Page 64 of Blind Devotion

“Do you think Adrien will hit me too?”

Her face fell, her eyes going glassy, and her hands caught me around the shoulders. “Never. He would never hurt you. Yours is going to be a love story for the ages.”

“How do you know?”

“Can you not feel it?Siete anime gemelli.” You are soulmates. “No matter what, I know he will always treasure you, and that is why I know you will be safe with him.”

I bit and chewed on my upper lip. “Would you and Babbo get a divorce?”

She briskly faced the piano once more. “Hush.”

“If Babbo wasn’t a don—”

“Stop.” There was no strength to it.

“If there was no famiglia, would you? Renzo could help. I would too. You don’t have to be with him. You don’t have to let him—”

The piano fallboard slammed shut.

“Enough!” Mammina’s eyes darted around the hall, her chin trembling. “You cannot say such things. Ever.”

“I was just—”

“Do not! You have to be his perfecttesoruccia. Always.” She got to her knees in front of me and gave me a shake. “Promise me. Promise me, Persetta!”

The delicate edges of her face blurred, then the piano and the room. The colors warped, swayed, then finally settled. We weren’t in the dining hall anymore. A pool of red stained the alabaster entrance tiles, growing larger and larger around the dead body of Mammina’s bodyguard, Giorgio, or Gio as I called him. My father, my real father. I hadn’t known. I thought he was just nice to me.

Someone was screaming. Someone was begging between sobs. Strong hands kept dragging me back. Pulling and hurting. My ears were ringing.

Mammina lay broken on the ground, blood dripping from a cut to her cheek.

“Do not do this. I beg you, Elio.”

Babbo’s heels nudged her forcefully in the belly. “Mistakes made must be fixed.”

“Stop it,” I yelled, thrashing in the hold of Babbo’s men. “Get away from her! You’re killing her!”

His glare pierced through me. “You never did have anything of mine. I should’ve seen it sooner.”

“Please,” Mammina begged between sobs.

“Choices have consequences.”

The jerk of his head was minuscule, but the hands binding me caught on to the signal. They dragged me back toward the darkness. I screamed and yelled and kicked.

“Tessa,” a man’s voice said. Not Babbo’s. Not the men holding me prisoner.

Mammina’s shrieks echoed my own, no longer begging. She tried to come after me, but Babbo beat her down again, yelling over her cries.

“Tessa, wake up.”

I kept getting pulled farther and farther away. The darkness was creeping closer. I fought. I tried so hard, but no matter what I did, the arms around me were too strong. Too powerful. Too much.

The world shook. I was in a car. I was blindfolded in a cargo hold. Shoved before the blinding lights of an auction house. I was back on that boat.

A prick of pain on my arm shocked me. A pinch.

“Listen to my voice.”