“I don’t know,” I say again as I drop my head onto Bastian’s shoulder and let my orgasm wash over me. I let it drown me just for a moment. Just this one small, fleeting safe space in time. And when I open my eyes again, I’m lying on my back on the couch with a cushion beneath my head and a blanket over me. I’m dressed. They must have put my dress on me when we were finished. When I passed out.

Amadeo and Bastian are standing at the desk talking quietly, and on the coffee table is the switchblade. The room smells of sex. It’s the scent of us. But then my gaze catches on the folder, and I remember our conversation.

My heart feels heavy, but my head is clearer as I sit up. The brothers turn to me. I pick up the folder and open it.

“She’s my sister,” I tell them, looking over reports I can’t really understand. But for the first time since my father’s death, I feel like I know what I need to do. The fog has cleared for now at least.

“Half sister. Your father isn’t Emma’s father, Vittoria,” Amadeo says. “You share the same mother but not the same father.” I look up at him.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

“I know you don’t, but it’ll work in our favor.”

It takes me a minute, but I understand what he means. “Blood.”

He nods. “Exactly. If your father isn’t her father, it means she shares no blood with Lucien. Which means you can file for custody as her closest blood relation. It gives you the upper hand.”

I nod, but I’m thinking. My mother had a lover? I knew she was unhappy, didn’t I? For years. My father was very protective of her to the point of obsession. She was a beautiful bird in a gilded cage. But it was how we were. How he was with both of us. Not with Emma, though. Never with Emma. And things changed at home after she was born. I remember that well. Nothing I could put my finger on, but everything felt different.

“Who is he?” I ask.

“Don’t know that yet,” Amadeo says.

Bastian comes to sit beside me as I study the bandage on my thigh, tracing the map of bruises and cuts. “We’re going to need to bubble wrap you,” he says.

I smile, setting my head on his shoulder.

Amadeo sits on the coffee table, his knees touching mine. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I look up at him. At my beautiful husband. His eyes can look so cold yet hide emotions that burn so hot. I look at his mouth and touch his lips. And I feel my heart slip a little as I sit there with them both.