Once she was able to stop the terrible retching, she crawled toward the bathroom and the cool tiles. Her clothes hurt her skin. She couldn’t stand the weight of the fabric, and her body temperature seemed to be soaring. The burning between her legs was back. Horrible. Needy. Her body wanted him—Elijah. She despised herself—and him.

Siena pulled herself into a sitting position and then shakily, using the sink, pulled herself to her feet. Her face was already swelling. There was blood streaking down her face from several cuts where Paolo’s knuckles had split her skin open. Her camisole was torn from Elijah, the material in tatters, exposing the tops of her breasts. There were bruises forming there as well. Every breath she drew was painful.

She yanked down her jeans and kicked them away from her. Wetting a washcloth she cleaned the evidence of her innocence and Elijah’s possession from between her legs and thighs, but she couldn’t take away the feeling of him there inside, filling her. She pulled off the ruined camisole and let it drop to the floor while she stared at herself in the mirror, hardly recognizing herself.

She had to tell her grandfather. No, she had to show her grandfather what his beloved, first-in-command had done to her. Then she had to confront him about Marco. She wiped the spit from her face, her stomach lurching again dangerously.

Her movements clumsy, she dragged on a T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans and went slowly down the stairs, using the bannister to keep herself upright. Each step jarred her bruised ribs so she wrapped her arms around her middle as she walked into her grandfather’s sitting room, her face still bloody, her breath hitching in her lungs with every step.

Paolo stood just inside her grandfather’s sitting room. She felt the instant tension in the room as she moved inside, bloody, swaying, holding her arms around her bruised ribs. Her grandfather looked up slowly, his old, faded eyes moving over her face and then going back to Paolo. She didn’t see censure there, only resignation.

Paolo licked at the blood on his knuckles, but said nothing, his eyes on her. She waited, her gaze fixed on her grandfather. He should be yelling. Ordering Paolo out. Instead, his gaze came back to her and he shook his head.

“Tell me you did not do this thing, Siena. You allowed the bastardo Lospostos to put his hands on you?”

She flinched at the disgust in his voice, but she didn’t move. Didn’t respond. They couldn’t make her feel any lower than she already felt. She wasn’t going to defend herself. There was no defense. Still, there was no defense for what Paolo had done and certainly none for what her grandfather had done. They were all guilty of something.

“I did not raise my granddaughter to puttaneggiare.”