Page 115 of Poison Vows

“Your grandfather, of course,” Grandpa Armando says with a chuckle. “That wily old fox! Can you believe he left first? That selfish bastard!”

An asteroid could crash right in this magnificent library at this moment, and I wouldn’t notice. All I can see, all I can taste on my tongue, is my rage.

How can he sit there and say all of that about my grandfather with a nonchalant expression?

“H-how,” I grit out with difficulty. “Did you know my grandfather, sir?”

Emmett’s grandfather smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Wow, you’re good,” he praises. “I have to say, you grew up well, Ivy Marie. The good doctor must be smiling from Heaven looking at you and how far you have come.”

I want to say something but the next thing I know, I’m sputtering and choking, having breathed wrong.

“Don’t kill yourself,” Grandpa Armando says while ringing a small bell. “You didn’t survive back then just to die in front of me now.”

Almost immediately, Ripley appears. “The young miss is in some self-induced death spell due to shock,” the old man says. “Aiutala.”

“Sì, signore.”

Before I know it, a glass of warm water is placed in my hands, and I’m being directed to drink slowly.

The absurdity of the moment is not lost on me, but I have to keep my cool. I don’t have a choice.

I can’t let this man know…

After a while of drinking the warm water and wheezing here and there, which almost had me seeing the light, I start breathing better, but my mind is whirring with questions, possibilities, and fear.

Raw, potent fear.

Ripley offers me a pretty saucer with lemon slices. I awkwardly stare at it.

“Please bite on a few pieces, Young Miss. It’ll help.”

A memory from long ago flashes in my head…

Just like now, I was being offered lemon slices to suck on after a particularly nasty panic attack.

But at that time, the one who was kneeling beside me at the back of the science building at school, was a green-eyed boy who didn’t even attend my school, but he just happened to be there that day…

“Young Miss, please,” Sir. Ripley insists. Like a robot, I reach for a slice and place it on my tongue to shock my system back to life.

It somewhat does the trick, but I’m still stuck on what Emmett’s grandfather just said.

“Are you all right now?” Grandpa Armando questions, watching me.

“Uh, yes, sir. Thank you,” I whisper hoarsely. I turn and thank the other person in the room as well. “Thank you, Sir Ripley.”

He smiles gently and then bows his head before he disappears.

“You still suffer from panic attacks.” It’s not a question, but a frank observation. “I guess I said something that chewed at your soul.”

“More like you shredded it,” I mutter, to which he chuckles.

“I apologize,” he says gently. “Though I thought maybe you knew all this already. Didn’t Alessio tell you about how close your grandfather and I were? I mean, you two have a very interestingly close relationship, don’t you?”

Straining to subdue my immense curiosity, I stare at the old man in front of me and pick the safest of the two things he just said.

If I dwell on the fact that this old man knew my grandfather before… or that Emmett knew about that too, I don’t know what I’d do.

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