Knowing what I would find on the next page, I flipped past it, not wanting to see just yet. I got to the photograph of Sergio and his wife on their wedding day. She’d been laughing so hard her eyes were screwed shut in the picture. Then came the date he’d died. Then the one announcing his son’s birth just months after his death.

He’d never even seen his son.

I flipped back the few pages I’d skipped, my heart racing, blood pounding against my ears, the noise unbearable. I found the page that pictured the third son. Dominic. His parents smiled, but I saw the strain in their faces, the effort it took. They didn’t look like they had with the other two births.

The most recent photograph of Dominic had to be at least ten years ago. He’d have been twenty-five. He stood beside his father at a party, his arm around his father’s shoulder, his grin cocky, everything about him carefree, as if he were the boy who would have it all. The girl by his side stared up at him, enamored with him, when he seemed barely aware of her presence.

Dominic Benedetti with his father, Franco. The man who’d pledged to take care of my family. Did Victor work for him? Was it a sort of rebellion against Angus Scava? He knew Angus didn’t like him. But did that mean Victor did Franco Benedetti’s bidding? It made sense. The brand screamed the truth. Mateo and I had been branded with the Benedetti family crest, not the Scava mark. Franco Benedetti had fucked us over, had promised my father he’d protect us then killed my brother and taken me prisoner. Dominic, a man I thought my ally in some strange way, was his son. I wore on my hip Dominic Benedetti’s mark as if I were branded cattle, a thing owned, not a human life at all.

He’d lied to me.

He’d told me Victor was playing a game, but Dominic was the master game maker.

Fury raged inside me.

I’d been fooled.

I’d been played.

I’d fucked my enemy. I’d slept beside him, clinging to him, and I felt sick for it.

I picked up the first thing I saw and screamed, sending it crashing into the bloodstained wall, watching the glass shatter into shards on the marble.

I didn’t stop.

15

Dominic

Something crashed to the floor in the other room. Gia screamed. I grabbed the pistol and jumped to my feet, running through the living room toward the open dining-room doors, where the sound of something else shattering had me cocking my gun, ready to fire.

Her scream came again, but I didn’t hear fear in it.