Fifty-six: Emmilia Vitore

Fifty-six:

Emmilia Vitore

I couldn’t help but stare at Vera. “What do you mean, you know my mother? Do you mean the woman that raised me? Victoria?”

Vera shook her head. “No, I’m talking about her sister. Victoria’s your aunt. She helped take care of you while your mother was in hiding.”

“How do you know her?”

She looked away from me. “The hardest part about growing up is realizing that your parents had whole lives before you. That maybe you haven’t known every version of them that you’ve ever been. But you must know…I didn’t have a choice.”

“Didn’t have a choice in what?”

“Octavious liked to tell our story like he was the greatest romantic of a century. It wasn’t romantic. I was forced to marry someone else. Octavious knew him and he became obsessed with me. He seduced me away from him. But there was a time where I hated him so much that I wanted to kill him. Even when I did finally marry him, I still harbored that. And of cou