Page 355 of Vicious Saint
No…
I crawl backwards as fast as I can into a dark corner, then, huddled in a ball I squeeze my eyes shut to will away my suspicions.
There’s no way. My mom wouldn’t do this to me.
She wouldn’t. Auntie wouldn’t. They love me too much.
I’m farther from the living room, but not far enough to avoid the horror of what the guy says next.
“And you think, what,fiore? That you can hide, lie, change your daughter’s name…and it will somehow drain my blood from her veins?”
The name part hurts, but it’s the blood part that has my heart shattering into eighteen pieces.
One for every year I just found out my mom’s been lying to me.
Somehow through the internal and external chaos, I manage to climb to my feet and stumble like a drunk on my way to the living room.
“I warned you about that money,” the man says harshly when Mom starts to cry. “How winning it would draw too much of their attention. Yet still, you didn’t listen.”
“I just wanted to give Hendrix the life she deserves!”
“Caterina!” he shouts. “Caterina Salvini! And I could’ve provided the entire fucking world to her on a platter from the beginning. Including my protection.”
Boom goes the dynamite.
I don’t realize I’m crying, or standing in the threshold of the living room, until Darla gasps.
“Mom? What’s going on?”
Mom and Vic whip around, matching horrified stares.
The man, though, moves gradually, as if he’s been expecting this moment, and when I finally catch sight of his face my blood runs cold.
Not from the threatening size of him.
Or how his presence dominates the room.
It’s his eyes, although exuding danger, they’re green like mine.
“Mom?” I call out to her again, voice trembling as he watches me.
I get nothing in response.
And when the man speaks for her, it’s in Italian.
Something along the lines of “Don’t you feel my blood in your veins?”
The question is not a question, more like a haunted manifestation. Because immediately after the man asks, I see more of his similar features.
Dark hair, skin tone, even our lips.
It’s unbelievable, yet undeniable at the same time.
I have no doubt he knows I see it too, but I shake my head regardless.
The man chuckles, then smiles in a way that shows neither come naturally to him, but he’s trying for my sake to appear friendly.
Loving, even.
