Page 159 of Salvatore

He frowns. “You were the next in line to take over. You got special treatment.”

“Did I?” I raise a brow. “Or is that what Itold youI got?”

He stares at me, unmoving, unblinking.

“What’s going on, Salvo?” Matthew asks. “What aren’t you saying?”

I turn to him, the one who escaped torment and left a space I had to fill. “What did you think would happen after you took off?” I stroll the short space between us to stop in front of him. “Did you seriously believe that after they murdered your girlfriend and you disappeared, they’d take a soft parenting approach toward their next successor?” I narrow my eyes. “I know that’s what you wanted to believe. You all did. But did you actually convince yourself it was true?”

I step up to him, wanting him to hit me. To round out the trifecta. To take the edge off this fucking brutal rage. “Name one time our fathereversoftened to adversity, you fucking coward.”

He recoils.

“Think about it,” I sneer. “What was a more logical path for him to take?”

Abri stills in Bishop’s hold.

The room falls quiet.

There’s only my bottled fury spurring my pulse into overdrive as Matthew humbles himself in silence.

“Are the puzzle pieces falling into place yet, brother?” I cock a brow. “I wasn’t offered an ounce of leniency in the years after your disappearance. Instead, I was manipulated, blackmailed, and fucking tortured into compliance far beyond what any of you had to deal with.”

“Then why lie?” Abri accuses.

“Good question.” I keep glaring at Matthew. “Why do you think? What was the only thing I had in my life that they could use against me? I certainly didn’t have much time for women.None of us had disposable money. And I couldn’t have given less fucks about the family business. That didn’t leave many options for their favored game of extortion.”

Matthew’s nostrils flare.

He knows.

“You did the same, I’m sure,” I accuse of him. “Most of the time I felt like I was following your lead because God fucking knows you must have kept a lot of shit to yourself growing up.”

His jaw ticks as the atmosphere in the room changes, the violent charge in the air losing its electricity.

“Explain,” Abri demands. “What are you saying?”

Matthew rakes a hand through his hair and retreats a step, breaking eye contact. “He’s saying he lied to protect you and Remy.”

“Lied? About what?” Remy approaches.

Matthew huffs a sardonic laugh and shakes his head, as if he can’t believe he didn’t pick up on it sooner. “Everything, I assume—what they did to him, how he was treated.”

The weight of everyone’s attention presses down on me.

I’d expected the truth to be some sort of set-me-free, emotionally vindicating moment. But everything still feels the same—my anger, the resentment, the shame.

“Bullshit.” Remy shoves my chest. “We all had the same base level of trauma—the restrictions, the financial slavery. You never mentioned additional torment. I had the fucked up fifteenth birthday, and we all know the added nightmares Abri went through. But you never said a damn thing. Not once.”

“Because there was nothing to be said. Words wouldn’t change a thing.”

“It would’ve changed my goddamn opinion of you.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “All this time I thought you were a prick for the fun of it.”

“Whenever we got along, they felt threatened.”

“Threatened?” Abri asks. “And what would they do when they felt that way?”

I throw back the remainder of my coffee, buying time, not having planned to ever go so far down this path. But they all stare at me as I hold her gaze, their pained curiosity tightening around me. Suffocating.

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