Page 78 of Savage Claim

Isabella

Istared at my sister, at the person who I had loved longer than anyone else in the entire world, and every warm feeling that I ever had seeped away. I brought my hand back and slapped her as hard as I possibly could. She cried out as her head rocked to the side.

Gemma spat out blood onto the white counter. She must have cut the inside of her cheek on her teeth. I had a hard time finding any sympathy for her pain. Gemma reached up and touched her cheek, wincing. “Izzie.”

My whole body revolted. Santino called me that when he wanted something from me. It had been years since anyone else had called me that. “Don’t.” My voice was broken glass. “You don’t ever call me that ever again.”

Her eyes were wet; her cheek was a red that was turning darker every second. “Isabella,” she tried again.

But I didn’t want to listen to her whimpering. “You are a stupid little girl,” I told her. Even to my own ears, I didn’t sound like myself. My voice was as ice cold as I felt on the inside. Gemmacovered her face with her hands. She began to sob into them, sounding every bit like the child I accused her of being, and for some reason, that enraged me all the more.

I grabbed her wrists and hauled her hands away from her face. Her eyes were puffy and wet, and she was having a hard time looking me in the eye. “Look at me, Gem,” I commanded. She did, and her eyes filled even more with tears. “Without Lorenzo, we would both be dead,” I told her. “I thought you would realize that all on your own, but obviously, I was mistaken.”

“If he hadn’t forced himself into your life?—”

“Then, Santino would have sold me to someone else, and they probably would have trafficked me. Or sold me for parts. Then, he would have come after you.”

“You can’t know that,” she insisted, and I nearly slapped her again.

“He told me as much the last time I saw him,” I said.

“No. Mom would have never let that happen.”

There was no way that she was this naïve, right? “Santino had our mother killed in front of you. What do you think she could have done to stop him?”

Her whole body jerked out of my grasp. “Shut. Up,” she all but shouted, and for a moment, she reared back as if she was going to hit me. If she did, there would be nothing I could do to save her from Lorenzo’s wrath. I might not even be able to save her as it was. “You don’t talk about my mother.”

Her mother, not ours. In any other situation, that might sting a little, but right now, I felt like we were more strangers than sisters. We might never be sisters again. “Santino would havekilled her with or without Lorenzo’s involvement,” I insisted. “Once he managed to kill me, it would have been inevitable that he would have come for you both. We are just cash cows to him to use when and how he wants. The only thing that keeps us safe from him is Lorenzo.”

Gemma was back to crying again. “He wouldn’t have done that to me,” she wept. “He left me with Mom; he wanted me to have a normal life.”

I couldn’t decide whether she was having some kind of nervous breakdown or what. She was trembling uncontrollably now, shaking her head back and forth over and over again. “Santino never ‘wanted’ anything for either of us that didn’t somehow benefit him as well,” I said. The louder she sobbed and shook and gagged on her own spit, the calmer I became. “These are the facts. This is the life that we have now. It’s time for you to grow the fuck up and accept it.”

Lorenzo was right. I had coddled her for too long. I let the wounds of her trauma fester.

Gemma looked at me, expression hostile. “How can you be okay with any of this?” she demanded. “You know what kind of monster he is.”

I shrugged. It was a question that I asked myself a lot in the beginning, but those worries had largely faded away now. There would always be the things I couldn’t wrap my head around, and I would do what I could to make those things better. At the same time, I had seen Lorenzo do horrific things, many of them in my name, and something about that made me feel so loved, so seen. “I don’t condone what he does,” I said, but even that didn’t feel quite like the truth. I tried again: “I don’t think I care about it anymore.”

“You don’t care?” she demanded.

I shook my head. “Lorenzo takes care of his family,” I said. “He would do anything for us. How can I condemn him for that?”

She was clearly horrified. “I will never understand that,” she declared. “You climb into bed with him and giggle about it over breakfast the next day, as if he wasn’t a murderer. How could you stand to let him touch you?” It was the same question that she’d asked me before, but now there was a desperate, pleading edge to it. As if she wanted me to see my sins and repent.

I tried to think of all the ways that I could possibly explain this to her, but then I realized that I didn’t really care whether she understood how I felt or not. “I love him, Gemma.” My hand touched my belly. “We’re starting a family. That’s all that I really care about.”

“You’ve been brainwashed.”

I shook my head. “I adjusted to the reality of my life.” I drew myself up and squared my shoulders. “Amalia asked me if I was Isabella Rossi or Isabella Vitali, remember?”

“And you’ve chosen to be a Vitali.” Gemma spat the name like a curse.

“I have,” I said. “That’s where my loyalties lie.”

Finally, it dawned on her what I was saying. Fear stole across her face. “Is he going to kill me? For what I did?”

“I don’t know,” I said, unable and unwilling to lie to her. She stared at me for a split-second, and then she gagged and ran for the sink, throwing up the breakfast that I had so lovingly made for her. “Traitors don’t fare well in the Cosa Nostra,” I told her.“I’m going to do everything I can to save your life, again, but I won’t make any promises.”

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