I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two by Knight, Natasha (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

wine, pours some into an empty water glass and swallows it down like it’s water.

“Cristiano,” my uncle starts but stops. His eyes are shiny like he’s on the verge of tears.

“You lied to me,” Dante says, bringing the dirty steak knife over, anything casual gone from his face, his voice. “You fucking lied to me and I broke my promise to my brother. That part is on me. I’ll pay for that. But the rest, that’s all you. Now answer his fucking question or put your other hand on the desk,” he says. “It’s going to get messy.” He shifts his gaze momentarily to my uncle’s bleeding hand. “But you like messy, don’t you?”

I wonder how Dante knows that detail but it’s true. It’s what my uncle always asked of me when I took out those names he listed for me. How many innocents have I killed for him?

“You too?” my uncle says to Dante. “You’ll side with him as he accuses me when all I was doing was protecting you?”

“If you were protecting me, why are you here in Amsterdam registered at a hotel under a false name? Why would you run? Why would you hide unless you knew he was alive, and he’d come after you?” Dante pauses. “We’d come after you. It looks bad, Uncle, so help yourself out. Tell us where Felix took Scarlett. Then you can explain the rest of it.”

“I need to sit down,” David says.

Dante pulls the chair out, moves it around the desk and shoves it under him.

David sits, tucks his free hand into his pocket and takes out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

He looks up at Dante, smiles a little, the look on his face strange before he turns his attention to me, that expression different, colder.

“I could have let you die, I didn’t. It would have been better for Dante if I’d let you die but I saved your life because he wanted me to. I did it for him.”

“What do you mean it would have been better for me?” Dante asks.

I can’t peel my eyes from him. This man who, if what Rinaldi says is true, masterminded my family’s massacre.

“You don’t know anything. Neither of you. You never knew your father, not really. How ruthless he could be. Only Michael saw that side of him. And you never knew your mother, either.”

I fist a handful of his hair, tug his head backward and lean my face close to his. “Then educate us because you know what Rinaldi told me before I put his own knife in his throat? He told me about the message you wanted him to deliver. The last words my mother heard before he slit her throat.”

Was it the same knife, I wonder? Did I kill him with the same blade he used to kill my mother?

Now comes the emotion. The elevated heart rate. I guess I’m not as much a monster as this man if I can still feel.

He snorts, face contorting a little in pain. “Rinaldi? That’s where you’re getting your facts from?” He raises his free hand when he says facts to make a single air quote. The instant he does, my brother grabs it, sets it beside the other and drives the steak knife through it.

No choked, shocked silence this time. My uncle screams.

“What did you do?” Dante demands with a roar.

“I did it for you, you ungrateful bastard! She would have gotten rid of you, but I told her no! I saved your fucking worthless life!” He draws a deep, shuddering breath in as tears begin to stream down his face. “You think she ever loved your father? Really loved him?” His eyes are on me now. “She loved me first. Me! Until my brother saw her and just like with everything else, he stole her too. And your mother…” he shakes his head, words foaming at his lips. “He turned her head. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.” He shifts his gaze to Dante again. “I made sure you were off the island. I made sure you weren’t anywhere near that charity event. I made sure you were protected from him. From the violence he brings.”

The he my uncle is referring to is me. And the way he says it, the way he nods his head gesturing to me when he does, betrays his hate of me.

“You think that woman wanted to suck off an inexperienced fifteen-year-old boy? I arranged that. For you.”

Dante stumbles backward a step. His face contorts like he’s just figured something out.

“Why?” he asks, so much emotion in those three letters.

“Why? Look in the mirror and tell me what you see,” my uncle says to him.

Dante’s hands fist at his sides.

I take hold of the hilt of the steak knife and pull it out, freeing one of David’s hands. He gasps with the movement. I’m sure it’s as painful coming out as it is going in. He starts to draw his arm back, but I grab it, turn it over and stretch it across the desk. I set the point of the knife at his wrist and push the sharp blade in. It cuts skin like butter and blood pours from his vein.

“You had him rape her. That’s how you knew,” I say.

“What?” Dante asks. He doesn’t know this part. No one knew but me. I was the sole witness.

“You had Rinaldi rape our mother,” I say again, out loud. It feels good to say it to him because he is more guilty than Rinaldi.

I push the knife deeper, feeling my own rage.

“Why?” I ask.

He drags his gaze from the knife up to me. He looks old. Already dead. “She accused me of it. I wanted to be sure she knew the difference,” he spits. He shifts his gaze to Dante. “She couldn’t love you because of it. She would have gotten rid of you. She needed to be punished. They all did. I did it for you. For you.”

Shock registers on Dante’s face. His mouth