Page 109 of Brutal Crown

For a second, he says nothing. Just stares at me. His lips are swollen, and his breaths come out in heavy pants above me.

“Why can’t you look at me the way you look at him—just once?”

His voice isn’t angry. It’s raw, almost quiet. Like the question’s been bleeding in his throat for days.

Then he rises from the bed, slowly. The pain of my rejection settles over him like dust, soft but permanent. His face stays mostly still; he’s always been good at wearing masks, but something behind his eyes flickers. Something that looks a lot like heartbreak. Or rage. Or both.

He doesn’t look at me when he speaks again.

“You don’t have to love me,Stellina,” he says, his voice almost too soft. “But you will learn to love the life I give you.”

A beat passes. Then, without turning, he adds?—

“And our child.”

His voice deepens. “He’ll be raised the right way. I am going to make sure of it.” It sharpens. “Even if you’re not part of the picture.”

My entire body freezes as I watch him walk out of the room without another word.

The silence he leaves behind is thick and suffocating.

I rise on shaky feet and walk over to the vanity. I don’t realize how badly I’m trembling until I try to grab my bottle of lotion and it slips from my hand, clattering to the floor.

He said it so easily. So calmly. Like he didn’t just threaten me. Like he’s already imagined a life without me in it, as long as he gets to keep the child.

Because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?

Not just the baby. Not just me. It’s about power. Legacy. Control.

He doesn’t needmeto love him. He just needs something—someone—that ties me to him forever.Mychild.

Because in this world, I belong to him. I was given to him as a trophy, and by La Mano Nerarules, he can take my child away from me, and it would be deemed legal and acceptable.

I let out a shaky breath.

Marco has made the only options I have left very clear. He’s in the good books of the Society, so I will be safe if I stick by him. But if I try to side with Francesco, I will lose it all.

My child.

My life.

Francesco.

I look at myself in the mirror. At the robe slipping off my shoulder. At the fear in my eyes. And I know one thing.

This ends soon. One way or another.

28

FRANCESCO

Ihave been looking for answers in all the wrong places. In libraries, searching for hidden information that might be found between the pages of an old book. Yes, I’ve found a few things from the ledgers and old letters, but it’s not enough.

The kind of truth I need to discover isn’t tucked away in cellars or behind paintings. The Elders don’t leave trails for people to find, especially not in paper. They’re too old, too evil, and too careful for that. If they ever made mistakes, they buried them under bodies, favors, blood oaths, and names long forgotten…

Except by the ones who survived them.

So I go to the streets.