Page 131 of Dishonored

Brutal.

And suffocating.

No one said a fucking thing. No one even wanted to look in Caesar’s direction, but he was used to that. Usually for different reasons, sure, but he was coming to find it really wasn’t all that foreign to him.

“And what about what your wife did to me for years?” Caesar asked. “Doesn’t she have to answer for that?”

He said the words easily. Far easier than he thought he would when the day finally came for him to open up his mouth, and say something about Martina’s abuse.

“That’s a lie!” Daniele was up out of his chair in an instant, and looking like he might come Caesar’s way any second. His fists clenched at his sides in tight, shaking balls, and his gaze burned with every ounce of hatred he had always felt for his older brother. “My mother would never—”

“Why,” Caesar asked, “because she never did it to you?”

Daniele snapped back like Caesar had punched him from all the way across the room. The two stared at each other for a long while, but Caesar really didn’t give a shit about his half-brother. Or what the man thought about the things he had learned.

It wasn’t about Daniele.

It never was.

“Because she never climbed into your bed when you were a kid,” Caesar continued, refusing to be silenced by anyone, “you feel safe enough to say it didn’t happen, right?”

“My mother loved you,” Daniele snapped, “and you’ve been nothing but horrible to her, Caesar. Everyone knows it. Everyone has fucking seen it.”

“But did you ever wonder why?”

Daniele’s gaze narrowed. “I—”

“Never cared to ask. Yeah, I got it.”

With a nod, Caesar turned back to his father. Angelo looked even more passive than he had before. Like none of this was surprising, and he’d heard it all before.

Caesar knew then.

He knew.

Everyone else in the room was in various states of shock, or disgust. Maybe because they hadn’t known, or they didn’t want to believe.

“It’s never a woman, right?” Caesar asked his father. “We always just assume it’s a man.”

Angelo’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “Son—”

“When did you know?”

“I can’t say I knew.”

“You did,” Caesar said confidently. “I can tell you did. So, when?”

Angelo cleared his throat, and gestured with a hand at the other men in the room. The three men were quick to scatter, and close the office door behind them as they went on their way. It was only once the two of them were alone that his father turned to him again.

“You were ten,” Angelo said, “and one of the maids you took a fancy to had found something in your room as she was cleaning. Something of Martina’s—I don’t remember what it was now, but she mentioned she was concerned, and it wasn’t the first time someone had said something.”

His father fixed a cufflink on his shirt. “And then again when you were fourteen, we were having a Christmas party, and one of my men happened to see Martina … crowding you in a hallway, but he didn’t say anything else. They were things that didn’t draw my concern, Caesar. It could have been a lot of things—she drank too much, and got a little too handsy. She was your step-mother; her things could be excused if they were found in your room. I never thought to look at something like that until you were far older, and by then, you were gone out of the house and it didn’t matter.”

Caesar laughed.

Hard.

Bitter.