3. Giulia
Marianna stayed by my side as we entered our home. I couldn’t blame her for the abrupt end of the reception an hour ago.
From the moment Cecilia screamed in the ballroom, chaos ensued. I’d never forget the terror on Renzo’s face as he ran inside, and I hurried in after him to see what happened. That sight would be forever etched in my mind, too.
Giovanni Bernardi stared at his son, roaring with rage and demanding to know who’d killed him.
I’d never be able to forget that father’s plea for an answer, either. So enraged and instantly shocked, he lost it. Unhinged and red-faced, he began yelling at everyone to know who’d killed Luka.
Why?
How?
But most of all, he repeated his desperate demands to know who’d murdered the groom.
Any parent would be shocked and furious. Hurt and lost. Bewildered and aggrieved. No one ever wanted to see their own child to the grave. I often felt like a parent myself, raising my younger sisters, and I couldn’t comprehend that heart-deep loss.
My father’s reactions, however, made no sense.
He’d been moody and sad all evening, acting like his usual depressed self, but the moment Cecilia screamed that her husband was dead, the Romano guards closest to the head table had attacked him . Rocco Acardi had no reason to be struck, but in the heat of the moment, he had been beaten badly, caught in the commotion that followed Cecilia’s screams as Luke lay dead, slumped over the pristine-white fabric of the head table he’d shared with his wife.
“Is Father going to be okay?” Marianna glanced at the Acardi men helping him inside our mansion. He plopped onto the couch, breathing hard with blood streaming down his face. Our father wasn’t the fittest man, but he looked every bit of his age, worn and bruised as he groaned and sank into the cushions.
He didn’t look good, and I couldn’t fault her for being startled, but he would live. Violence was a given in this life—but not like this. Not every wedding ended with murder. Not all outings resulted with our father being struck directly like this.
“Of course. Of course,” I replied.
Mother continued to rage at him, demanding to know why he hadn’t defended himself. Why he’d let those Romano guards strike out at him.
She didn’t care that he was hurt, only that he’d let the Acardi name look weak when he didn’t act like a strong, fit man half his age and defend himself even though he was outnumbered.
She didn’t care about Marianna being traumatized and witnessing such an uproar of violence at the wedding. My sister was only fourteen, too young to be thrust into this much violence. But she didn’t care.
Nor would she care about Lucia and Beatrice hearing the noise and coming downstairs, scared and alarmed by the shouting.
Mother didn’t notice or pause in her rants at my father, too used to my acting like a mother in her place.
“Go on upstairs. Back to bed.” I shooed them away, trying to block the sight of the blood on our father’s face. Lucia saw anyway and frowned, but she wrapped her arm around Beatrice’s shoulders and guided her to turn around.
“Take them back to bed,” I told Marianna. “They’re too young to be worried about this.”
You are too , I thought.
She listened, leading our younger sisters back up the stairs. Father was wounded, but it wasn’t like he was dying. Still, this was a startling sight. If any violence visited us, it was when one of our soldiers was hit or killed. Father seldom did anything on the “front line” of any meeting, and a wedding wasn’t a scene of war.
Or it shouldn’t have been.
Luka Bernardi’s death would rock our world. Everyone would be impacted in some way, whether as a reminder of our mortality, an example of how deep rivalries and hatred could run, or another demonstration that we surrounded ourselves with violent people.
It still felt surreal, and part of my stubbornness to let Luka’s death sink in was because of where I was and what I was doing when the news broke out.
I’d been hiding from my parents, sheltered by Renzo while he?—
Stop. I had no business wanting him to touch me like that. I had even less business demanding that he kiss me more. And it was not the time to think about it at all. His brother had been killed. My father was wounded.
Not the time to be thinking about what I’d been pulled from.
I exhaled as my sisters trudged up the stairs, glancing back at me, then at Father on the couch.
“You too,” Uncle Dario said. He approached me slowly, wincing and leaning heavier on his cane. “Help your sisters.”
I shot him a look and shook my head. “No.” I’d be damned if I was shoved aside too. News of Luka being killed at his wedding was nothing to sweep under the rug. I had to know what had happened to Renzo’s brother. Staying up-to-date about others was a necessity, but I had to know now.
