He let go of my leg as if touching me had caused him pain. Like he was the one who had been cut and not me. He placed the rope back into my mouth and walked away.
The wound on my thigh pulsed with a stinging ache, but it felt good, liberating, bringing my insides to life, and it felt even better knowing Castello had been the one to inflict it.
What kind of twisted, warped person was I? What was wrong with me, with my body for wanting more, for wanting him to not walk away from me? Rather, for him to come back…and do it again?
Chapter 12
CASTELLO
Even though I knew she would show up, I didn’t count on her hovering around the dining hall, glaring in Tatum’s direction every five minutes. In every goddamn conversation my mother took part in, she made her hatred for Tatum known through her disrespectful words. She made no secret about how she felt, how much she wanted Tatum’s corpse buried in our backyard so she could stare at her grave every time she looked out her bedroom window. I shared my mother’s need for revenge. She missed her son. I missed my brother.
“Have you made contact with her family yet?” My mother took a seat beside me.
I cleared my throat. “Not yet.”
“When?”
“A few more days.”
“Do they know she’s missing?”
I leaned back in my seat and snuck a glance in Tatum’s direction. “According to my informant, the family started to suspect something was amiss a few hours ago.”
“Have they gone to the police?”
“Not yet. She works different shifts at the studio. She’s not supposed to start work for another two days. I suspect the Linscotts will take drastic action once they learn that she didn’t show up at work.”
My mother nodded. “Good. Then their hell can begin. Then they’ll have a taste of what my life has been like the last few months.”
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with the fact that my mother demanded all this information. This was my operation. She entrusted me with this task, so why was she prying?
Uncle Gino watched us from across the room, observing like he always did. I always got the feeling he didn’t like my mother very much. That and the fact that I heard him and my father bickering one day about how Uncle Gino thought my father was allowing her to manipulate him into doing things that were questionable—even for us. It was no secret that my mother was a strong, intelligent woman, but she always knew her place, always played the part…sometimes a little too well.
I turned back to her. “Have you ever thought about Carlo and her?”
She frowned. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Have you ever considered the fact that Carlo might have really loved her?”
“Never. There is no way my son would fall for that woman. The thought alone is preposterous.”
I placed my hand on the table, tapping lightly on the black-covered tabletop. “Then why do you think he was with her in the first place?”
She snorted. “I might idolize my children, Castello, but I am not naïve. I know my sons are men, and men have needs. Tatum Linscott was just a way for those needs to be met.”
I calculated her every word, studied her face. “So he used her for sex?”
“What else? She is not worthy of the love Carlo was able to give, and he would have known that. There is no way it was more than sex for Carlo, and that’s the reason she and her family had him killed.” Her deathly stare moved toward Tatum once again. “She couldn’t handle the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That someone had used her in a way she deserves to be used.”
I narrowed my eyes. “But you told me Carlo left her because he realized she was nothing more than a whore. If it was about sex, her being a whore wouldn’t have mattered to him.”
“What does it matter, Castello?” She grabbed the crucifix around her neck and rubbed the silver between her fingers. “None of this matters now. He is dead, and so is your father. Your responsibility is to make sure those guilty of taking their lives pay for what they have done. That woman needs to die. Every member of her family needs to suffer—just as we have suffered.”
Every word my mother spoke was coated with sheer venom, like she hated Tatum enough to poison her with insults and slurs. And she had a way to make everyone around her feel her pain, feel her hatred, feel everything she was feeling by using perfectly chosen words, body language, and facial expressions to suck a person into her world, into her dilemma—which was probably why Uncle Gino thought her to be a master manipulator.