Page 88 of My Dark Ever After

I laughed again. In the wake of surviving this horror on my own, giving Gaetano and Eduardo nothing, and knowing that Raffa was not riding in on his noble steed as my Prince Charming but cracking open the very earth to find me, as Pluto had to reach Proserpina, I felt freer than I ever had before.

“He wanted to make a spectacle of it,” I said, even though she hadn’t asked a question. “He wants them to know he can come for them at home in broad daylight, with the house full ofsoldati, and still win.”

“He won’t win,” Ginevra said as the last of my bonds fell away. “Not unless he has an army. This is acastello, Guinevere. It was made to withstand a siege.”

I only grinned as she tugged me toward the door. My legs were gummy, but I forced them to move with minimal grace.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

Following her seemed like the best option regardless. I was a sitting duck in that room, especially given everyone in the house knew that was where I had been kept. I had no idea of the layout, but emerging from the basement seemed like getting a step closer to Raffa.

“The safe room,” Ginevra declared, pausing at the threshold of a staircase to peek around the corner with her gun drawn.

“I’m surprised you’d bother,” I admitted as I ran up the stairs behind her and followed her into a room hidden in the concave wall of the staircase.

Inside, an older woman sat on a chartreuse velvet love seat with two boys.

I recognized her instantly as the confused woman from the Duomo.

She blinked at me, pushing aside one of the boys gently as she stood up and then reached out her hand toward me.

“Io ti conosco,” she said.

“You do,” I agreed in Italian, stepping forward to take her hand and press it to my cheek. “I am your granddaughter.”

Tears pooled in her lower lids, catching on the wrinkles beneath as they spilled.

“She has dementia,” Ginevra explained quietly. “She often gets confused. Gaetano does not let her out in public much.”

“I saw her in Firenze the day you took me from the train,” I mentioned without looking away from my grandmother’s beautifully aged face. “She recognized me then too.”

“You have the eyes of your father,” my aunt said. “Of your grandmother.”

“What’s your name?” I asked the elderly woman, who was still cupping my face, her thumb rubbing back and forth along my cheekbone.

“Giulia,” she said with a tremulous smile.

“Hi, Giulia,” I replied, pressing a kiss to each of her silken cheeks.

She beamed at me.

“And these are my sons, Circo and Ottavio,” Ginevra introduced the two preteen boys, one of whom I’d also seen at the church with Giulia.

“I’m glad you broke theGnaming tradition,” I said, which prompted my aunt to laugh. “It was a bit much.”

Behind me the door opened, Gaetano ushered in by asoldatoI didn’t recognize. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me there, face screwing up with distaste.

“What is she doing in here?”

“She is family,” Ginevra pointed out. “Just because you do not trust her yet does not mean she shouldn’t be kept safe.”

“I am safer out there than you are,” I countered. “They’re here for me.”

“To take you away again anduseyou against us,” Gaetano said, his brows so knit together they were one thick black squiggle from a marker drawn across his face. “We will not give you up to be manipulated again.”

I looked at the man who had raised my father and wondered how Dad could have become the kind of man I knew today. There were shades of the iron will and stubbornness that must have come as a product of this life, but John Stone was otherwise kind, caring, and thoughtful.

This paranoid creature who would waterboard his own granddaughter while claiming to want to welcome her into the family was the kind of monster Raffa had claimed to be. Two faced, violent as a baseline, convinced always that his way was the best.