Hush: Family Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

see things the same way. Once I say something is mine it is mine.
    “Ah, here you are,” Uncle Nicholas’s voice booms jovially when I enter the room. “Come sit Uri.”
    “What is this about,” I ask not bothering to sit.
    My uncle shakes his head and sighs. “Must you be stubborn about everything?”
    “No, but I was on my way out,” I shrug. I have only chosen to stay here at my uncle’s manor because it gives me access to Luca and his movements. While he owns a private apartment in the city Luca prefers to stay here with in town.
    “This happens to be about the Caprisi family. You have questions I have answers,” my uncle’s face is now all business and I know I just may need that seat he was offering me.
    “You’re right I do have questions and if I remember well enough you and Don Vincent were close as boys. So tell me, how does a man like Don Vincent allow his daughter to become, for lack of a better word, an assassin?” I ask with narrowed eyes.
    My uncle nods retrieving a cigar from the box on his desk and offering one to me. I accept, clipping the end and lighting it. My uncle does the same before answering my question. I’m not sure my patience will hold up today.
    “Valentina was the sweetest little girl you would ever want to know. Very bright and she loved her mama and papa. She had a light in her eyes I never saw in a child so small. But that light was stolen.
    “Valentina was only four when she watched her mother and older sister brutally murdered. She watched her sister being violated for hours before being shot to death. She sat hidden in the closet the entire time,” My uncle pauses to take a poof at his cigar while his words are left in the air to sink in.
    I begin to replay a conversation Valentina and I had at the engagement party over in my head. I knew something happened in her past but this was not what I was expecting. Memories assault me and I remember Don Caprisi’s first wife. She was just a little lighter than Valentina with light eyes.
    I had only met her once around my early teens. It was one of my few visits to my uncle during the time I lived with my hateful grandfather. Those were bitter years for me and I have suppressed many memories from that time but I remember her and the small child in her arms the day I met her. Valentina.
    “How,” I demand.
    “It was a hit meant for Don Caprisi only some bad intel brought the hired maniac to Vincent’s home where Khayla and the children were. To this day we don’t know what happened to the men that were supposed to be guarding the house. We believe they were all paid to look the other way and disappeared with their new wealth.
    “Those that remained loyal were slaughtered. Corrade Ferro was a monster that needed to be put down way before that tragic day. Whoever sent him knew what he was capable of. It almost broke Vincent to find Valentina had watched the whole thing but it did break her,” My Uncle frowns at his own thoughts.
    “This Corrade Ferro, where is he,” I lift a brow.
    My uncle looks me in the eyes knowing I already know the answer but I need to hear it from his lips. “In hell, where he belongs,” he snorts. “He was Valentina’s gift for her eighteenth birthday. Valentine saved him for her. Vincent didn’t agree with it, but Valentine thought it was what she needed.
    “She went two years without speaking to anyone. She would draw pictures and have nightmares. Vincent didn’t know what to do. It was her Uncle Valentine that finally got her to speak. He promised her that if she spoke he would teach her everything she needed to know to get the bad man in the pictures she drew,” My uncle shakes his head.
    “If he only trained her for this purpose why didn’t it stop there?” I snap. I can’t believe they so carelessly turned her into a killer.
    I know it is what I am, but if given the choice all over again this would not be my life. At least that is what I tell myself. I want to believe that the