‘What was he complaining about?’
‘You.’
‘Me,’ Valentino repeated evenly.
I nodded.
Another flicker of interest, his lashes lowering. ‘Why?’
Why hold back now? I didn’t want to keep any secrets from the family, especially not something that might be vital. With the blood war looming, we needed to be sure of everyone’s loyalty, and as far as I was concerned, Felice was walking around with a giant question mark over his shiny silver head.
Here goes nothing. ‘Felice doesn’t think you’re equipped to lead the family. I think he reckons he’d do a better job … that it should have been him.’
‘As we’ve always known,’ Valentino said, unsurprised. ‘Felice has long suffered from delusions of grandeur.’
‘I think it’s more than that,’ I hedged.
‘How do you mean?’
‘He was complaining about your dad.’
Valentino’s fingers tightened on the wheels of his chair. ‘Elaborate.’
‘Well, I think Felice resents your dad for overlooking him, but as well as that …’ I was starting to think that maybe this constituted ‘stirring’ rather than ‘briefing’, but I couldn’t back down now, not while Valentino was hanging on my every word. ‘I think Felice is under the impression that your father had a hand in Evelina’s “escape” all those years ago … He always thought your father was too sympathetic towards her.’
Valentino chewed on this new information, digesting it in silence. ‘I see,’ he said at last.
‘Why would he think that?’ I asked delicately. ‘Why would there be a side for your father to choose in the first place?’
‘Felice used to drink a lot,’ Valentino said. ‘He has since directed his addictive nature to bee-keeping, more or less, but back when he was married to Evelina, there were many times when he would … mistreat her.’
‘Mistreat her,’ I repeated, hearing the sudden coldness in my voice. ‘In what way?’
‘He would push her around. Berate her. She was careful about hiding it from us. She didn’t want us to see that side of Felice, of their relationship. But you couldn’t miss it.’ His voice got quieter, threads of something else woven inside his words as he went on. It sounded a little bit like regret. ‘She drifted through the house like a ghost. You could see shades of black and purple around her eyes, even beneath the make-up.’
Suddenly I understood the sadness simmering behind Evelina’s eyes. All that beauty tinged with melancholy. A palace ruled by a violent king. A diamond choker for a noose. ‘Did you ever say anything to her?’ I asked. ‘Or him?’
Valentino shook his head, a frown tugging at his mouth. ‘I wish one of us had done something, Sophie. Luca and I talk about it often. But we were young, and as much as I hate to admit it, we were afraid. We didn’t have a voice. She always spoke up for my brothers and me, but we never spoke up for her. She was kind to us and we failed her every single day.’
I could feel the respect he had for her, and the sense of grief now tangled up inside it. ‘You were young,’ I said softly. ‘It wasn’t your battle.’
‘It wasn’t hers either.’
‘Why did he do it?’ The memory of Felice’s hands on my throat, of his breath in my ear, made me shiver. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He was obsessed with her,’ Valentino said, his words woven through a heavy sigh. ‘Rather, he was obsessed with the idea of her. The idea of someone and the reality of someone, when they merge, can make for a dangerous disparity. Felice picked her out of a church choir when she was barely twenty. She was an angel. He fell in love with her and built her a palace, and then when she started speaking up and voicing her own opinions, he didn’t like it. He wanted a doll, not a wife, and Evelina was not a doll.’
‘Oh.’
Valentino went on. ‘Evelina hated how active Felice was in the family, and how much he enjoyed the theatrics of bloodshed. They argued constantly. Felice can’t seem to love in a healthy way. He hit her in front of everyone one Christmas Day. My father ended up knocking him out. He wasn’t going to stand for that in his family, under his rules. My father was a decent man. Felice was always somewhat of a … challenge. Believe it or not, this version of him is much more palatable than the old one.’
‘And just when I thought Felice had reached the lowest ebb of my respect,’ I said sourly. ‘What a creep.’
Valentino didn’t disagree. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that he would suspect my father in her disappearance. My father was always kind to her, and Felice never liked that.’
‘That was his own fault.’ I could feel myself getting riled up. ‘He didn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve anyone if that’s the way he carries on.’
‘Well, he doesn’t have anyone,’ Valentino said, pointedly. ‘Not any more.’
And there it was – the sting in the tail. Felice might have been horrible to Evelina, but my own father had been worse. He had taken her life from her. Did Valentino suspect she was dead? Or did he really think her missing all these years?
‘She and Luca were close, weren’t they?’ I remembered what he had told me about her, how she had made him believe he could be anything he wanted to be. How she had made him believe in possibility. I looked at my lap, suddenly unable to look Valentino in the eye.