Page 77 of A Taste Of Darkness

“I told you how I stopped my uncle from raping you…” he said.

I nodded, but since he wasn’t looking at me, I confirmed with my voice. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t the first time he did it, but it was the first time I was more aware of what he was doing. Doesn’t matter. Uhm… after I brought you to your family, and came back home, I uh…”

Without thinking, I reached for his hand again. He flinched slightly at the sudden contact, but when tears already swelled in my eyes and I wanted to apologize, Milo intertwined our hands and held mine tightly.

“I went to confront him about what he did, how it was wrong of him to use his power like that. He was so mad at me for robbing him of… well, you know. Anyway, to make up for what I’d interrupted, he used me.”

A gasp fell from my lips at the same time as a tear dripped from my eye and rolled down my cheek.

“He didn’t drug me,” Milo said, his voice holding pain in ways I’d never heard before. My heart was breaking for him. “I remember everything. Sometimes, I can still feel his hands on my body, and see the smug look he gave me when I begged him to stop, and how that only made him enjoy it more. He made me feel so disgusted with myself that I promised I’d never let him do this to anyone ever again. So a week later, I’d killed him. There was this weird victorious sensation in my chest. I felt relieved that he was gone, and so I figured other people who’d been through that and didn’t get justice for what was done to them would feel relieved to hear about their assaulter’s death as well.”

“So you decided to kill all of them?”

He nodded softly. “What are they going to say? No?”

I carefully leaned my head against his shoulder, he didn’t flinch this time. “I’m so sorry, Milo.”

It made sense now. Why he always told me when he was going to touch me. Why he was so cautious with everything. Why he felt the need to kill them.

Milo rested his head on mine. “Don’t be. It took a while, but I accepted it. Besides, if he didn’t do it to me, he’d still be alive.”

“Still, it shouldn’t have happened to you in the first place.”

“I’d rather it been me than you,” he said and brushed his thumb over my knuckles.

“Didn’t your parents do anything about it?” I asked, unsure whether he’d tell me. If he didn’t want to, that would’ve been fine. I could only imagine how difficult it had to be to talk about this.

He shook his head. “When I told my dad, he laughed at me. He said Pedro was a good guy—good for our family anyway—and that I must’ve been dreaming it. Dad told me to suck it up and to stop causing drama where there was none. I was a Veneto after all, we didn’t cry about anything. Besides, it’s not like boys or men would ever get raped; it was only women who did.”

How could a father say this to his son?

First of all, it was total bullshit. Men also got raped.

And even if Milo was making it up, as his father, he should’ve believed his son either way.

I climbed into Milo’s lap just to face him. His hands laid on my hips, and he looked a little startled at my sudden change in seating position.

“I don’t know what to say, Milo,” I admitted. “No words in any language could ever express how sorry I am that this happened to you, that your father treated this like it wasn’t a big deal. You have every right in the book to be mad, and you have every right to want justice.”

My hands laid on his jaw to make sure he was looking at me and didn’t try to avoid my eyes.

“You’re so strong, Milo. I don’t think anyone’s ever given you credit for how well put-together you are. But it’s so wrong that you never got to grieve what happened the way you should’ve been able to,” I said.

I couldn’t help but notice the profound sorrow etched on his face. How his eyes, which were lively and warm just five minutes ago, were now filled with unmistakable emptiness. The little spark I saw every time I looked at him had dimmed, replaced by a heart-wrenching sadness.

A tear glistened at the corners of his eyes, but he held them back, unable to let them flow.

The sigh that left him at my words carried a weight that no words could ever describe. I wished I could do something to make him happy again, but I was unsure how.

There was one thing I wasn’t sure would work, but I could try. “As I said weeks ago, what you do is admirable, even if it’s so wrong. I wish I could say killing those people was a bad thing, it is in a way… but I think you’re actually doing the world a favor. And I wish you didn’t know what it’s like to live with that kind of scar,” I said. “I wish this doing came from hearing stories, an unexplainable anger toward bad people, not from first-hand experience.”

“Please don’t be repulsed by me.” The tips of his fingers pressed into my body and fear covered his features.

“I’m not,” I replied, keeping my voice soft. “I’ve never been. Not even when I had no clue why you did this. I’ve never felt anything but respect toward you, Milo.”

His gaze turned warmer as the spark in his eyes returned. Suddenly, it was as though the world around us faded away, leaving just the two of us sitting there, on a towel in the middle of an almost empty beach.

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