Page 50 of Sacred Vow

“Well, yeah. I didn’t know our family was staging a coup. If he’d been honest from the beginning, I would have left him a long time ago. You know I hated the match,” I told him, daring an accusatory tone. “If I’d known this was part of your plan, I wouldn’t have jumped from my window to escape the wedding.”

I didn’t mention that I hadn’t planned on falling, or how lucky I was that Romeo was there to catch me.

He chuckled. “You were always so rebellious. How do I know this isn’t you pretending to be loyal to your family?”

Think… think… “You’re right. I have always been rebellious, and I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you, Papa, but I was never disloyal, and I’m not now.”

My father studied me with the disinterested cruelty of a boy deciding which leg to pull off a bug first, then turned to the man he called my brother. “What do you think, Leonardo? You’ve been with my daughter for weeks. Do you think she’s lying?”

Leo’s eyes continued to glitter, his stare so intense that I could all but feel myself pinned by those twin pools of blackness. As dangerous as I knew my father could be, I realized this man was far worse, not merely ruthless but unhinged.

“So what if she is?” Leo countered. “The family always has uses for good liars—“ His cold gaze moved over me. ”—and well-trained whores. If you think she can be useful to us, I’ll keep her and I’ll deal with her impertinence in the basement, where all disloyal soldiers go to learn their lesson.”

Holy shit! This guy was terrifying. For the first time, I understood the difference between darkness and evil. Romeo possessed darkness. It lived inside him, and prowled beneath his skin. But it had rules.

Boundaries.

Loyalty.

Leonardo had none. How could we be related when we were so different?

“Scusami, brother. Where have you been all these years?” I kept my tone light and interested, trying to salvage the situation and prove to my father I was on Team Calogerà.

“Calabria. Learning how to lead this family and exterminate its enemies.”

“So this is why you spent so much time in Italy, papa, leaving me all alone.” I turned a practiced pout on my father, playing the old game between us. “You ignored me to visit my brother? Why did you never bring him home to meet me?”

Leonardo visibly disliked the forgiving smile my father showed me. Without warning, he lunged at me, gripping my hair so tight I screamed.

“Basta!” my father barked. “Let her go, Leonardo! Hurting your sister isn’t part of our arrangement.”

He gripped my brother’s other arm and twisted it behind his back. Leo dropped me and the two of them tussled. I ran past them and out of the pen. I guess they didn’t expect me to put up any resistance as there were no guards that I could see. I ran blindly as desperate to find an exit as the panicked cattle that had once thundered down this self-same chute. Hopefully I’d have a better ending than the cattle that came before me.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The steady rhythm of someone hitting the metal bars of the stalls with something. If that was Leonardo behind me, and I was pretty sure it was, then he’d won against my father and no one could help me now, but myself.

Don’t lose it, Vittoria, pretend you’re back home. It’s all a game.

I slipped off my shoes and carried them in one hand, slinking backwards into the deeper shadows as silent as a cat. The banging stopped; he was probably listening to see what direction I’d gone. I threw one of my shoes as far as I could and heard the soft thud it made when it landed, but did he?

“I’ve got you now, sister!”

It worked. He went after the shoe and I plunged deeper into the darkness, following the wall I found off the killing floor and into a maze of smaller rooms and halls. There was no light back here. All I could do was keep moving and pray I wasn’t turned around and heading right back to my brother.

Just when panic began to rise, my hand brushed a padlock holding two ends of a chain together, securing…I felt around until the two sides of the door revealed themselves. A door, hopefully it led to freedom. I couldn’t do anything about the padlock, but there was some slack in the chain. I pried at the unused door and managed to shove it open about six inches, letting in a precious slice of dim moonlight. Was it enough? They say that anything you can get your head through, your body can too. I wiggled my head and one shoulder through when the bang, bang, bang started up again. I was so scared and struggled to fit through the opening.

“When I catch you, sister, I will teach you to obey with my fists.”

Tears streamed down my face as I forced myself through the narrow opening, tearing clothing and skin just to get away from him. It was a dark night, with only half a moon in the cloudy sky but after the pitch-black slaughterhouse, I could see enough to run as fast as my feet were willing to go over the abandoned gravel parking lot.

Up ahead, I could see a roadway. I moved toward the side in the tall uncut grass and prayed I didn’t step on anything sharp. I slowed down and stayed low. The progress was slow until I heard the sounds of a vehicle from in front of me. It could be a trap. I hid lower and watched as several cars turned off their lights and pulled across the cattle guard and into the tall grass. I listened to the sounds of whispered voices… familiar voices. Could it be? If I was wrong, I’d end up back in there with the monster who called himself my brother.

“Romeo,” I whispered into the darkness.

“Vittoria?”

“Oh, thank God!” I stood and ran toward the barely discernable human shapes until one scooped me up in his arms.

“Principessa, is it really you?” Romeo cradled me in his arms, and covered my entire head in kisses. Little one, he called me, and oh how I missed his terms of endearment, and if we managed to get out of here in one piece, I’d tell him everything, including my stupid childish fantasy of the princess in the tower.