Chapter 14 #3
He jumps as I sweep the coffee mug off the table, and it shatters on the floor, the last dregs of liquid draining out onto the stone.
“I know, okay! You’re right, about all of it. But I’m here, and I’m sorry, and I wanted to tell you what I suspect. I want to try and help you!”
I suck in a ragged breath and attempt to calm myself. If I get so angry I murder my brother, I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my sorry life, and I don’t deserve that fate—I already carry the guilt of killing one sibling.
“Right. Well. Talk then—what do you suspect?”
He studies me as though he’s trying to assess what level of threat I am right now.
Pietro is a Maker, like Tomasso, and they are often both creative and practical.
Our parents were Healers, and I yearn for some of that right now—someone to soothe, to reassure, to make it all okay again.
They’re gone, though, and I am not a child anymore.
“None of this I know for fact,” he says eventually, “but I have my suspicions that he actually wants you to be the only Seer. He’s old now, and not as careful as he once was, and he let something slip a while ago. Something about Anna Lombardi.”
That name again, I think. The long-dead Seer who I never even knew. Why does she keep cropping up? I gesture for him to continue, and he nods.
“It wasn’t much, but he said something like ‘it was a pity, but it had to happen.’ It was weird, and he shut up straight away, like he realized he’d spoken out of turn.
And Paola … When we heard the news about Paola, he wasn’t surprised, Rosa.
He made some shocked noises when her father called to tell us, but I spotted it because I know him. He … he already knew.”
I turn the information over in my mind. The way he questioned me the day I went over there to discuss things, making me admit that I never felt like my own life was under threat regardless of the near-constant Calls.
How the two of them reacted when I mentioned the name Kurt.
“Who is Kurt?” My question obviously catches Pietro unawares.
He visibly weighs his options before responding.
“I’m not sure. But his name has come up.
I heard Tomasso talking to him on the phone one night when he didn’t know I was in the house.
They were discussing money transfers and a schedule, and that’s all I know.
I didn’t think anything of it until you asked about him.
Even then, you didn’t give me enough information to go on—I assumed he was just someone who worked for Tomasso. ”
“And you didn’t wonder why he denied all knowledge of him that day?”
“Yeah, I did wonder—and I checked the books. There was no record of a Kurt of any kind being on the payroll, and when I went over Tomasso’s phone records, the number he called was dead. And then … Well, then things went haywire.”
By haywire, he means that Tomasso revealed his master plan to boost the Capelli gene pool. Jesus.
What does all of this mean, apart from the obvious—that I am descended from a family of sociopaths?
Who is Kurt, and why does Luca think he is a danger to me?
And what does my grandfather have to do with the death of Anna Lombardi and the attack on Paola Bianchi?
None of it makes any sense, and the only person I want to talk to about all of this is Luca.
He’s older than me and will have seen countless battles and family disputes and Cosca intrigues. He will have a different perspective.
A powerful sense of yearning pulls at me. I snuck away from him, and he will be awake now and will not be pleased to discover me gone. I didn’t give him the chance to come here. I didn’t try and explain why I wanted to come back. I just did my usual thing—struck out on my own, no matter the risks.
I glance at the sun slowly sinking in the sky, near to setting now, and wonder how long it will be before he risks coming after me.
He’s awake. I felt him trying to make contact earlier, the faint touch of his voice in my mind before I shut him down.
I need to keep my head clear for a little while longer—plus, he sounded pissed, and I am not in the mood to listen to an alpha male vamp lecture me on my poor choices.
“Sis?” Pietro says, his voice somehow distant. “Are you still there?”
“Don’t call me sis,” I reply. “You’ve lost the right to that word. What are you going to do now, Pietro? Will you go back to him?”
I’ve deliberately kept Luca’s name out of this conversation, because I still don’t trust my brother. I don’t want to give him any information he might use against us—because while he seems genuinely regretful, who really knows? It could be an act, or it could be temporary.
“No,” he says firmly. “Never. I can’t face him ever again after what he tried to make me do.
Your vamp … Tell him thank you from me. It was worth the fucking headache I ended up with after he threw me across the room.
I’d rather have died than have dealt with the rest of my life knowing what I did to you.
And I knew … It wouldn’t have stopped until you were pregnant, and who the fuck knows how long that might have taken? So tell him thank you. From me.”
I shudder at the reminder of what almost happened. At the thought of being held captive in Tomasso’s mansion while my brother repeatedly tried to knock me up. “I will. Though I warn you, he wants you dead.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of that going around. What about you, sis—sorry, what about you, Rosa? Do you think you can ever forgive me?”
It’s a big question, and not one I can come close to answering. I can’t even look at him without feeling sick, but that might pass. We have many years ahead of us, decades to make things right. Maybe one day he will be my brother again.
“Ah, fuck it,” he says, his words dripping with weariness. “It doesn’t matter if you can or not. I can never forgive myself. I’m sorry. For everything.”
He stands abruptly and, before I can respond, throws himself over the balcony.