Gaia was gone.
Blood kept dripping down on Loulou, and the goddamn thing kept licking it up eagerly. Enraged, I snatched the dog up by its neck, staggered toward the door, and tossed it into the hallway. It landed with a squeak before it dashed off.
I stared down at my blood-covered hands then at the lifeless body of my wife. Slowly, I closed the door in case Daniele came by. A bloody handprint remained on the white-lacquered wood.
Daniele didn’t need to see more of this. I turned back to the gruesome scene. The red roses one of the maids had bought for Gaia as a gift for our eighth anniversary lay crumpled beside the limp body. Red roses to match the blood-stained sheets and her white dress. A desperate attempt to mend a marriage that couldn’t be mended. Proof of my own failure.
Seconds ticked by as I regarded my wife. Even lifeless, she was still beautiful. She’d chosen to wear her wedding dress when she killed herself. It still fit her perfectly. The crystals on her bodice glittered in the glow of the lamp. A few of them were sprinkled with blood, making them appear like rubies. They matched the gemstones in her necklace. She’d even curled her hair the same way she’d worn it on the day we made our vows. How long had she planned this?
Picking up my phone, I called Father. I rarely called him after dinnertime. He and Mother spent their evenings watching classics or playing backgammon. Now that he’d retired, they had time for it. Their love had been something I strived for as a young man, before marriage, before Gaia.
“Cassio, don’t you have a dinner reservation with Gaia?”
A dinner to flaunt our failed marriage in public. “Gaia is dead.”
Silence. “Can you repeat that?”
“Gaia is dead.”
“Cassio—”
“Someone needs to clean this up before the kids see it. Send a clean-up crew and inform Luca.”
I hung up. A sheet of paper on the bed beside Gaia’s body caught my eye. I crept toward the bed. Death didn’t bother me, not when I was the harbinger of it so often, but every fiber of my being revolted against going anywhere near the corpse of my wife. The opposite arm that wasn’t hanging off the side of the bed was draped over her chest. The blood from the slit wrist had soaked the fabric of her wedding dress. Her lifeless brown eyes fixed on the ceiling, even in death they were full of accusation. I closed her eyelids then picked up her last letter with shaking fingertips.
Her elegant handwriting and the expensive stationery promised a love letter, but of course it was nothing like that.
My breathing had slowed as I read Gaia’s letter to me. I couldn’t move, could only stare down at her last words. I wasn’t sad about losing her. I’d never had her to begin with. She’d been Andrea’s, even after his death. I felt a deep sadness over what this meant for Daniele and Simona and a raging madness toward the people who were responsible for this mess. Toward her parents who’d forced her into a marriage with me, even though they’d known the truth. It was incest. Their love had been doomed like ours, but her parents had let me run into an open knife, hadn’t warned me when I allowed Andrea to spend every day alone with my wife.
A knock sounded but I didn’t react. The door opened then. Faro slipped in and appeared beside me. He said something but his words were muffled. He took the letter from me. I let him. It didn’t matter if he read it.
“Cassio!” He shook me hard, and finally my focus snapped to him. Behind him, my father leaned heavily on his walking stick, looking furious as he scanned the letter.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty, Cassio,” he muttered. “That’s what she wanted. She cheated on you, probably helped her brother leak information to the bikers, tried to kill your children. She’s not worth a flicker of your guilt.”
Faro met my gaze. “You didn’t choose to marry her either. You both were thrown into this marriage for tactical purposes. You aren’t any guiltier than she is.”
And yet I felt it. “I don’t know how much Daniele saw of this.”
Father grimaced. “He won’t understand either way.”
“I locked that damn dog into the storage room. It was covered in blood,” Faro said.
I nodded distractedly, but my gaze returned to Gaia. My wife had killed herself because of me. I’d been the final nail in her coffin, but her parents had built the fucking thing.
“Take care of everything,” I said. “I need to deal with something.”
Father gripped my arm. “Son, tell me you won’t do anything foolish?” I rarely saw fear in his eyes, but there it was.
