Page 93 of Brutal Legacy

“But she’s clearly not dead! You just turned your back on her?”

“She turned her back on me. I don’t mourn the dead, Giada, you know that. When you’re gone, you’re fucking gone, and she was gone.” My voice rose toward the end of my words, my frustration with myself and the circumstances bleeding through my control.

Giada was incredulous. I rarely lost my cool.

She nodded, then reached out a hand and patted my arm. One of the few whose touches I didn’t mind.

“Okay, I get it. She was dead to you… You never wanted to see her again. But Elio, you just married her.”

And there was the fucking irony of the century right there.

“That reminds me, don’t you think that the good prosecutor sent her the backup he was holding over Zio Salvatore? Has she mentioned it?”

I blew out a long breath. The fucking package from her father. I’d forgotten about it completely. That’s how fucked up being near Georgia had made me.

“No, and she won’t. She won’t volunteer anything. I’ll get it from her if she’s got it. Let’s see what he has on us, get rid of it, and leave the rest. Enough to sink the Ravellis forever. They’ll get off our backs as they scramble to stay ahead of the law.”

Giada nodded. “You want me to search her room?” She wriggled her fingers. “I’ve got the expert touch.”

“No. I’ll get it. She can’t lie to me. Leave it with me.”

“Where are you going?” Giada asked when I got up to leave.

I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to my room at this point. I needed to be far away.

“I have to go out. I need to — just be far away from here, at least for a while.”

I stood, and my sister followed, concern filling her face.

“If you want to help me… get the woman upstairs a needle and thread, or something to keep her from trying to climb out the window.”

“Okay, got it. Getyour wifea needle and thread,” Giada said, following me.

I went toward the door.

“Giada,” I warned her.

“What? Isn’t that what she is?” Giada protested.

Yes. That was what she was.My wife.Something dark and possessive snaked through my blood at that thought. One of those demons I’d carried back from hell, alive and well inside me.

I turned on my heel and strode away.

26

GEORGIA

Aknock at the door a short time after Elio left had me spinning around guiltily. I’d been carefully going through the contents of his room, looking for any kind of clue as to the kind of man Elio Santori had become, because I certainly didn’t recognize him. Sure, his face was that of the devastatingly handsome man who had charmed me all those years ago, but his soul… that was very different.

The door opened, and a beautiful dark-haired woman lounged against it. Her eyes weren’t the same, but the family resemblance was undeniable.

She had to be Elio’s little sister. The one he’d always been planning to get back.

“I’m not interrupting your snooping, am I?” she asked lazily, immediately clocking my bent-over position at the bedside table.

I straightened up and shook my head. “No. I was finished.”

I really was finished. Elio had nothing of any kind of personal nature in the room. Maybe he’d scrubbed it before locking me up in here. That was the only way to explain the fact that therewasn’t a single scrap of personality in the whole place. It really was a prison cell.

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