“There was no question of liking it or not liking it,” Benedetto said, gazing at the portrait. Then he turned that gaze on her, and she found the way his eyes glittered made her chest feel constricted. “It was simply the reality of my youth. My mother always felt that her duties were in the providing of the heir. Never in the raising of him.”
“And did… Did your parents…?”
Angelina didn’t even know what she was asking. She’d done what due diligence she could over the past month. Meaning she had Googled her husband-to-be and his family to see what she could find. Mostly, as this castle seemed to advertise, it seemed the Franceschi family was renowned for wealth and periodic cruelty stretching back to the dawn of time. In that, however, she had to admit that they were no different from any other storied European family. It was only Benedetto—in modern times, at any rate—who had a reputation worse than that of any other pedigreed aristocrat.
His mother had been considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. She and Benedetto’s father had run in a glittering, hard-edged crowd, chasing and throwing parties in the gleaming waters of the Côte d’Azur or the non-touristy parts of the Caribbean. Or in sprawling villas in places like Amalfi, Manhattan, or wherever else the sparkling people were.
“Did my parents regret their choices in some way?” Benedetto laughed, as if the very idea was a great joke. “How refreshingly earnest. The only thing my parents ever agreed upon was a necessity of securing the Franceschi line. Once I was born, their duties were discharged and they happily returned to the things they did best. My father preferred pain to pleasure. And as my mother was a martyr, if only to causes that suited her self-importance, they were in many ways a match made in heaven.”
Angelina’s mouth was too dry. “P-Pain to pleasure?”
Benedetto’s eyes gleamed. “He was a celebrated sadist. And not only in the bedroom.”
Angelina didn’t know what expression she must have had on her face, but it made Benedetto laugh again. Then he drew her behind him once more, leading her out of this gallery filled with black Franceschi eyes and dark secrets, and deeper into the castle.
“Why is that something you know about your own father?” she managed to ask, fighting to keep her voice from whispering off into nothingness. “Surely a son should be protected from such knowledge.”
Benedetto’s laugh, then, was more implied than actual. But Angelina could feel it shiver through her all the same.
“Even if my parents had exhibited a modicum of modesty, which they did not, the paparazzi were only too happy to fill in the details before and after their deaths. Barring that, I can’t tell you the number of times one or other of their friends—and by friends, I mean rivals, enemies, former lovers, and compatriots—thought they might as well sidle up to me with some ball or other and share. In excruciating detail.” He glanced down at her, his mouth curved. “They are little better than jackals, these highborn creatures who spend their lives throwing fortunes down this or that drain. Every last one of them.”
“Including you?” She dared to ask.
That curve in the corner of his mouth took on a bitter cast. “Especially me.”
Together they climbed a series of stairs until they finally made it to a hall made of windows. Modern windows in place of a wall on one side, all of them looking out over the sea. Angelina could see that the wind had picked up, capping the waves in white, which should have added to the anxiety frothing inside her. Instead, the sight soothed her.
The sea carried on, no matter what happened within these walls.
It made her imagine that she might, too.
Despite everything she knew to the contrary.
“This is the private wing of the castle,” Benedetto told her as they walked beside the windows. “The nursery is at one end and the master suite far on the other end, behind many walls and doors, so the master of the house need never disturb his sleep unless he wishes it.”
“Your parents did not come to you?” Angelina asked, trying and failing to keep that scandalized note from her voice.
“My provincial little bride.” He sounded almost fond, though his dark gaze glittered. “That is what nannies are for, of course. My parents held regular audiences with the staff to keep apprised of my progress, I am told. But Castello Nero is no place for sticky hands and toddler meltdowns. I would be shocked to discover that your parents’ shoddy little château was any different.”
That was a reasonable description of the house, and still she frowned. “My parents were not naturally nurturing, certainly,” Angelina said, choosing her words carefully. “But they were present and in our lives.”
“No matter what, you need only call and I will come to you,” Margrete had said fiercely before the wedding ceremony today. It had shocked her.
But Margrete had always been there. She might have been disapproving and stern, but she’d always been involved in her daughters’ lives. Some of Angelina’s earliest memories involved reading quietly at her mother’s feet, or laboriously attempting to work a needle the way Margrete could with such seeming effortlessness.
It had never occurred to her that she would ever look back on her childhood fondly.
Of all the dark magic Benedetto had worked in the last month, that struck Angelina as the most disconcerting. Even as he towed her down yet another hall
