Page 97 of My Dark Ever After

“The Venetian was using Guinevere against you with the Pietras, trying to motivate them to join his cause by convincing them you had abducted her knowing she was a member of their family,” he explained in a slurred rush.

“That’s true.”

The voice that spoke was so incongruent with the situation that, at first, I thought I had imagined it.

But when I turned to the source, it was Guinevere who stood beside the open barn door Tonio had left ajar. Her wavy hair was loose downher front, obscuring the long white silk nightgown I’d bought for her in Firenze that summer and an old Oxford hoodie of mine she wore unzipped over the top. There was something surreal about her fresh-faced, youthful beauty in the dark barn we used to string up men and strip them of their secrets. It did not feel wrong, exactly, but wild, as if a fey creature from the night had come to observe our wrongdoings with eager eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked when I found my voice.

I knew I made quite the vision, standing in the same trousers and shirt I’d worn for the raid, dried blood from a wound on my neck, Philippe’s blood on my hands and splattered like polka-dot print along my front.

The violence of the moment and the relief at having her back were a potent, dangerous cocktail roiling through me. I wanted to throw her to the ground and fuck her in the dirt. I wanted to carve my name into her flesh so everyone would know whom she belonged to and fear the repercussions if they tried to harm her or take her ever again. I wanted to paint her in cum until she looked like mine, smelled like mine, wept my name with every breath from her lips.

She ignored me entirely, moving forward on bare feet across the cold, stained concrete floor, the hem of her silk nightgownshushingsoftly in the silence.

“What Philippe said is true. The Venetian tried to blackmail the Pietras into helping by telling them Raffa was holding me hostage,” she explained, stopping beside me so the tips of her bare toes touched the blood on the floor.

When she looked at me, her eyes were filled with shadows.

“That does not mean he was trying to help us,” I noted.

“No,” she agreed. “But I think it means he is conflicted. Aren’t you, Philippe?”

He blinked the sweat from his lashes as he looked at her, wary suddenly as if he sensed the same coiled, dark energy inside her that made my skin buzz with electricity.

“Yes,” he whispered, gaze darting to the table filled with my crew and then over to Leo. “I did not want to betray you, Raffa. We have been friends since we were boys. But I owed it to the Venetian to help him when he asked for aid.”

“Why?” I demanded, stepping forward before I reminded myself that Guinevere was beside me and she did not want to see more violence from me.

“It’s okay,” she whispered as if in answer, her fingers extending to brush against my fist. “I want to see what you would do if I wasn’t here. I’m not afraid.”

When I did not move, she pressed herself into my back.

“I am not afraid of you,” she confirmed.

I swallowed the tangle of emotions clogging my throat and nodded curtly, stepping forward as I had intended with the cigar cutter in hand.

“Please, don’t,” Philippe begged. “I cannot tell you more. You have to believe me. Someone you love will die if I tell you more.”

“The Venetian cannot hear you here,” I reminded him. “I am your only judge, your only jury, and your eventual executioner.”

His gaze darted to Renzo, who usually exacted such violence for me, but I grabbed his face to force him to look at me.

“No, no, I am the one who will end your life if you insist on keeping his secrets,” I said, and my voice came up like smoke from an active volcano. “It was my woman you took, so I will be the one to watch the light go out in your eyes as the hope would have gone out of mine if something worse had happened to her.”

Behind me, Guinevere shifted, but I tried not to think of her.

Instead I focused on Philippe, cutting his finger down knuckle by knuckle as he cried and shouted his innocent intentions.

After another half hour, it was clear he would not give up the identity of the Venetian. The only further thing of interest he admitted was that the Venetian was keeping an eye not just on my family in the villa but also on my companies, implying he had spies in both the Romano Group and Lupo Nero Investments.

I had long ago forgotten about Guinevere bearing witness to my interrogation, lost to the darkness that rushed up to meet me when I fell headlong into my birthright. So I thought nothing of the intensity with which I beat into Philippe’s face after losing his fingers did not perturb him, slaking some of my rage on his body, and then nothing still of the knife I punched between his ribs and twisted until his body gave one last, pitiable sigh.

When I stepped back from the dead meat swinging from the ceiling, I was panting roughly, splattered in blood and limned in sweat.

“Take him down and feed him to the pigs,” I told Renzo.

“Literally or figuratively?”