Page 42 of Depths of Desire
Luna’s father straightens like he still thinks he has some kind of power.
“Since before Luna was born.”
I hear a sound behind me and know instantly that Luna has entered the room. I turn to instruct her to leave, but I see the anger and hurt on her face. I turn off my microphone so my family can’t hear me. “Luna,” I say, “You shouldn’t be here for this.”
“I need to be here. I need to hear him say it. Say exactly what he’s done.” She stares at the screen. “All these years, I’ve lived in fear of him. Fear of the truth. Now I want to hear it from his lips. I’m owed at least that.”
I want to argue with her, tell her it won’t be pretty, and she will be scarred by it all, but then I know she’s already scarred and maybe this will give her some kind of closure. “Fine.” I make a promise to myself that if I think she’s suffering too much, I will take her out of here. She will not suffer at this man’s hands any longer.
I turn the microphone back.
Luna takes up a position standing just out of frame beside me, arms folded, eyes like fire. “Turn it up. I want to hear it all. No more lies.”
Her father flinches, turning to the camera. “Luna, is that?—”
“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “You don’t get to say my name.”
Renzo doesn’t even blink. “You were saying? You started selling secrets to Malrick before Luna was born. How did that come about?”
Benedetti stares at the screen and then sags. “There was a deal I was trying to make. I’d made promises about it, and took money for it, and suddenly the deal fell apart. I couldn’t get it back together. I lost the product and the money. I was a dead man. A friend gave me Malrick’s name as someone who might be able to help. I was desperate.
“I met with him, and he offered to help me if I cut him in on a slice of the action. I agreed. It was a simple deal. The type I made every day.” He let out a shuddering breath. “Until it wasn’t. I…tried to get out. I told Malrick he’d made his money and we were through. Then he showed me what he really was. He attacked some guy in front of me sucking the blood out of him. It was disgusting. He told me about vampires and magickal creatures, and then he told me if I tried to stop working with him, he would kill me faster than I could blink, but he would take a good long time with my wife.”
Luna made a small sound ,and I reach out a hand toward her. She took a step back. She was not looking for comfort from someone like me. So be it.
Renzo’s voice stays level. “Why didn’t you go to Aldo Giordano, former head of the family and your best friend for help?”
“Because Malrick had proof that I’d given him details about shipments to pay him off. He owned me. My business, my debts, my name. Aldo would have killed me if he knew. And then Malrick offered the one thing my wife wanted more than anything, a child. He offered us a child.”
His eyes flick toward the screen again, as if looking for Luna. Pleading. Pathetic.
“And how did it come about that Malrick would marry Luna?” Renzo cut right to the heart of the issue.
Benedetti turned back to the screen. “Luna,cara, I didn’t have a choice. He promised me he wouldn’t hurt you.”
A tang hits my sinuses as adrenaline floods Luna’s system. Her heart rate ticks up, and the anger coming off her buffets me. This is precisely why I didn’t want her to hear this. While I can determine her physical reaction to her father’s confession, I can’t sense her emotional one. Her face says she’s livid, but my guess is that he has broken her heart. It’s hard to realize a parentdoesn’t love you the way you thought they did. I know from experience.
“Don’t ever speak to me,” Luna says through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”
Her father looks sad for the first time. I wasn’t buying it. “You had to know what the deal meant, and yet you still made it, why?” I growl.
“Because I needed more help and Malrick was the only one who could supply it.”
“What help could you possibly need that was more important than me?” Luna demands.
“Your mother. She—struggled with aging. With losing her youthfulness. She couldn’t seem to accept that she wasn’t going to stay young forever. She realized Malrick never age, and she wanted the same thing. I tried to talk her out of it. Told her she was just being foolish, but she wouldn’t hear of it. It was like she lost her mind.” He stopped speaking as if suddenly lost in the past.
“She reached out to Malrick without telling me. She made the deal with him. He promised her…I don’t know what the hell he promised her, but she believed him. He said he wanted Luna to be his wife, and she agreed, providing she didn’t age.”
I brace myself as disbelief pours off Luna. “How,” she starts, “do you go from making a deal with the devil to have a baby to offering that baby up to the devil to save your looks?”
Benedetti shrugs. “It was my fault. The money made her a bit crazy. Suddenly, it was all about keeping up with Sophia Giordano and Connie Dominici, the matriarch ofla famigliaand her best friend. It was all about being on top. She liked it, no, she loved it almost like it was an addiction. She couldn’t see that she was losing her mind. Anyway, the deal was set before I was aware of it. There’s nothing I could have done to get out of it.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Renzo nudges me.Looks like it’s just a verbal contract. We should be clear then. Luna can stay with you. For now. We need to formulate a plan on how we’re going to respond to Malrick’s sinking of our cargo.
Agreed. I’m going to take Luna out with me now. She doesn’t need to see the rest.
I stand up. “Luna, we need to go.”
