Chapter 33
Alessandro
The two of us have quieted down—more to catch our breath than anything else. My sister still has her gun aimed at me.
In situations like this, I think your life is supposed to flash before your eyes.
The problem is, I don’t even know what the fuck my life is anymore.
I held the belief that I could trust Elena with anything.
That she’d always take my side when it came to Marco and Vincenzo.
Was that all a joke? Was I simply an annoyance?
I feel like a complete fool. I’ve observed Elena’s manipulative behavior since as long as she could talk, but I never thought she would use that against me.
I suppose I was desperate to cling on to someone—that surely I could have a familial trust with one person.
My mind flips to Sofia, and I realize that she’s taken over that position.
“Sofia!?” I call out, suddenly worried. She must have heard that gunshot.
There’s no response, so I can only hope she is hiding somewhere safe.
“You killed him,” she manages, still clearly in shock as she stares down at Vincenzo’s body. “He woke up yesterday and now he’s…”
“He was going to kill me first.” I grind my teeth together, livid that the doctor didn’t notify me of this news. I’m sure if I wandered down to the hospital wing I’d find him gone. “Or is that what you would have preferred seeing that the two of you were in love?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was never supposed to happen. We were supposed to… I had no idea he wanted to…”
She’s barely even aiming the gun at me anymore because she’s so distressed about Vincenzo’s death. There’s a chance I could rush her and grab it from her, but that risks one of us getting hurt.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you two been…?”
“Fifteen years.” She swallows back a sob as she stands in front of me in her robe. “We were in love for fifteen years.”
A million questions fly through my head. How did this happen? Did Marco have any idea? How did I not notice? Am I that clueless? She always laughed when I made fun of Vincenzo or was a sympathetic ear whenever I complained about him. That was all bullshit?
I don’t even know my own sister.
“You hid everything from me,” I say.
She sniffs, calming herself. “You despised him, and he despised you. What could I have done?”
“Well… what did he think about the two of us getting along? Didn’t that bother him?”
A faint smile forms on her face. “He never knew. I always talked badly about you to him. The same way I faked laughter every time you spoke ill of him.”
“Why!?” The one-word question breaks out of me. “How could you fall in love with him? And for fifteen years? You were still a child.”
“I was eighteen.”
“And you used me as a puppet to help you get out of your marriage arrangements?”
“Vincenzo helped with some of them too. I had other methods as well.”
“Fuck. You.” I step closer to her, not caring that she still has a gun in her hand.
Her eyes narrow.
“Your entire childhood, you watched him torment me. And then you grew up and jumped into bed—”
“That was all Marco. Marco egged him on to be cruel to you in order to strengthen him. He thought it was an effective method to mold Vincenzo into a strong leader.”
It didn’t work out that way, but I hold my tongue.
“Even if that’s true. You grew up together. It’s perverted.”
“We’re not related,” she growls.
“How old were you when Marco took Vincenzo in? Do you even remember the first day he came to us, or were you too young?”
That pisses her off enough to point the gun at my head.
I raise my gun at her and consider whether or not I could actually shoot her.
Kill Elena? Never in a million years would I have thought that would be a choice I’d consider.
My baby sister. The one person who could cheer me up in my darkest days.
But now I have Sofia and a child on the way. I’m not letting her kill me.
Luckily, she lowers her gun before I have to consider that.
Fresh tears form in her eyes. “I was so confused throughout my whole life. Marco treated me like a princess as soon as he took me in. He told me he kept you away from me because you were evil. And I believed him because I was so young.” She sniffs.
“By the time I was old enough to realize that was wrong, I had been long settled into Marco’s family, and I didn’t know what to do.
He was my father, and as complicated as our relationship was, you took him away from me. And now you’ve taken Vincenzo as well.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me? You acted as if you hated those two, but that was far from the truth? If I had known, I wouldn’t have killed Marco.” I know that I’m lying to myself with that one. “I would have known why you were so upset when Vincenzo was in a coma.”
“My relationship with Marco was strained once I reached adulthood. That much is true. But I don’t know if you want the rest of the truth, Sandro.” Her voice cracks.
“Tell me.”
“I pitied you.”
Those three words feel as though she’s stabbed me in the stomach.
She holds back a sob. “I could tell you had this narrative in your head that we were both suffering. That it was me and you against the world. But I can honestly say that I had a happy and lavish childhood. The one dark stain in my life was having to watch you suffer from afar. I didn’t have the heart to tell you what was happening.
By the time I was an adult and no longer getting along with Marco, I realized how horrible that was. But it was too late.”
The walls feel like they’re closing in on me as I backpedal towards the stairs. She lied to me my entire life. How? She’s seven years younger, so how the fuck can anyone be that conniving? But was she even the conniving one, seeing that Marco was the puppet master behind all of this?
“Just… get out of my home.”
“Fine,” she sobs.
I feel devastated and empty as I leave her and run down the stairs. Desperate to find Sofia and have her in my arms.
“Sofia?” I call out in the main foyer. She could have run off anywhere, concerned for her own safety. Then, the hair sticks up at the back of my neck. Where are my men?
A fucking gunshot went off in my home and none of them rushed in to help? I hurry out of my home and check the hallway outside to see no one stationed there. My head was reeling so much that I didn’t even think about the oddity of the situation.
“Sofia!?” I shout as loud as I can, worried that there’s a coup in the works and she’s in danger. Vincenzo alluded to a plan being in place before I shot him.
I run down to the basement level, trying to calm myself, thinking that this would have been a strategic place for her to run off to. I’m sure she’s hiding in the gym or maybe the pool locker room.
“Sofia!?” I try shouting her name again.
I stand in the dark hallway, the desperation inside me feeling unbearable.
I scream her name at the top of my lungs anyway for good measure.
Fuck.
I rush back upstairs, panic rising in my chest. She’s not here.
So, she either got scared and ran off to another part of the castle, or she was taken.
I force myself to believe the former because the latter makes me want to be sick.
Elio was acting so strange a moment ago, and I could tell he was bullshitting me, but I figured we were safe because we had guards outside the door. Who are missing now, inexplicably.
Elena cries softly upstairs as I continue to panic, heading towards my office. I don’t bother sitting at my desk as I wake up the computer to open up the application where I can review the footage.
And as horrible luck would have it, I don’t need to search around or rewind anything to find her.
She’s standing in a hallway towards the center of the castle with her brother and cousin.
All three of them are laughing like they’re having the time of their lives.
Denial is the first place my mind goes. Surely, she just told her family that the two of us are getting along great and it’s all a misunderstanding.
They talk for a moment. Then she points in the direction that would take them out of the castle and leads them away.
I feel nausea take over as I grip the desk and fall to the floor.
First, I find out that Elena pitied me her whole life, and she lied about everything. And now I find out that Sofia is willingly leaving with her family.
I suppose I could try to chase her. But I have no desire to.
Not if everything has been a lie this entire time.
She faked all of her happiness to escape?
She even teased that it was a plan of hers this morning, probably because she knew I was so smitten that she could say anything and I’d trust her.
Was it obvious to everyone else? How will I have anyone’s respect if Sofia played me like a fiddle to that degree?
I’m a dead man.
If there isn’t some coup in the works already, there surely will be soon after word gets out that Sofia ran away with my unborn child.
Panic rises in my chest when I think about the baby and what her plans could be for that. Surely, she doesn’t want my child if she planned to escape this whole time.
But is she really that cold?
I almost join my sister in sobbing, but emotionally, I’m beyond that somehow.