Page 106 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
I draw in a shaky breath. Realizing I’m no longer moving, Giorgio looks over his shoulder, and his expression darkens when he sees how freaked out I am.
“I’ll explain everything.”
“Okay.” My voice comes out like a croak.
No, Giorgio couldn’t have killed his mom. There’s no way. When he spoke about her, it sounded like she was really important to him.
He pulls me into his bedroom and locks the door. When he lets go off my hand, I shrink into the wall. “You’re scaring me,” I confess. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Giorgio stops in the center of the room, his broad chest rising and falling with steady, even breaths.
He rakes his fingers through his hair and says, “That cottage used to be the groundkeeper’s. My mother lived there when she was a girl.”
I wait for him to continue, my heart rapping against my ribs.
Walking over to the window, he links his hands behind his back. “When I was a child, she always told me she was happiest here. My mother regretted leaving her family behind to go to Naples. She married my father a year after she arrived in the city, had me another year later, and for the next decade and a half, she suffered from terrible depression because of what had happened to her.”
“What happened?”
“My first memory of my mother is of her crying while she rocked me to sleep. She cried a lot during my childhood. My father hated when she did it in front of him, so she’d hold her tears back until we were alone.”
My question hangs unanswered, but I don’t dare interrupt him. The words drip out of him slowly, as if he has to work for each one.
“She killed herself when I was fifteen. Hung herself in her bedroom while my father was doing his deliveries around the neighborhood. I found her like that when I came home from school. That morning, I could tell she wasn’t well, and I asked my father to wait at home until I got back so that someone would be there to keep an eye on her, but he didn’t. He left, and she ended her life.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God.”
Giorgio shakes his head. “She never blamed me explicitly, and in some way, I think she loved me, but it was the kind of love that eventually tore her apart.” His voice turns brittle.
I push myself off the wall and take a few tentative steps toward him. “Giorgio, I don’t understand. Blame you for what?”
When he doesn’t answer right away, I move closer and wrap my arms around his waist. I think he might push me away, but instead, after a moment, he drops one of his arms and places a palm to rest over mine. The fabric of his dress shirt brushes against my lips, and his familiar scent reaches my nose. I press deeper into him.
“She was violently raped.”
My eyes widen in horror. “By who?”
“Sal.”
He turns, and the movement forces me to drop my arms and take a step back. Late afternoon sun streams into the room from behind him, leaving his face cloaked in shadows.
“She was nineteen when it happened. She never fully recovered. My father knew she was unwell, but he didn’t care. He spent many years telling her when she was at her lowest that she needed to move on. That it happened to so many women, friends of theirs. ‘Look at them,’ he’d say. ‘They’re fine. Why aren’t you?’”
His face becomes a grimace. I realize then that Giorgio hates his father. Maybe as much as he hates Sal.
“I moved her body here after I bought the castello,” he says in a somber voice. “She was first buried in a cemetery in Naples. My father owns the lot beside her. I couldn’t stand the thought of him lying beside her one day, so I bribed someone to dig up the coffin, and I brought it here in secret. I wanted her to rest in the place she always considered to be her home.
“There’s no good way to say it, Martina, so I’ll be blunt. I didn’t deal with it well… Moving her here. I…lost it in that cottage. I was so angry. I just wanted to destroy everything in my sight. I was ashamed of who I was and the pain I brought her.”
My forehead crinkled. What pain? It sounds like Giorgio was the only one who cared about her.
“But—”
“I already told you I blame Sal for her death, but the truth is…I’m equally to blame.” He drags a palm over his mouth. “My mother never told me the details, but—” He expels a harsh breath though his nose. “Based on some of the things she said, I know the rape was brutal and horrible. She had to go to the hospital afterwards. A few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant.”
My heart stutters, and there’s this feeling of a rapid descent.
“Wha-what did she do?”
