Chapter Ten #2
He found he was clenching his teeth, though this time it was because it was only occurring to him that he’d come up with this plan of his when he hadn’t known Leontina.
He’d decided exactly how it would end, but he’d made these decisions before he’d met her.
Before he’d held her. Before she’d told him the stories of how she’d lived here for so long.
Before she’d begun to matter to him in ways he wasn’t sure he knew how to articulate, even to himself.
That he hadn’t thought to consider how she might feel about having to return here at all, much less to be paraded in front of her nasty father like the spoils of war—well.
Perhaps Pau had more in common with the father his mother had left than he cared to admit.
It was a long march through the old building, winding this way and that.
Leontina was wearing absurdly high heels, though they did not seem to slow her down any.
They clicked against the marble and stone impressively as she walked, somehow adding to her mystique in ways he felt take shape inside him.
Though he wasn’t sure he could name them.
Possibly because the only name in his head was hers.
All Pau knew was that his hunger for her had never been higher. Maybe it was because they were back here in this castle and the last time they had been here, they’d spent an epic night together. More than simply enjoying each other, repeatedly, they had created their son.
It was difficult not to look back and consider that night magical now.
He just wished she hadn’t said those words. He would have done anything to rewind time, to keep her from saying them out loud.
Even if it meant it took longer to reach this stage in his end game.
That thought hit him like another unexpected hook to the mouth. Since when had he ever—ever—let anything come between him and his revenge? Even hypothetically?
But they had arrived at a set of ostentatious doors where a man dressed entirely in unctuous black stood.
“The master waits within,” the man said, deferentially, and bowed.
Then he stood and turned crisply, throwing open the two doors at once in what was, clearly, a piece of deliberate choreography.
“Enter, please, the chamber of Umberto Tavian himself,” the man in black intoned, like he was auditioning for town crier.
But the bland look Leontina sent him made Pau think that all of this was a bit of theater for an audience of one. And not an unusual occurrence.
He took that as a good sign, because surely if they’d been brought to some kind of execution chamber, she would have reacted differently.
Not that he really thought Umberto would kill him.
That wasn’t how the old bastard operated.
He preferred to come at people financially, because ruin was more fun.
Still, Pau didn’t expect this to be pleasant, either way.
The man in black was waiting for them and the doors were open, so Pau took Leontina’s arm and ushered her in with him to what he assumed was Umberto’s questionable version of a throne room.
It was a sitting room of sorts, but was done all in gold.
Some of it real gold, he could see. It was a travesty of taste, but then, he supposed that was the point.
It was so opulent, so over the top, that its only purpose had to be for Umberto to flatter himself with his own wealth.
After all, it wasn’t his blood that built this castle.
It hadn’t been his ancestors who had tied themselves to this land, marking time with the fields they’d tilled and the villages they’d built.
This castle had been built by nobility as a fortress many centuries ago in wars forgotten by most, and had fallen in and out of disrepair since.
Umberto had divested the last remaining blood relative of that once-noble line of the last of his funds, self-respect, and possessions in one fell swoop.
Umberto had called it a business deal.
But like most of his deals, it had ruined everyone else involved.
This castle was a monument to the epic, soulless greed of a man who took things and broke them simply because he could.
And this throne room was perhaps the ghastliest example of money failing to buy taste that Pau had ever seen.
It almost made him something like sad, as it suggested that Umberto was unworthy of the time and effort Pau had spent getting to this moment.
Almost.
But then, all the way on the other side of the room, was the little man himself.
Umberto was not a tall or athletic man, and had not been one even in his youth.
He was also not an attractive man. He was known to claim that he had a certain charisma that brought him women and acolytes and whatever else it was he desired, but that was what all rich, ugly men said.
It was always about money.
It took Pau a moment to note that all of Umberto’s malevolent attention was not on him, but on his daughter.
“I see you’ve come crawling back as I knew you would,” Umberto began, rising up from what looked like a gold-plated chaise to come charging toward Leontina—
Until he stopped short, wheezing in astonishment when he got closer.
