Page 15 of Forsaking All Others

The next day, when I enquired with Bonnie, she told me it was probably Stefan or Luigi, two of the house security staff, who had carted me to my room.

It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to see Dario. He was cruel, arrogant, and frustratingly opaque about what my own future held. But I was desperate for news about Ricco, Beppe, and Niccolo.

I knew Papà was dead.

There was no way to survive a bullet through the eye socket. He had been gone before he hit the marble steps of the Duomo di Palermo.

But my brothers could be alive.

The pen in Ricco’s chest had enabled him to breathe, and if the paramedics arrived soon after Dario dragged me away, I had to believe he had a real chance.

Beppe and Niccolo had both been disturbingly still, face down and akimbo like dolls tossed to the ground by bored children, but there was a chance . . .

There had to be.

It was what I clung to in those long, lonely days rambling away in an unfamiliar house with only the household staff for company. I found myself praying the way my aunts used to, unearthing my mother’s old rosary beads to run them comfortingly through my fingers as I wasted away the hours in the informal living room or the carefully manicured gardens behind the house. Bonnie watched me tirelessly, hovering at the edges of my life with offers of food, baths, trips into town with one of Dario’s men to chauffeur me around.

I ignored all of it, starving myself because I had no desire to eat.

Not when the well-being of my family seemed to hang in the balance.

Then, one day, there was a knock at the door.

I blinked but didn’t budge from my sprawl on the velvet couch that had become my sanctuary outside my room. The informal living room was warm and cozy, despite its size, with grand windows overlooking the back garden in all its late-summer glory.

It was only when voices sounded outside the room in the hall that I stirred myself enough to sit up and face the door.

A moment later, a gorgeous older woman swooped into the space, dressed as if she was attending a charity function or a red-carpet event instead of paying a simple house visit. She had long dark hair that was curled artfully and clasped at the crown of her head with pearl pins that matched the strands at her delicate throat. Only faint lines beside her eyes and a hint of gauntness that came from older age were signs that she was above forty-five years old.

“Fiammetta,” she greeted in a dulcet purr, the skirt of her long satin dress whispering around her legs as she swept toward me and perched on the edge of the coffee table to take my limp hand between her perfectly manicured ones. “My darling, I am so sorry it’s taken me this long to come visit you. My husband and I were busy trying to get affairs in order after the tragic events of your wedding in Palermo.”

I swallowed thickly, my heart clunking as it seemed to kick into proper gear for the first time in days. “You know about what happened in Palermo? Do you know if my family . . . ? Are they—?”

Her smile was tender as she surprised me by pushing a lock of my hair back from my forehead. “I’m sorry, I should introduce myself properly. I’m your mother-in-law, Carla. I so wish we were meeting under better circumstances, but when I discovered Dario hadn’t informed you about your family’s status, I felt it of the utmost importance to come myself and deliver the news.”

“What news?” I croaked, my hand trembling in hers.

It was a combination of fear and rage that made my system overheat. How dare Dario keep the news from me? What kind of monster wanted someone to suffer in doubt the way I had the last week and a half?

She soothed me with strokes of her long cool fingers. “Your father, Vincenzo, was dead on arrival to the hospital.”

I nodded, because I knew that had to have been the case, but inside, my heart started to dissolve in the acid of my new reality.

“Beppe died shortly after he arrived at the hospital. There was just too much trauma.”

A whimper leaked from my too-tight throat.

Carla’s hand tightened on mine, anchoring me. She didn’t have Dario’s pale eyes. Instead, hers were a warm brown. They reminded me of my mother’s, from what I had seen in the photo Papà kept locked away in his office. A surge of gratitude swelled in my collapsing chest, and I clutched at her hands hard enough to make her mouth flex with pain.

Still, she didn’t let go.

“Ricco . . .” She paused and drew in a sharp breath as she took in my expression. “Oh, darling girl, I’m so sorry, but after a few days in the ICU, he passed away too.”

I didn’t recognize the animal wail that echoed through the room, not even enough to know it came from me. My body felt suddenly too heavy. I fell forward off the couch to the carpet on my knees, my forehead pressing into the leather-tufted coffee table beside Carla’s hip. My lungs were so tight I couldn’t draw real breath, the air wheezing harshly as I tried to squeeze it into my lungs. I scrambled to open my shirt, buttons popping, as if the fabric was constricting me and not the cage of bone surrounding the delicate tissues.

“Hush, sweet girl.” Carla’s voice floated on the top of my consciousness like foam. Vaguely, I was aware of her soft hands pulling my head into her lap so she could stroke her hands through my hair.

I pressed my wet face into her silky skirt and sobbed so hard my body convulsed and I couldn’t think to remember my own name.