Page 83 of The Last Vendetta

“She ran.”

Fuck! While I was glad she’d run from whatever fate waited for her in the cell, that she’d run to safety, I feared this meant I would never see her again. Now, more than ever, she would make good on her desire to run away for good, like she’d hinted at when she was informed of the possibility that she might be Nickolas’s wife one day.

“Why—”

Giovanni held his hand up, frowning deeper. “Cecilia was pregnant? When she was married to Luka? Before then?”

Dean nodded, holding up his phone higher. “Yes.”

I turned, skimming the lines quickly. The results were in. And on the line identifying the father of her baby was a name I hadn’t counted on seeing.

“Whose is it?” Giovanni asked, crowding in close to see. He sounded too stunned, stuck in disbelief, to catch up.

“Rocco Acardi,” I read of the test on Dean’s phone.

“Acardi!” Giovanni bellowed. He fisted his hands and glared at me.

Giulia’s father. He was the one Cecilia had fallen in love with while engaged to my brother. He was the one who’d knocked her up before she married Luka.

I thought back to the impassioned, furious words Cecilia spat at her deathbed. When she lashed and snarled at Giulia that she would be pissed if the unborn son she’d carried from her affair with Rocco would have lived.

Because it would be a son? To take over the Family instead of anything Giulia would achieve through marriage?

It made no sense. I wouldn’t have much time to think about it, though.

Giovanni swore and stepped up to me.

“Go.” He licked his lips and shook his head, seeming more frightened and alarmed. “Go, Renzo. You must kill her.”

I reared back, studying him. “Kill who?”

“Isabella.” He nodded and grabbed my hand. “You must.”

He no longer was shouting at me, no longer acting like he was upset with me. Now, he stared at me like I was his last hope.

“She’s unhinged. She’s crazy.” He shook his head, muttering more curses that I couldn’t keep up with. “She’s… She’s got to be stopped before she kills someone else!”

“What?” I asked as Dean looked between us, seeming as lost as I felt.

“She’s…” He groaned and ran his hand through his hair. “Isabella Acardi. She must be stopped. She’s gone too far. First, my wife. Then my son?”

I narrowed my eyes. My heart raced faster and faster the more he ranted these strings of nonsense. Or was it nonsense? If he was speaking the truth and he truly believed Giulia’s mother had killed Luka…

“Explain,” I ordered. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He gripped my forearm again, as if a physical touch would emphasize it. “She is crazy. The last time a man chose another woman over her, she killed her.”

“Who?” Although I had a sinking feeling who he was talking about.

Him. And my mother.

“I didn’t stay with her. We were fooling around before I was arranged to marry your mother. And she didn’t like it. Isabella was furious that I stuck with marrying your mother, and she became deranged when I loved her. She killed her, Renzo.”

Rage swept through me. “Isabella Acardi killed my mother?” Arianna Bernardi didn’t live long. I’d only had her in my life for four years, and I only had photos and videos to know her by with the few memories I’d formed before she died—supposedly, in a car accident.

“I never had proof,” Gio admitted, shaking his head and lowering his gaze. “I could never prove it, not completely, but over the years, she gave me hints.”

“She taunted you,” Dean said, his glare full of fury. “For years, the security team dealt with her teasing messages and suggestions that she’d seen to Arianna’s death.”

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