Chapter 22 - Valentina
The rain pounds against my windshield as I pull up to the cemetery gates, each drop like gunfire against glass.
My hands won’t stop shaking on the steering wheel.
The Glock Marco taught me to use sits heavy in my coat pocket, its weight both comfort and mockery.
My body betrays me even now—my throat burns where Marco marked me this morning, my thighs still ache from how he claimed me at dawn.
Every physical reminder of our connection pulses with each heartbeat.
St. Mary's Cemetery stretches before me in the darkness, rows of headstones disappearing into fog that rolls between the graves like restless spirits.
The smell of wet earth mixed with rotting funeral flowers fills my lungs.
This is where Mother rests. Where Father buried her after the "accident.
" Where Alice always came when our world fell apart.
I push through the rusted gates, my heels sinking into wet grass with each step.
The blue dress clings to my legs, already soaked through, the silk dragging like hands trying to hold me back.
I should have changed into something practical, but there wasn't time.
Not when Alice could be anywhere, could be doing anything in her grief and confusion.
The familiar path to Mother's grave winds through older sections, past mausoleums that loom like stone guardians in the mist. My breath comes out in white puffs, the lingering April cold cutting through my coat.
Every shadow could hide danger, every sound could be a threat, but I keep moving.
Rain mixes with tears, salt and fresh water on my tongue.
Then I see her.
Alice kneels in the mud before Mother's headstone, her white nightgown—Mother's nightgown—soaked through and clinging to her trembling frame.
The fabric drags through the mud with each sob, a wet whisper against earth.
She's sobbing, great heaving sobs that shake her entire body.
Her hands claw at the wet earth like she's trying to dig down to Mother herself.
"Alice." My voice cracks on her name. "Alice, baby, we need to go. Now."
She doesn't move. Doesn't even acknowledge I'm here. Just continues that horrible keening sound that tears at my chest.
I drop to my knees beside her, not caring about the mud, the cold, the rain soaking through everything. "Alice, please. It's not safe here. We need to get back—"
"You knew." Her voice is raw, destroyed. "You knew what they did to her."
"Actually, she didn't."
The voice cuts through the rain like a blade. I'm already reaching for the Glock when Liam O'Brien emerges from the fog, his silhouette materializing between headstones like something out of a nightmare.
"But she's about to."
Irish soldiers step out from behind mausoleums, from shadows I should have checked, from places that I thought were empty of the living.
Six of them, maybe more, all armed, all watching us with the patience of hunters who've already won.
My mind races through scenarios even as my heart pounds.
Six men, Alice as leverage, approximately fifteen feet to the nearest cover.
This isn't my weak, sweating almost-groom from the altar. Liam moves differently now, carries himself with the cold confidence of someone who's been planning this moment. The humiliation has carved away everything soft, leaving something sharp and terrible.
"Hello again, wife." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. His gaze drops to my throat, to the bruises Marco left visible above my coat collar. "I see he's marked you. Like a dog pissing on territory. Did you like it when he fucked you, knowing what his family did to yours?"
The words hit like ice water, but I keep my face neutral, mind still calculating: two guards have lazy trigger discipline, one favors his left leg, old injury probably.
Another figure emerges from the fog. Christopher O'Brien, younger than Liam, with the kind of cruel beauty that makes my stomach turn.
His eyes lock on Alice, studying her like she's something he's considering purchasing.
The way his gaze travels over her wet nightgown, the way he licks his lips, I want to put myself between them, but I can't move without triggering something worse.
"Two Bernardi sisters," Christopher says, his voice carrying an edge that makes my skin crawl. "Just like we originally planned. Though one's a bit used now."
Christopher's hand slides from Alice's shoulder to her throat, a mockery of intimacy that makes me see red. "Your sister's prettier than the photos suggested. Innocent. Marco's already broken you in, but this one…"
My hand moves toward the gun again, pure instinct, but the click of a hammer being pulled back stops me cold. One of the soldiers has his weapon pressed to Alice's temple. She doesn't even react, lost in her grief, but I see the man's finger on the trigger, see how little pressure it would take.
"I wouldn't," Liam says conversationally. "My friend there has a very nervous disposition. Loud noises make him jumpy."
Liam circles us slowly, his expensive shoes squelching in the mud. The rain has plastered his red hair to his skull, but he doesn't seem to notice or care. His focus is entirely on me, on this moment he's orchestrated.
"Your mother stood right here," he says, stopping beside a mausoleum. "All those years ago. Begging for her daughters' lives."
My blood turns to ice. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, this is rich." He pulls something from inside his coat, a plastic folder, protected from the rain. "Your precious Marco never told you? The man you spread your legs for never mentioned his family's little arrangement?"
