“Two blue-eyed parents cannot have a brown-eyed child,” Bastian says bluntly.

Amadeo watches me while I try to process.

Bastian’s eyebrows rise. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I blink, then lower my gaze to my bandaged thigh. For hating me, he takes care of me. It’s strange. I touch it, wondering how I didn’t really feel it when it cut me with each step, only aware of it almost in my periphery, an aside. I think it’s all the things that are happening. They’re taking their toll. Snapping that worn-out thread holding me together.

“It’s in the file, Vittoria,” Amadeo says. When I look at him, I see my reflection in the glass front of the liquor cabinet behind him. I don’t look like myself. The shadows under my eyes show how tired I am even though I’ve slept. But it’s not that. There’s something deeper. Something broken. Too broken to repair. And I understand why they were all looking at me strangely. The lipstick is almost clown-like, too heavily applied and smeared, stark against my pale skin. With makeup it’s fine, but without and given the state I’m in, it just makes me look unhinged. I wipe it away with the back of my hand, managing to smear red across my cheek.

I look at Amadeo. He’s watching me intently. Watching me come apart. Because I am unraveling. I feel it.

I set the switchblade aside and climb on top of him, straddling his thighs. I wrap an arm around his neck and pull him to me, kissing him as I slip my other hand between us and undo his belt, the slacks. I slip my hand into his briefs and feel his hardening cock even as he tries to push me off.

“Dandelion,” he says against my mouth.

“No.” I grip a handful of his short hair. Eyes wide open, I kiss him. And I make him kiss me back. With the other hand, I draw the crotch of my panties aside, rise up on my knees, and slide him inside me with a deep, low moan. “Fuck me. I need you to fuck me.”

He groans, kissing me, pulling the dress off me before gripping my hips. I’m not wearing a bra. I didn’t bother. He slips one hand into my panties from behind and presses a finger to my other hole. I ride him harder, impaling myself on him again and again, but he draws me off, tearing at the string of my panties and discarding them.

“Fuck me,” I tell him, trying to get him inside me again and biting his lips before kissing him, forgetting myself as he pushes his finger into my pussy, lubricating it, then slides it to my back hole.

“I’m fucking your ass,” he tells me, gripping both cheeks and forcing them apart.