She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Oath

Marco's men cleared the gates in minutes, and no one fired a shot.

Six armed Giordano soldiers came down the drive from the manor door.

Elsa's two men simply got back into their car.

"She wanted us to know she could," Marco said, watching from the study window. "That's all."

"She wanted us frightened," Sergio said.

"Are you?" I asked.

"No." He looked at me. "Are you?"

"I'm furious."

By nightfall the gate was ours again, and the manor was quiet.

I stood alone on the balcony outside Sergio's bedroom, wrapped in his coat, with the dark hills going down to the road.

The glass door slid open behind me.

They came out together and stopped a pace away.

I could tell by the way they stood that they had something to say, and had argued about who would say it.

"Tell me," I said.

"The night we took you in," Sergio said, "it rained."

"I remember the rain."

"You were six. You had on your mother's coat, and it came to your ankles. You stood on the gravel and wouldn't let anyone carry you."

"I remember," I said again, and I did.

I remembered that Marco had crouched down in the wet and put his hand out flat, and I had taken it.

"Marco and I went into the study afterward," Sergio said. "We had a bottle between us. We swore an oath on it."

"What oath?"

"That no matter how you grew, we would never put a hand on you," Marco said. "Not unless you came to us yourself, grown, knowing everything, and asked."

"And that if you did," Sergio said, "we would not take it for granted."

"Why not?"

His face worked.

"Because you'd say yes to us for the wrong reason," he said. "You'd say it because we fed you, and clothed you, and kept your enemies away."

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