Chapter 10 Chapter 10
. “Selena is…” I faltered for a moment and inhaled deeply to steady myself. “She was the best memory of what this family could have become. Not what it is. Not what it demands.” Silence. I heard Vito straighten behind me, like he might have to intervene any second, but I kept going. “She was my twin. My counterpart. The part of me that never wanted to learn how to hate.” I glanced at my father. He remained motionless. “But now she’s gone. And with her, everything good this family has ever produced.” I stepped back without another word. I saw Vito move to my side the moment they closed my sister’s casket. Then came the walk to the grave. My father stood at the front right, Sebastian behind him. I stood front left, Vito behind me. We lifted the casket as one and carried it to her grave. With every step, I lost myself a little more. When we reached the site and I watched the casket being lowered, we took our places with the other guests at the edge and listened to the pastor’s prayer for Selena. Vito stepped closer and wrapped an arm around me. I didn’t care how things had been between us these last years. I felt empty and rested my head on his shoulder as he pulled me closer. “I’m here, Nic. I’m not leaving you alone.”
Alessandro’s POV
I stood a little apart from it all and watched my future husband very carefully. In the last three days I’d had everything about him dug up that could be found. Nothing I read matched the man I saw at that grave – and yet it all checked out. Every one of those reports, every detail. This man was what they turn us into if they start early enough. He was a Petrovich through and through. Precise and merciless, almost unmatched in brutality – nearly like myself. The perfect heir for a man like Rafaele. And even worse than him At least until he suddenly disappeared five years ago, as if he’d fallen off the world, hiding behind easels and exhibitions at his sister’s side. I had to admit, his paintings were impressive, beautiful even and completely out of place in our world. Just like Selena Petrovich: pretty and elegant, but utterly blind to the world she came from. The little she knew, she despised and that seemed to have been enough to drag Nicolai away from everything he’d been trained for. He was only ever seen with her. Only in her shadow. She looked like she’d become his compass and maybe she had. Maybe she was the reason the future patriarch turned into an artist who didn’t even seem to bite anymore. But the man who was carrying his sister’s coffin to the grave now, together with Vito and that driver who was always at Nicolai’s side, didn’t look like someone who had given up. There was something in him that was slowly waking up again. I saw it in his posture and in his gaze. In the coldness with which he now looked even at his own family. And more than anything, I saw it in the way Vito watched him. As if everyone else in the room was irrelevant. Antonio stepped a little closer, his voice barely a whisper. “You think there’s something to the rumors?” I didn’t need a hint which rumors he meant. They’d been whispering them since the day Nicolai turned his back on his father. That the cousins had been more than just close. That there had been something. Maybe still was. Since Nicolai withdrew with Selena, the two of them had been beating each other half to death whenever they were alone. And only recently had people started daring again to murmur that it might not just be hate drawing them together. I didn’t take my gaze off Nicolai. Off the way his body leaned just slightly into Vito’s, how Vito not only tolerated it but silently asked for it. “If they knew the two of them aren’t related at all,” I murmured, “would they still only whisper?” I turned my head a fraction toward Antonio, my tone neutral, almost casual. “Or would they start wondering whether there really was something and whether it’s started again?” I paused briefly. “If it’s true… it ends today. I don’t share. And I don’t tolerate anyone touching what belongs to me.” Antonio stayed silent. That was for the best. Because what I was thinking I wouldn’t say out loud. I’d show him. The future husband with too much past. And too little respect for what he was about to become – my property. The pastor was still talking, but no one really seemed to listen. His words sounded memorized, lifeless, nothing more than necessary background noise that settled over the damp, freshly turned earth. I stepped a little to the side as the rows began to form. The first guests lined up to take the shovel, as tradition demanded. Everyone of importance was here, and everyone was watching who stayed how long, how hard the earth hit the coffin, and whether anyone showed a crack. My gaze wandered, then stuck on Nicolai. He was quiet, too quiet. His eyes empty, his face still, but his fingers… they moved, as if his body were doing everything it could to stop what his thoughts were whispering. Vito stood close to him. Too close for what you’d expect from cousins. No other man was allowed to stand that close to him. Not today. Not when he would belong to me in a few hours. Antonio stepped back when my father took the shovel. Every step he took looked rehearsed, like he’d done nothing else his whole life but shovel dirt onto graves. The dull thud as the earth hit the coffin was the first sound that gave weight back to the scene. I watched Rafaele standing directly behind him, his back straight, eyes dry. For him this was a political act, not a loss. And that was the difference between him and my father – and between them and me. The shovel moved on. Names, faces, positions of power followed. Everyone knew the role they were meant to play. Then it was Nicolai’s turn. He stepped forward, took the shovel and the way he held it cleared the fog in my head. No hesitation. No doubt. He’d done this before. Not symbolically. Not as ritual. For real. His hands had dug deeper than anyone else’s here. He stood there, silent, half his face in shadow, his eyes fixed on the grave while Vito’s hand rested on his back, as if to confirm he knew exactly what was going through him now. I felt my fingers curl, and Antonio shot me a quick sideways glance. “You’re sure they don’t know the two aren’t really cousins?” he asked quietly. “I’m sure they don’t,” I replied just as softly, without looking at him. “And even if they did, any thought about it would rot in that ground today. Along with her.” Nicolai didn’t throw the earth carelessly. He let it fall slowly. Precisely. Controlled.