Page 8 of The Last Vendetta

From the moment Cecilia screamed in the ballroom, chaos ensued. I’d never forget the terror on Renzo’s face as he ran inside, and I hurried in after him to see what happened. That sight would be forever etched in my mind, too.

Giovanni Bernardi stared at his son, roaring with rage and demanding to know who’d killed him.

I’d never be able to forget that father’s plea for an answer, either. So enraged and instantly shocked, he lost it. Unhinged and red-faced, he began yelling at everyone to know who’d killed Luka.

Why?

How?

But most of all, he repeated his desperate demands to know who’d murdered the groom.

Any parent would be shocked and furious. Hurt and lost. Bewildered and aggrieved. No one ever wanted to see their own child to the grave. I often felt like a parent myself, raising my younger sisters, and I couldn’t comprehend that heart-deep loss.

My father’s reactions, however, made no sense.

He’d been moody and sad all evening, acting like his usual depressed self, but the moment Cecilia screamed that her husband was dead, the Romano guards closest to the head table had attacked him. Rocco Acardi had no reason to be struck, but in the heat of the moment, he had been beaten badly, caught in the commotion that followed Cecilia’s screams as Luke lay dead, slumped over the pristine-white fabric of the head table he’d shared with his wife.

“Is Father going to be okay?” Marianna glanced at the Acardi men helping him inside our mansion. He plopped onto the couch, breathing hard with blood streaming down his face. Our father wasn’t the fittest man, but he looked every bit of his age, worn and bruised as he groaned and sank into the cushions.

He didn’t look good, and I couldn’t fault her for being startled, but he would live. Violence was a given in this life—but not like this. Not every wedding ended with murder. Not all outings resulted with our father being struck directly like this.

“Of course. Of course,” I replied.

Mother continued to rage at him, demanding to know why he hadn’t defended himself. Why he’d let those Romano guards strike out at him.

She didn’t care that he was hurt, only that he’d let the Acardi name look weak when he didn’t act like a strong, fit man half his age and defend himself even though he was outnumbered.

She didn’t care about Marianna being traumatized and witnessing such an uproar of violence at the wedding. My sister was only fourteen, too young to be thrust into this much violence. But she didn’t care.

Nor would she care about Lucia and Beatrice hearing the noise and coming downstairs, scared and alarmed by the shouting.

Mother didn’t notice or pause in her rants at my father, too used to my acting like a mother in her place.

“Go on upstairs. Back to bed.” I shooed them away, trying to block the sight of the blood on our father’s face. Lucia saw anyway and frowned, but she wrapped her arm around Beatrice’s shoulders and guided her to turn around.

“Take them back to bed,” I told Marianna. “They’re too young to be worried about this.”

You are too, I thought.

She listened, leading our younger sisters back up the stairs. Father was wounded, but it wasn’t like he was dying. Still, this was a startling sight. If any violence visited us, it was when one of our soldiers was hit or killed. Father seldom did anything on the “front line” of any meeting, and a wedding wasn’t a scene of war.

Or it shouldn’t have been.

Luka Bernardi’s death would rock our world. Everyone would be impacted in some way, whether as a reminder of our mortality, an example of how deep rivalries and hatred could run, or another demonstration that we surrounded ourselves with violent people.

It still felt surreal, and part of my stubbornness to let Luka’s death sink in was because of where I was and what I was doing when the news broke out.

I’d been hiding from my parents, sheltered by Renzo while he?—

Stop. I had no business wanting him to touch me like that. I had even less business demanding that he kiss me more. And it was not the time to think about it at all. His brother had been killed. My father was wounded.

Not the time to be thinking about what I’d been pulled from.

I exhaled as my sisters trudged up the stairs, glancing back at me, then at Father on the couch.

“You too,” Uncle Dario said. He approached me slowly, wincing and leaning heavier on his cane. “Help your sisters.”

I shot him a look and shook my head. “No.” I’d be damned if I was shoved aside too. News of Luka being killed at his wedding was nothing to sweep under the rug. I had to know what had happened to Renzo’s brother. Staying up-to-date about others was a necessity, but I had to know now.

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