“What were you thinking?” Mother demanded, screeching at Father. “Why on earth would you intervene?”
“I was there,” he replied shakily, wincing as a soldier applied a compress to the cut on his brow. “I was there, by that table, and I thought it would make sense to help or defend or…”
Dario approached them with me, furrowing his brow. “Defend? You ?”
Father scowled at him. “What does that mean?”
Uncle Dario didn’t react to his angry expression. “You aren’t any defender.”
“Oh, no more than you are?” Father snapped.
I held on to Dario’s upper arm, showing my support at that jab. Father was hurting, but he had no right to attack like that.
It was too cruel of a dig at his younger brother. Dario had been handicapped years ago in a turf battle war. Disabled, unable to use his leg well, and rendered infertile, Dario was half the man he once was—physically.
“You are a leader. Head of the Acardi Family,” Dario reminded him. “If anyone needed defense, it shouldn’t have been you to personally provide it.”
“Why them?” Mother demanded. She seethed, pacing and absolutely livid. Her face didn’t show it. She’d had far too much surgery to truly reveal any emotion, but I heard it in her snarl.
“The Romanos would have appreciated the help,” Father replied feebly, shifting to sit more comfortably.
“The Romanos?” she screamed, incredulous. “Cecilia Romano wasn’t killed. Luka Bernardi was! And Marcus Romano will be out for blood. He’ll take this as a personal insult. And you had to butt in and get in the way. Now he’ll be looking at you as a complication in all of?—”
“Enough.” I stepped closer to stand in the way of Mother’s pacing.
“Don’t you dare tell me enough ,” she sneered at me. “Marcus Romano is not someone we want to have as an enemy.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to understand. “But you’re fine with Luka being killed, right? Because he’s a Bernardi?”
“Shut up, you fool. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shoved to get around me to yell in Father’s face again.
This was far from the first time she’d talked to me like that. It wasn’t the first time she’d talked to him like that, either. This was just the vile sort of woman she was.
“She’s right,” Father said, surprising me with that defense. “You won’t care that a Bernardi was killed.”
“You only care about the Acardi name,” I reminded her.
“As I should,” she yelled. “Giovanni’s going to be furious and out for blood too, and I can’t worry about that.”
“He already was,” Dario said as he lowered to a chair, wincing with the descent.
He was. Renzo’s father was fighting his guards who kept him back from everyone else. Other Bernardi soldiers took over, defending both Renzo and Giovanni, worried that another hit would come.
None did. In fact, Luka hadn’t been hit either.
It wasn’t a gunshot wound that ended Luka’s life, but a poison. Nothing showed on Luka outwardly, but the medic of the Bernardi guard staff quickly concluded that he’d been poisoned. The details were fuzzy. Everything seemed so sudden and impossible, which made it difficult to accept and understand, but I did hear the whispers through the guests that they’d deduced it to be a poisoning.
“You fucking idiot,” Mother continued to rant. “You had to rush close and risk the Romanos thinking you were killing someone up there.”
“Cecilia screamed and it caused everyone to react,” he argued weakly. Staring ahead, he zoned out and seemed like he was stuck in a shell, looking out from the inside and lacking control to do anything but press that cloth to his wound.
“No one else was harmed,” Dario added, as though that could appease Mother as she paced and ranted like a caged bull ready to charge at anything that she could identify as a target or irritant. She always prioritized her image, our image, and she valued the Acardi name and standing above all else. “Once Marcus settles down, once Cecilia is comforted for this loss,” he said as slowly and evenly as he likely could, “I’m sure that no Romano will target Rocco for being there.”
“In the heat of the moment,” I added, “the Romano guards likely attacked any and everyone near Cecilia when she screamed.” I hadn’t been there to witness it all. By the time I’d run after Renzo into the ballroom, Father was already being pulled back by Acardi guards.
All three Families had split. While Giovanni mourned Luka and demanded answers from the startled wedding guests, we’d all been wise to part in the huge venue space. Wars had broken out over less than a murder or assassination, and accusations would no doubt come flinging from everywhere. I had to agree with my uncle, though. In the spur of the moment, yes, Marcus Romano and his guards were right to be suspicious of my father being near the murdered groom. Once things calmed down, he would probably want to know who’d killed his son-in-law and seek revenge.
