Faro’s eyes settled on Andrea’s bleeding form, opened wide, then turned back to meet my gaze. The doctor’s face remained still: he knew the rules. Nothing he saw would ever leave that house. “Gaia is upstairs,” I said. “Look after her, make sure she and the baby are okay. And don’t let her out of your sight for one fucking second. She threatened to hurt the baby.” I didn’t wait for a response. Instead, I pushed Andrea toward the basement door and shoved him down the stairs. The sound of his fall ended with his stifled cry as he landed at the base. I followed him. Footsteps resounded behind me. I did not have to turn around to know it was Faro. Andrea lay in a crumpled heap at the base of the steps, groaning. I grabbed him again and dragged him to a soundproof room where I hoisted him onto a chair. Faro looked at me circumspectly.
“Is it a mouse?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s a man fucking his sister.” Faro’s eyes widened as he scanned Andrea’s naked body.
“Alessio…”
“Don’t do that,” I growled. I didn’t want sympathy. It was worth less than the dirt under my shoes. Compassion was for the weak and the stupid. Maybe I was the latter, but definitely not the former. “Fuck,” Faro said, shaking his head. He knew what was supposed to happen, what I had to do, what I wanted to do. I approached Andrea and tore the tape off. “Now let’s talk.” Andrea spat against my chest. “There’s nothing to talk about.” “Oh, there is.” I grabbed his throat. “How long have you been fucking my wife?” Andrea smiled grimly.
“She was mine before she was yours.” “What does that mean?” I shook him hard. His eyes turned back for a moment before meeting mine. He had lost a lot of blood, losing more and more with each passing second. He would not get out of that basement alive. “We’ve been together since Gaia was fifteen. We’ve been fucking since she was sixteen.”
Anger bubbled up inside me like an unstoppable wave. “You’re lying.”
“Why? Because she bled the first time you were together?” He laughed with gusto.
“There are doctors for everything.” Almost eight years. This was the time when Gaia was cheating on me. I had been faithful even when she hardly tolerated my presence most days and slept with me only once or twice a month. I didn’t care. I kept my marriage vows and she stepped on them from day one. I trusted her and Andrea, I had allowed him to become her only bodyguard because she asked me to. I didn’t give a shit what had happened before our wedding night, whether she had been a virgin or not, but every betrayal since then has hurt me like a knife coated in acid. My hands closed into fists.
“Remember the bikers,” Faro said, but I barely heard him.
“We need information.”
Andrea swallowed.
“If you want an heir, you have to keep Gaia alive because Daniele and Simona are not yours. They are mine.” Static electricity entered my ears. I threw myself at him, raining punches on his face, chest, stomach. I beat every inch of him I could reach.
“Alessio, stop!” Faro grabbed my shoulders, but I pushed him away with a roar, more animal than human. He slammed into the wall and slumped to his feet. Then I turned back to Andrea. His look said he knew he was going to die. My fists burned with each new punch. I hit flesh and bone, even the floor beneath us in my blinding rage. I punched and punched until I could no longer breathe, until my knuckles throbbed with pain, until my rib cage ached under an invisible weight. Pushing myself away from the body, I slumped against the wall, my chest swollen. My knuckles cracked from the impact with the stone floor.
I was breathless and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was calm. Andrea was a bloody mess. I didn’t have to check his pulse to know he was dead. I had killed many men with a knife, a gun, a hammer, a razor blade, but never with my bare hands. I did not let anger dictate my actions. Today I had it. Faro sat across from me, looking at me with distrust.
“Are you okay?” I stretched out my arms covered in blood. My shirt and pants were soaked. My fingers hurt when I moved them. I smiled wryly. “My wife has been fucking her stepbrother for our entire marriage…. Daniel…” My words died in my mouth, my throat going dry. Faro stood up with a gasp. He stepped over the body and almost slipped on the blood.
“Fuck,” he growled before stopping in front of me. He held out his hand.
I grabbed it and let it pull me up, even as a sharp pain cut through my fingers. Faro touched my shoulder. “Andrea might have said that to provoke you, Alessio. You don’t know if she told the truth. Daniele and the baby could be yours. Do you really think Gaia would have risked putting the cuckoo’s eggs in your nest?”
“Don’t call them that,” I replied in a hoarse voice . Faro looked at me with a piercing intensity that made me nervous. “Andrea knew what awaited him. A slow death, hours of brutal torture until he revealed all his secrets. Provoking you, he died quickly.” I observed the bloody mess on the floor.
“I doubt it was the painless end he had hoped for.”
“Not painless, no,” Faro said, following my gaze. “But quickly enough. Better than he deserved, in my opinion.” I leaned against the wall, not knowing where to go from there. My wife had betrayed me, had admitted she would rather see me dead, had threatened to kill our baby-if it was ours, too. My chest contracted until every breath was a struggle.
“What are you going to do now?”
Faro asked. I met his cautious gaze.
“With Gaia,” he clarified, as if I didn’t know.
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t, didn’t want to kill her. She was still my wife, still Daniele and Simona’s mother. My head fell forward under the force of the emotions slamming into me.
“Alessio.” Faro squeezed my shoulder, his voice pleading. “Call my father. Ask him to come. He needs to know. Don’t warn anyone else yet. We have to make up a story.” “Will you keep Gaia’s affair secret?”
“Of course. I don’t want people to know. We’ll blame it on Andrea. Declare him a traitor, as he probably was anyway.” “Gaia might know more. If she had been his mistress, they could have talked.” I shrugged off Faro’s grip. A new wave of anger and despair surged through me.
“I have to control her.”
“Alessio,” Faro said, grabbing my shoulder. “Even if you don’t kill her, you can no longer trust her. Your marriage is over.” I said nothing, just went up the stairs. I found Gaia and the doctor in her bedroom. She was lying in bed, looking drugged. The doctor was covered in sweat and had a swelling on his forehead.
“She struggled. I had to sedate her and drag her to bed. Otherwise she would have hurt herself and the baby.”