“Not the kind of foolishness you fear. It’s an act of cowardice and a crime toward the ones left behind.” I ripped away from his grip and stalked away.
Faro hurried after me. “Do you need my help?”
“No.”
I took the car. Twenty minutes later, I knocked at my in-laws’ house. When they opened the door, I pointed my gun at them. “Let’s talk about Andrea and Gaia.”
The next day, their maid found them dead in their bedroom. They’d shot themselves, unable to bear the death of their son and daughter. That was the official statement.
The present
Slowly, I turned away from the fireplace, facing my young wife. She was pale, her lips parted in horror after my story. “When I married Gaia, she was in love with her half-brother. I didn’t know it back then. Her parents did but chose not to divulge the information. Maybe now you understand why I was wary of Christian.”
Giulia covered her mouth with her palm, staring down at the floor as if she couldn’t bear looking at me. I couldn’t blame her. It was a story that had shaken up even my father and Faro. “Oh my God.”
I grimaced. I hated remembering, and worse speaking about what happened, but even worse than all that was the look on Giulia’s face now that she knew the truth. “After I married Gaia, she asked me if her half-brother could become one of her bodyguards. I agreed because she was miserable away from home and I thought it would help. I wanted her to find happiness in our marriage.”
Giulia nodded, not looking up. “Her parents? You killed them.”
“I did. They betrayed me. Their lies cost Gaia and Andrea their life.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, horrified. Giulia was a good girl. Kind and positive, willing to see the light even in the dark. I’d dragged one woman into an abyss. I desperately hoped Giulia would be spared the same fate. “Gaia practically asked you to kill them in her last letter.”
“She knew me well.” Occasionally I would share details of my work with her when I’d been particularly shaken or when she asked, which didn’t happen often.
Giulia shook her head. She’d said our marriage would be doomed if I didn’t tell her the truth, but I had a feeling the truth just ended whatever had been blossoming between us. Losing Gaia hadn’t hurt. For one, because she’d betrayed me, and because I’d never loved her. Losing Giulia—I wouldn’t get over it. We hadn’t been together long, but in the weeks of our marriage, she’d brightened my days more than I thought possible.
“I never raised my hand against Gaia, not then either. I would have never killed her. Whatever you decide, you don’t have to worry about your safety, Giulia. I won’t hurt you.”
I couldn’t breathe. Hearing Cassio tell the story of what happened in a raw, bitter voice had unsettled me deeply. This was so much worse than I expected. The idea of finding Cassio with another woman tore at me. How much worse must it have been for him? Finding his pregnant wife with her half-brother, a man he trusted, and finding out his children might not even be his. It was too horrific to contemplate. Even I wasn’t sure what I would have done in a situation like that. Probably not killed someone, but I wasn’t a man raised to survive in the mafia.
Cassio smiled grimly seeing my expression. “That’s the man you married, Giulia. I understand if you’re scared of me now. I won’t stop you from moving into another bedroom, but you’ll certainly understand that we’ll have to stay married for Simona and Daniele. They can’t lose you too.”
I pushed to my feet, crawled on Cassio’s lap, and wrapped my arms around him even as he stiffened. I kissed him hard. God, this was horrible. Everything. It wasn’t okay that Cassio had killed a man in a jealous rage, but he was a killer, and he, like all the men in our world, had killed for less. Part of me understood.
Confusion mingled with hesitant hope in Cassio’s eyes. “What… what are you doing?”
I pressed my face against his throat. He wrapped an arm around me lightly. “Giulia? Say something.”
“I’m not scared of you.” I wasn’t. Maybe I should have been, but I’d always known Cassio was capable of brutality for something as trivial as power and money. That he killed because someone hurt him, it only showed he wasn’t an emotionless killer.
Cassio slipped a finger under my chin and nudged my face up. “You heard what I said.”
“I did. You protected Daniele and Simona. You kept Gaia alive despite what she did. I know it isn’t something many men would have done. It’s more than I expected, knowing the stories about you.”