He tosses the folder at my feet. Through the clear plastic, I see photos. Surveillance shots, grainy but unmistakable. Mother in this very cemetery, talking to someone whose face is turned away. The timestamp reads eleven years ago, two days before she died.
"She was trying to broker a deal," Liam continues, watching my face as I process what I'm seeing. "Her silence about family business in exchange for safe passage out of Chicago. For her and her daughters."
Another photo. Mother at a bank. Another showing her at what looks like a lawyer's office. Building a case, planning an escape.
"But the Rosettis couldn't have loose ends." Liam produces another document, this one a bank transfer record. "Recognize the account name?"
I do. It's a Rosetti family account, one I've seen on papers in Marco's office. The transfer amount is significant, dated the day before Mother died.
"Marco's father ordered it," Liam says, savoring my reaction. "Your father just… facilitated things. Gave them her schedule, her route. Both families wanted her gone."
The world tilts. Everything I thought I knew rearranges itself into a horrible new pattern. My throat burns where Marco's mouth was this morning, whispering how I was his, only his, forever his.
"Both families," I whisper, the words like ash and rain on my tongue. "They worked together."
"The one thing that could unite them," Liam confirms. "A woman who knew too much and wanted out. Your mother had information that could have destroyed them both. So they destroyed her first."
Alice's sobbing has stopped. She's staring at me now with eyes that burn with betrayal. "You're sleeping with them," she says, each word precise and terrible. "You're fucking the people who killed our mother."
The accusation lands hard. Because it's true.
Every night in Marco's bed, every time he touches me, every moment I've started to care for him, all of it built on our mother's blood.
The worst part? Even knowing this, my traitorous body still aches for him.
Still remembers how he held me after the Irish attack, how he whispered 'mine' like a prayer.
Was that possession or guilt? Love or control?
"He knew." The words come out broken. "This whole time, Marco knew what his family did."
How many times has he mentioned my mother? How many times has he compared me to her, warned me about Bernardi women getting people killed? He's known from the beginning that his father ordered the hit that orphaned us, that created the broken woman who would one day fall into his bed.
"The best part?" Liam's enjoying this, feeding on my horror. "He probably sees it as justice. The Bernardi daughter paying for her mother's betrayal, one fuck at a time."
Alice launches herself at me, nails clawing, screaming incoherently.
I don't fight back, can't fight back, because every accusation she shrieks is true.
I am sleeping with our mother's killers.
I did choose them over our family. I am exactly the traitor she thinks I am.
The same taste of copper fills my mouth from when Marco first kissed me.
God, how did I let myself become this stupid? Mother would be ashamed.
The soldiers close in, their circle tightening like a noose. One pulls Alice off me, not gently, and she fights him with the wild desperation of someone with nothing left to lose. Another grabs my arms, and I note his grip strength, the angle I'd need to break free if Alice wasn't their leverage.
"Both of you are coming with us," Liam announces, triumph clear in his voice. "The Bernardi sisters, together again. Though I doubt this reunion is what you imagined."
Christopher has Alice now, his hands on her shoulders in a grip that speaks of ownership rather than restraint. She's stopped fighting, gone limp with shock or exhaustion. The sight of her like this, broken and captured because of my choices, tears something inside me.
The rain intensifies, turning from steady drops to sheets of water that obscure everything beyond our small circle. We're trapped in this moment, in this revelation, in this cemetery where our mother begged for our lives.
"What are you going to do with us?" My voice sounds distant, like someone else is speaking, even as my mind races through escape routes, weapon positions, anything that might save Alice. I learned from Marco, but not enough to deal with this.
Liam's smile is all teeth. "That depends entirely on your husband. How much is his wife worth to him? How much is her sister worth? We're about to find out exactly what price Marco Rosetti puts on the women who know his family's secrets."
Marco will come for me. Not for love, but for ownership. He'll tear through the Irish to reclaim his property, leave bodies in his wake, and when he finds me, he'll fuck me against the nearest surface to reassert his claim. And the worst part?
I'll probably let him. Because he's turned me into exactly what Liam said, a woman who spreads her legs for dangerous men, who mistakes possession for love, who gets wet at the thought of violence.
Just like my mother.
Just like the woman who died for trying to escape this world.
The realization settles in my chest like a stone as the rain pummels the gravestones around us.
Marco Rosetti hasn't just stolen my body or my freedom.
He's stolen my ability to exist without him.
Even knowing what his family did, even drowning in this betrayal, my treacherous body still aches for his touch.
I've become exactly what he made me: his perfect victim, programmed to crave my own destruction.
And there's no coming back from that.