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Immediately, she tries to tug her hand away, but I hold on to it. She tugs one last time. I hold firm. When panic registers in her eyes, I bring her palm, the one she slapped me with, to my lips and kiss it. “Revenge isn’t always served cold. Sometimes, it’s served in the form of a pie.” I release her, and she clutches her hand to her chest.
“You’re my revenge pie,” I tell her, and I mean it as a term of endearment, but she doesn’t take it that way. Probably because it sounds terrible.
“You’re lying,” she says.
“I’d tell you to ask him, but he’s not here. You have to believe that I’m not lying because I have no reason to lie.”
“I was under the impression my family and yours haven’t crossed paths before.” She tilts her head. “Oh, but wait. Corrado said you visited the island a few times. Was it during one of the visits?”
“It was.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“If he really did that, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“It doesn’t justify you taking it out on me and seizing my home and my marriage and my life.”
“No, it doesn’t, and yet I’m doing it anyway.”
“You’re a heartless man.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Asshole.”
“Worse yet.”
Cristina’s trying to come up with a nasty name for me when Drago walks in from the back. He takes off his shoes in the mud room and enters the kitchen.
“Cunt,” he says ever so helpfully, before noticing the dessert on the counter. “Can I have some pie?”
“No,” I say while Cristina says yes.
She narrows her eyes. “I poisoned it, so have all you want.”
Drago side-eyes the pie.
“I’m kidding,” Cristina says. “I would never deliberately poison someone.”
“Which is why she will cook for us,” I tell him.
She groans. “I’ve never wanted not to be a chef until now.”
I smile.
“Severio,” she says, her tone serious. “What are you really doing here?”
I consider how to answer her. Cristina has had a rough week. She’s a good girl who’s been sheltered all her life. Breaking her even more than I already have when I took her from Gio and then tattooed a serpentine collar around her neck isn’t in my best interest.
Neither is telling her that I think her dad is alive and waiting for an opportunity to take what he thinks he can take from me.I’m certain her father wouldn’t hurt her, but he might enlist her help now that I’m in her house. I’m the bait, and I’m on his home turf. He can come get me.
“I needed a place to recover,” I say. “The villa was too isolated.”
“Mmhm,” Drago confirms, mouth full of ricotta pie.
