“She was,” Dario confirms. “Your mother was a free spirit. I tried to warn your dad, but I think he believed if he got her pregnant, she’d stay, and she did, for a while.” I rest my forehead in my palms to slightly rub my temples. “If he couldn't have her, no one could.”
“He killed her.” A wave of memories floods over me. I drop my hand, remembering some of the details but not all. There are still these small gaps, but I can piece them all together. “And I killed him.”
They’d been fighting, always fighting. My mother had another lover, there had been a few in fact, if I recall correctly. I heard the shot. I was young, but I knew what the sound was, and I knew where to get a gun for myself. When I entered the room to see my mother dead on the floor and my father with the gun in his hand, I knew he killed her, and a fear filled me that I was going to be next. I took advantage of him being distracted by what he’d done.
“Your father lost all control that night,” Dario says, and I know what he’s getting at.
“And I lost control last night. Is that where you’re going with this?”
“It doesn’t worry you?” Dario questions.
“It doesn’t worry me,” Cosima says from the doorway. I stand when I see her. She’s got a fierce expression on her face, and it is aimed right at her father. “I’m not scared of Z. He’d never hurt me.”
“Are you certain, sweetness?” I ask her.
“I’d bet my life on it.” She smirks. Dario mutters a curse.
“Come here and stop upsetting your father,” I order her.
“Fine,” she huffs, rolling her eyes but coming to me. I pull her into me the second she is close enough for me to grab, sitting in the process so that she’s in my lap.
Cosima has on another dress that doesn’t hide the marks I put on her. “Tell them you won’t hurt me.” Now it’s her ordering me.
“I’d never harm Cosima; if she tried to run from me, I’d just have to lock the house down.” Cosima lets out a small giggle. I’m not sure what is funny, but okay. “And Cosima is too sweet to try and take on a lover knowing it would be certain death for them. One she’d have to watch.”
“You’re a psycho.” She laughs harder. “I suppose if I want someone dead, I’ll pretend to be interested in them.”
“If you want someone dead someday, you only have to tell me, sweetness.”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Your jealousy is kind of hot.” Cosima turns her head toward me to press a quick kiss to my lips, solidifying what I have always believed since she entered this world.
She is my perfect match and was always meant to be mine. That is all that matters to me. Cosima is my god, the only person I live my life for, worship, and could take me to my knees.
Chapter Twenty-Three
COSIMA
Everyone is watching us. It’s for the best that everything is out in the open now, especially for my father. I thought us keeping this to ourselves might be better for everyone while we moved past War’s wedding and so on. After last night, that doesn’t matter. It’s not good for my husband, and he comes first.
"Are you okay?" I ask him, having heard part of what they'd been saying. I have always been rather good at sneaking around the house and listening in when I shouldn't be. It’s how I got most of my information growing up.
"If you're good, I'm good," he answers, placing his hand on my shoulder, his thumb stroking my neck, likely over one of the love bites he'd left.
“I’m more than good,” I tell him, staring directly into his eyes. I want him to see that what I heard doesn’t scare me. That it doesn’t make me look at him any differently than before.
“I think Cosima should hear the rest. It does after all center around her,” War says, and I know he’s speaking to our father.
“Mi dispiace, tesoro mio.” My father says sorry in Italian, making me sit up straighter.
“What did you do?” Z stiffens, and I can feel him wanting to get up. I place my hand on his chest.
“Dad?”
“You were too little to remember, and we never told you, but your mother was taken from me once.”
“No, I don’t remember it,” I respond, but I knew it happened.
It slowly pieced together for me when I was growing up. My hearing is rather impeccable. I knew my mother was taken, but they had gotten her back relatively unharmed. The same can’t be said about the Lombardi family.
