Page 32 of Desire and Revenge

“Let me take an educated guess, then. You are a sheltered, twenty-one-year-old who’s gone from receiving orders from Daddy dearest to receiving orders from your husband. All your life you’ve been told that your duty is to the men that own you, and you think you’re supposed to fit into the box of whatever they tell you that you are, because you don’t have a choice, because if you toe the line, you’ll be rewarded some freedom someday,” I recite. “But you’re different.”

“No, I’m not! Stop trying to make me into something that I’m not.”

“You hate him. You hate Sebastian, admit it.”

“I don’t hate him.”

Above us, lightning flashes in the sky, and I see how white her face is. “You’re cold. Go inside.”

“No.”

“Get the hell inside, Sofia.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“You’re going to catch your death out here. Get inside,now.”

Stubborn, infuriating, hardheaded. Those are just a few adjectives that can be used to describe her, followed by beautiful, alluring, and the only woman I’ve ever been so curious about.

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do. Or take care of me. Or protect me. Or fight for me. I get enough of being shoved around from everyone else.”

My fingers curl into fists at my side. “Someone needs to. Someone needs to care for you. Show you what it means to have somebody in your corner.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Then who the hell is it going to be?” I step closer to her, my voice low and intense. This time, she stands her ground,her defiance clear in the way she holds herself. “Because it’s definitely not your father, and it sure as hell isn’t the man who put his goddamn hands on you.”

“I told you, he didn’t do this,” her voice trembles. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because for some reason I can never understand, you insist on thinking your husband is a good man.”

“He’s not a bad man. There is no good or bad in our world. There are just men who do bad things sometimes.”

I grit my teeth in a mixture of frustration and fury. It is so ingrained in her to think all of this is normal, and maybe at one time, it had been the same for me.

When I got out and saw life outside of the tiny bubble of the Cosa Nostra, I finally understood that the men I used to look up to were nothing but monsters.

I don’t claim to be a good man. I’ve done my fair share of taking lives and using people for my own good, but the one rule I’ve always followed is No Women, No Children. You don’t put your hands on them and neither do you take advantage of them.

A powerful thunder sound booms across the sky, and the world seems to rock with the force of it. The sky lights up, and I see her green eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.

“At least I know exactly who he is,” she continues, voice full of accusation. “Unlike you. You’re different from one day to the next. You think I can ever trust you? I can’t even trust you to be the same person tomorrow, so how am I supposed to believe that you won’t take back all your care when I need it most?”

“I’m not one of the men in your life who has let you down.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turns around to walk away and my hand lashes out of its own will, clamping around her arm, firm enough to keep her in place but loose enough that if she really wants to walk away, she can.

“I’ve never hurt you, yet somehow, I’m the one who gets all your wrath. How can you stay in this shitty marriage with a man who lives to humiliate you and yet you want nothing to do withme?” It’s the most confusing part of all of this, and I’ve been wracking my brain wondering why she continues to take it with a smile.

I know for many women born into this life, they have no other choice, but it’s easy to see the resentment in their eyes. Like Sebastian’s cousins and his aunt, they are full of so much bitterness.

“I know it’s not love.” She flinches at the word. “And certainly not your love for money, so tell me what it is.”

“It’s my duty.”

That word!“Does your duty end in a coffin, six feet under?”

She tears away from my hold. “I’m not special! Hundreds of women have done it before me, and hundreds more will do it after me.”

---