“They’ll question everyone,” Dario continued calmly. “The guards were everywhere. Cameras, too. People will talk. This will settle one day, and this matter of striking out at Rocco will be old news.”
Mother huffed, shaking her head as she resumed pacing. As she whirled around quickly, she locked her glare on me.
“Where were you when this happened?” she demanded. I heard every note of disdain in her ugly tone. She loathed having to ask me about where I was when Luka was killed, like I shouldn’t ever dare to set a foot outside the boundaries of her expectations for me. Like a chained pet, a thing to be placed and ordered about.
She stalked back to me, and I refused to cave at all. I remained perfectly still, not betraying a single hint of emotions as she got in my face.
“Where were you, Giulia?” She pointed her finger at my face.
“Your father and I had just come in from searching for you when this all happened. Where were you?”
I blinked, shaking my head slightly as though suggesting she was being ridiculous to snap at me like this. “Me? Why does it matter where I was?”
Her upper lip curled. She slitted her eyes and tried to force such a stiff expression of loathing that she resembled a frigid dragon about to roar at me.
Talking back was not permitted in this house. Before she could slap me or try to punish me, though, I kept going.
“Are you trying to imply that my whereabouts matter? That I could have anything to do with Luka’s death?” She couldn’t sound any more ridiculous.
“Where were you?” She wouldn’t let up, ignoring anything I replied with. “Huh? Where the hell were you hiding?”
I didn’t bother to say that I wasn’t hiding. I was and we both knew it. This wasn’t the first wedding or Family gathering I’d tried to sneak away from and have a moment of peace. At home, she was constantly nagging me and on my ass. She harassed me or my sisters. Or my father. All of us. She spared no one her judgment and criticism.
I couldn’t tell her. I would never. She could put me on the spot as much as she wanted, and I would never tell her where I was.
“Who were you talking to?” she shouted, growing more frustrated when I stared her down.
I’ll never say. I wasn’t that stupid.
Remaining a virgin was expected. I had to stay clean, untouched for whatever marriage she would arrange for me. My own body wasn’t mine to do with as I pleased, and already, I broke that rule so much. When Renzo helped me hide from my parents on the patio, he showed me so much pleasure—or got me so damn close to it. I hadn’t been able to come. He’d pushed me close, fingering me like that, but Cecilia’s screams had cut it too short.
No way could I ever tell her the truth. He hadn’t fucked me. I remained intact. It wasn’t as though he’d penetrated me to change my true virginal status. My pussy throbbed as I thought back to the thrill of his touch there, deeper than my own fingers could ever explore, but with far more force, and somehow, more skill.
In that one-time, unexpected meeting, he showed me that he knew how to master my body much more than I ever could.
“Giulia!” I almost flinched at her shout, lost to the thoughts of Renzo.
He’d be suffering. His anger about Luka’s death wouldn’t fade anytime soon. It almost felt wrong to lust for him, but with how we’d been interrupted, I couldn’t help it. I was lingering, unfinished, and it aggravated me to no end.
“Where were you when Luka was killed?” she demanded.
Others would ask. Everyone would want to know who was where and what happened when. The law enforcement wouldn’t be contacted. We were all our own judges and executioners. But I had to be prepared.
My mother could demand answers until she turned blue in the face. I didn’t care. If anyone else asked…
I held my breath, stunned and anxious about what Renzo would say when he might be asked the same questions as everyone tried to piece together who was where up until the minute Cecilia realized that Luka was dead.
I have to get ahold of him. Renzo and I had to talk. If I could get word to him, I could beg him to lie. He couldn’t be spreading around that he was with me. That I could back up his alibi.
Reaching out to him wouldn’t be easy. Not in the aftermath of his brother’s death. It was no minor matter.
I have to.
And as soon as I spoke to him to clarify that we had to have our lies in sync, I’d need to forget all about that torrid moment we’d shared. It was cut far too short. It had happened so suddenly, out of nowhere, but that was all we could ever have.
I knew it.
But I loathed that a private moment with him could never happen again.