's face broke completely. Ignoring the swollen, reddening half of his face where my hand had landed, he lowered himself down and crushed me against him.

"Isabella, I'm sorry. Whatever you want, I'll make it up to you, alright?"

"Isabella, I'm the bad one. Isabella, hit me, curse me, do it."

The warm words were so familiar.

I gasped for breath, and my numb heart seemed to slip back to four years ago.

That was the first time Salvatore had ever felt something for me.

It was the night the Family swore him in as Don, every made man in the room raising his glass to the ring he now wore, and only I was low enough to want, from my small crippled corner of that world, to be the one and only woman in his life.

So I worked up the courage to kiss him.

Something dark churned in his eyes in an instant, and he wound himself around me and took me all night.

It was my first time. My face was streaked with tears from the pain, and Salvatore pressed close to my ear, coaxing me again and again. "Isabella, I'm the bad one, don't cry, hit me, curse me."

Almost the same words. Only this time, it was because he had thrown me to another man.

How bitterly ironic.

"Dio! Consigliera Isabella, what happened? Ah! My, my husband, he—" Gianna suddenly stepped through the door.

She was met by blood all over the floor and me in shambles.

She seemed terrified, yet she still wrung out a warm towel and came closer.

"Consigliera Isabella, you, you should wipe yourself down."

I truly had no strength left to keep my face civil, and turned my head away flatly.

But Gianna seemed set on it, taking it upon herself to wipe me down with the warm towel. Just as I moved to push her off, she leaned in to my ear and whispered, so low no soldier in the hall could catch it:

"How does it feel? Six years at his side, and you still can't measure up to me, who's only known him three days. Consigliera Isabella, how humiliating for you."

"Then again, taking that rape in my place, that just barely qualifies you."

"After all, a cripple and a trafficker do make a perfect match!"

An absurd wave of hatred rushed to my head.

The words left my eardrums ringing. Beneath the blanket, my thumb found the seam where the prosthetic met the flesh and pressed down hard, the pain sharp enough to steady the fury.

Almost on instinct, I snatched up the heavy crystal vase beside me and hurled it at her!

"Ah!" Gianna deliberately didn't dodge, but Salvatore had already thrown himself in front of her before she needed to.

"Dio, Don Rizzo! Your face—" The woman stroked her fingers over the sharp lines of his face, aching for him.

There, above his brow, a long gash had opened, bleeding.

It only made him look fiercer, more like the man other men learned to fear.

Gianna's shoulders trembled, guilt heavy on her face. "Don Rizzo, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! It's all my fault for wanting to comfort Consigliera Isabella."

"I didn't think she'd loathe me this much."

"But of course... I'm nothing but a woman used up and ruined by traffickers. How could I ever be worth a second glance from a great mind of the Family like her?"

"But Consigliera Isabella, at least you were saved by Don Rizzo. Me... I... this kind of thing, I've been through it a thousand, ten thousand times over these past years."

As the woman spoke, the humiliation and self-loathing had her sobbing so hard her whole body shook.

Even her snow-white skin flushed red with emotion.

She looked just like a flower bud battered by a violent wind, trembling on the verge of falling.