Page 112 of Thorns of Blood

Another tight hug, then I stood up, resisting the tears that threatened to spill. I left, fearing I’d embarrass myself and fall apart. It wasn’t until the cool night breeze hit my face that I inhaled my next breath.

I rushed down the driveway and was almost at my car when Lou’s voice came from behind me.

“Running, Lia?”

A cold mask firmly on my face, I turned around and met her judging eyes.

“I’m not running,” I lied.

“Then why not stay? It’s clear you want to spend more time with her.”

I turned around, reaching for the door handle. “Because I’m a busy woman, and I have places to be.”

“Eight years apart,” she scoffed, clearly not impressed. “Silly of me to think you’d want to spend time with me. With Kingston.”

I whirled around, words flying out of my mouth without my permission.

“Why didn’t you come for me?” I rasped, my chest trembling. All these emotions were starting to be too much, yet it seemed impossible to avoid them. “I waited and waited against hope that after I took your place, you’d come for me, yank me from that hell, but you were nowhere to be found. You were enjoying your happy life while I withered away.”

My lungs flared with that old feeling of betrayal, but I ignored it.

“I would have searched for you if I knew. If Kingston and I knew, but we didn’t.”

We were identical twins, yet we couldn’t be more different. But that was the beauty of it. What she lacked, I had. What I lacked, she had. We were perfect pieces to the same puzzle. Yin and yang.

“What?” I scoffed. “You two strode off into the sunset and thought I found paradise? My own happily ever after? Nobody is that naive, but definitely not you, Lou.”

“I thought I was you.” My brows furrowed. “Our mother… Sofia tortured me, used specific torture techniques until I truly believed, to my core, that I was you. Liana. I forgot about Kingston, didn’t even recognize him when I saw him again a year ago.Kingston.” She opened her mouth to say more but a sob was all she could manage. Not that it mattered. I knew what it meant that she’d forgotten the boy she fell in love with when we were still too young to understand how precious and fleeting that was.

She reached for her phone and scrolled through images until she found what she was looking for. When the video startedplaying and my eyes zeroed in on the screen, the scene sent a fresh wave of horror through me.

“What’s that?” I rasped, but I already knew. It was the video of Dr. Freud’s sister’s torture.

“I thought you were dead. Mother showed me this video over and over again.” The screen in front of my face accused me of all the wrongs that had happened because of me. “I blamed myself. I blamed the entire world, searching for those responsible and killing them one by one.” Her voice cracked. “But if I knew you were alive, I would have been searching for you. I promise you, Lia, I would have scoured every inch of this earth to find you.”

My sister’s voice was breaking my heart. I finally met her eyes, felt the corners of my mouth lift up of their own accord. “You’re not the Lou I remembered.”

“Ditto.”

Tears ran down our cheeks, two bodies feeling one pain, and then we fell into each other’s arms, holding each other for all that we’d endured during the past eight years.

FORTY-ONE

GIOVANNI

Iwas teetering on the edge of rage by the time I arrived at my mother’s house.

Let her find every person who’s ever hurt her and take her revenge. I believe she’s down to one person.Kian’s words had been playing on repeat ever since I’d learned of The Mistress’s identity. My own mother. It made me wonder if Kian knew this when he led me to Lia, if that was the reason he’d divulged information on her location in the first place.

It’d taken inhuman strength not to barge in and start shooting everyone in sight and then drag that woman by her hair and deliver her to my wife with a bow on her fucking head.

“I should go in with you,” Cristiano said as he scanned the empty grounds with a gun in hand. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

I shook my head. “No, stick to the plan.”

My brother was to meet Romeo at a shipping dock on the outskirts of the city where a transaction was about to take place with the Cortes Cartel. It wouldn’t fare well if the Agosti family failed to deliver, nor would it reflect well on the Omertà.

“You sure?”