Page 123 of Vicious Intentions
“What do you want, Raffaele?” I ask, not rising to his bait.
“What if I said I wanted her?” he says, glancing at her face, a soft, sad smile cresting his lips.
“She’s a person, Rafe. She’s not something you just give away.”
“Bullshit! If she can be stolen, she can be given too.”
My jaw clenches, but I refuse to move, though it’s getting harder and harder not to.
“That’s what you did, you know? Steal her away from me. And now you’re stealing her away from the only home she has ever known. What kind of fucking monster even does shit like that?”
The kind that would do just about anything for the woman he loves.
Still, I don’t say that to Raffaele. He hasn’t earned my honesty.
“If you don’t want anything, then what—”
“I never said I didn’t want anything,” Raffaele cuts in, confirming my suspicion that he’s holding my girl hostage in his arms because he has his own agenda.
“I’m all ears.”
Raffaele runs his fingers through Anna’s hair just to spite me, then looks me straight in the eye.
“Our father said something to me the other day, and it got me thinking.”
“You shouldn’t listen to anything that piece of shit tells you,” I interject.
“Funny. Nico told me the exact same thing. But what can I say? I’m curious by nature.” He shrugs unapologetically.
“I’m growing tired of these games, Rafe. Just spit it out already.”
“I want to see the scars,” he says, point-blank.
“Excuse me?” I ask, since this was the last thing I expected my brother to blurt out.
“You once said that you hold scars that were intended for me. Our bastard of a father said something similar, even if he alluded that you had it coming anyway. So I want to see them. I want to see how my big brother defended me when no one else did. When even Carlo refused to.”
My chest tightens at his request. Not because of what he’s asking, but because he still doesn’t believe I would go to such lengths to protect him.
I don’t utter a word as I take off my suit jacket, then proceed to unbutton my shirt. Once the final button is undone, I stripmy shirt off and let him take a good, hard look at the brother he despises so much.
“Ginevra loved her smokes, remember? Couldn’t go more than half an hour without lighting one up,” I say as I brush my fingers over every scar and burn mark on my chest. “But she was old school. Never did like lighters much. She always said she preferred the sound of a match, the way it caught fire when it hit the timber.” Raffaele’s expression remains perfectly stoic as he takes in every last inch of me. “These right here, these were meant for you. You were sound asleep in your crib the night she decided to sneak into your room, while I was wide awake, lying on the floor beside you. Oh, how she hated that. Hated that you weren’t alone as she expected. Whatever she had planned died the second she realized she couldn’t get to you without going through me,” I snarl, remembering that night as if it were yesterday.
Since the day our father brought Raffaele home with him, I had been holed up in his nursery every night, curled up beside his crib, refusing to leave him alone in that house of horrors. Even at that tender age, I knew that sooner or later, Ginevra would come for my baby brother. But if she wanted him, she would have to go through me first.
“So she pulled up a chair, sat down, and said that I’d have to suffer the brunt of her annoyance since I denied herfun. And I did. I did suffer. She smoked a whole pack of cigarettes that night. Every match she struck, she threw at me, singeing my pajamas, the fabric sticking to my skin.”
I swallow hard, the memory of burnt flesh invading my nostrils.
“When that didn’t entertain her enough, Ginevra ordered me to take off my pajamas, stand up straight, and try to catch the flicking matches with my body if I didn’t want any of them to fallinside your crib. She played that little game until the sun came up. I was six years old at the time. You weren’t even one yet.”
The disgust that was on my brother’s face not a minute ago morphs into something else. Something that almost looks like regret. Like guilt. And so the words are out of my mouth before his mind takes him to a place he can’t come back from.
“None of what I told you was your fault, Rafe. I know that you hate me right now, and I know why. But hear this. I would do it all over again, as long as it meant keeping you safe. Because that’s what real family does. We protect each other. We keep each other safe, away from the real monsters of the world. And even if you have no love left for me, you need to know that I have more than enough for both of us. Nothing and no one will ever scar you like that. Not as long as I’m still standing. Do you understand?”
Raffaele closes his eyes for a minute before opening them again and walking toward me.
“Take her. She was never mine anyway.”
