Chapter 4

When Victoria returned to the Santini estate, she was practically vibrating with excitement.

"Mom! Dad! I did it!" Ignoring the wine stains all over her dress, she flung herself into Camilla's arms with a shriek. "The Don agreed to marry me! He said he wants the wedding within a month!"

Antonio flushed with excitement and slapped his knee again and again. "Yes! This is it! Victoria, you did it! The Santini family is finally joining Europe's most powerful ranks!"

"I always knew my daughter was born to be a Don's wife!" Camilla crowed, beside herself with glee.

Victoria grew even more smug, boasting about Caine's "special treatment" of her.

"You have no idea how special he was with me." Victoria gave a coy little laugh. "He even deliberately spilled wine on his shoes and had me wipe them clean. He said it was a test of my loyalty, that I was born to belong to him! Even his insults were so manly!"

I stood in the shadow of the staircase, listening to her breathtakingly stupid boasting, barely able to keep from scoffing out loud. She had actually mistaken Caine treating her like a dog for the Don's idea of flirtation. She was beyond saving.

But from that day on, Victoria's torment of me escalated without end. She was no longer satisfied with verbal abuse. She had begun to revel in "rehearsing" her power as the Don's wife.

"Elena, get over here!"

Victoria sat in the middle of the living room sofa like a queen on her throne, ordering me around. She intended to take out every bit of "discomfort" she'd experienced with Caine on me.

"Your future Donna wants red nail polish today. Get on your knees and paint my nails. If you go outside the lines by even a fraction, I'll have your filthy hands chopped off!"

I walked over without expression, sank to my knees on the cold marble floor, unscrewed the cap of the nail polish, and bent my head, painting her nails stroke by careful stroke.

Crack!

Without warning, Victoria slapped me across the face.

"You're hurting me! You clumsy piece of trash!" she shrieked, her eyes glittering with sadistic pleasure. Then she snatched up a cup of scalding tea and splashed its contents over my shoulder.

The scalding tea soaked through my clothes, and searing pain ripped through my skin.

"You're jealous of me, aren't you?" Victoria grabbed a fistful of my hair and glared at me with pure malice. "Jealous that I took your keepsake and stole your man? Face it, Elena! Your mother was a loser, and you're nothing but worthless trash!"

The slap had snapped my head sideways. My cheek was swollen, my shoulder burning. But I didn't fight back. I didn't talk back. I simply turned my head, picked up the nail polish brush, and went on painting her toenails.

I endured it. For the sake of my final revenge, I could endure anything.

But I wasn't a corpse with no feelings. I was human too. I hurt too.

Late that night, when the entire estate had fallen asleep, I hid alone in the cramped, damp bathroom attached to the servant's quarters. I turned on the shower and let the cold water pour down over me. I bit down hard on my lip and scrubbed at the red welts and bruises on my arms and shoulders, and finally, the tears I could no longer hold back fell in silence.

I looked at my battered reflection in the mirror and asked myself, over and over: Why am I enduring this? Why do I let them destroy me like this? Why, ever since Isabella died, has there been no one left to love me? My own father would sacrifice me for power. My stepmother and stepsister took pleasure in my suffering.

The crushing weight of hurt and loneliness threatened to swallow me whole.

And then I thought of that phone call. I thought of Caine's hoarse whisper: "It's you."

I thought of his low voice, the absolute certainty when he said he understood. And I thought of what he had done that very day, humiliating Victoria without mercy, making her grovel like a dog, all to avenge me.

He remembered me. Caine, a ruthless Don with no blood ties to me, was willing to go through fire for my sake, willing to grind my enemies beneath his heel in the shadows. And my own blood, my own family, treated me like dirt, like something to be skinned alive and thrown away.

I didn't know what I felt for Caine. Was it gratitude born of desperation? Dependence on someone stronger? Or something deeper, something I wasn't ready to admit, a sense that this was fate? But I knew that in this cold, cruel world, he was the only one on my side.

I took a deep breath, turned off the shower, and roughly wiped the tears from my face. I found an old long-sleeved shirt and pulled it on, covering every ugly mark on my skin.

I was done feeling sorry for myself. Dead people didn't deserve my tears.

Two weeks until the wedding.

I just had to hold on for two more weeks. And then I would send Victoria and Antonio to hell myself.