Several things became immediately clear.
First, Umberto had clearly not been informed that it was Pau accompanying his runaway daughter. Second, the fact that said runaway daughter was visibly pregnant was clearly also a surprise.
And as she stood beside him, Pau could see that Leontina was doing something with her hand.
She was making it look as if she was playing with her ring absently, but Pau rather doubted it.
Because what she was doing made her ring catch the light and send it dancing all over this gleaming room, announcing their marriage without having to say it out loud.
“What the fuck is this?” shouted Umberto, his face going red and his eyes bugging out.
“Which part?” Pau asked, and he took pride in how even his voice was. How very nearly bored he sounded, because he could see how very little his lifelong enemy liked it. “Because I think you know what this is, old man.”
Umberto looked from him to Leontina, and appeared to be very nearly shaking with rage. It seemed like a good start to Pau, though he made sure he kept close to Leontina. Very close, because Umberto always preyed on what he perceived as weakness first.
Leontina smiled at her father without a shred of fear.
“I didn’t care for your selection of suitors, Father,” she told him in that cheerful voice of hers that Pau didn’t like at all when it was directed at him.
But he found he liked it fine today, aimed straight at her father. “So I went and found my own.”
“You did not leave here long enough ago to come back fat with child!” Umberto was sputtering. He was staring at her belly and then he stepped in with a fist outstretched, as if he truly believed he might actually strike her.
As if he imagined that Pau would allow such a thing.
Much less the two men standing behind him.
Pau’s men moved forward immediately, putting themselves between Umberto and Leontina. Umberto stopped, and dropped his fist.
But Pau learned things about his wife in that moment, because she didn’t so much as flinch. That smile didn’t move from her face.
“Pau and I met at Giaco’s wedding,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption.
As if her father’s spike of rage didn’t register with her.
“I thought you would be pleased, Father. Haven’t you always said you wanted to marry me off to a man of wealth and consequence that matches yours?
I believe the good news is Pau’s far exceeds yours.
So this can only be an upgrade, correct? ”
Umberto’s face was getting redder and redder. Alarmingly red, in fact. His eyes were wild as he fixed them on Pau. “You… You…”
That was all he managed to get out, most of it a wheeze.
“Me,” Pau agreed, his voice lethal. “What did you think? That you could really steal everything my father loved out from under him and nothing would come of it? That you would never answer for the things you do?”
“Your father was an idiot,” Umberto bellowed. “He should have sold to me when he had the chance.”
“Now you are nothing but an embarrassment,” Pau said quietly. And distinctly, to make sure the old man heard him, and well. “A laughingstock in every circle you once imagined you ruled. How does that feel?”
Umberto’s face was now approaching a worrisome crimson.
Pau did not stop. “Meanwhile, your daughter is mine,” he said.
“Wedded and bedded and carrying my child. Your legacy no longer exists, Umberto. It will stay in this tawdry room and tarnish as you do, until it is torn down and forgotten. Mine, on the other hand, grows deeper roots by the day. And let me assure you that Leontina and I will raise our son to know absolutely nothing about you.”
“Over my dead body,” Umberto shouted, and then he lunged in their direction—
But he never made it.
He never even reached Pau’s waiting security guards. He lunged in their direction but tripped as he went, twisting in on himself and then falling heavily to the ground.
His head slammed into the marble floor.
Where he then lay, stiff and silent, for the length of a breath. Maybe two.
Maybe a small eternity as Pau and his men and Leontina all simply stared in the jarring silence.
But then the man in black let out a shout from behind them, and everything after that was chaos.
The staff came pouring in. There was panic all over the castle, there was an endless amount of rushing around, and ultimately they carried the old man out and loaded him on a helicopter staffed with paramedics to take him to the nearest hospital in Florence.
Pau was in the middle of things. He had Giaco on the phone the whole time, and it wasn’t until he received word that Umberto had made it to the hospital and was declared stable that he realized he hadn’t seen Leontina in a long while.