Carpathian 00 - The Scarletti Curse

almost gentle. It made her blood run cold. " Mio padre did what he could to protect us, but he soon realized Antonello and Giovanni were not strong enough. Only I was. Night after night he would come to my room and whisper to me that I was the only Scarletti strong enough to conquer the curse."
    He shook her viciously, as if she were a doll, yet rather absently, as if perhaps he had forgotten she was at the other end of his hand. The action pushed her dangerously close to the edge of the crumbling cliffs.

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    "You see? I know I am the one destined to rule. I am the strongest. The Scarletti men are cursed to love only once, with our hearts and our minds and our souls. That one woman consumes us, becomes our life, until we are no longer real men. But I was the one padre trained to conquer the curse. I can lure women to me, make them my slaves. They lie for me. They even beg me to hurt them, to do anything to them that gives me pleasure. They are willing to sell their souls for me! I am the strong one, and I deserve to rule, not Giovanni. He was never meant to be don."
    His words were making her ill. His debauchery had led him to terrible depravities. He was looking at her with his sickness evident in his eyes. "So many women—they are nothing to me, you know. Nothing at all. The ones who look at me as you do, with that mixture of contempt and pity, those are the ones I like the most. They have spirit; they put up a fight before they crumble like dust in my hands. Your mother was very like you." His voice turned cunning. "None of them knew I did it. They thought it was Nonno.
    Even Nonno thought he might have done it. I did it!" he gloated. "Just as I strangled mia nonna."
    Nicoletta went rigid, her stomach churning and protesting her proximity with a man so sick. "You killed your own nonna?" Her voice was a whisper of sound, a shocked gasp. She could believe his baseness with women, but to murder his own grandmother, and allow his grandfather and everyone else to believe the elder Scarletti guilty, was the worst kind of sin.

Chapter Nineteen
    Hold on, bambina, I will get to you. Keep him talking. Giovanni's voice came to her. Gentle.
    Reassuring. Very calm.
    Nicoletta dared not breathe a sigh of relief. Giovanni! He was alive, then. And he had heard her as he always did when she was agitated, in trouble, when she desperately needed him. Her heart sang and the terrible weight pressing on her chest lifted. "Why would you do such a thing?" Nicoletta felt the revival of her determination. She held the knowledge to her tightly, protectively, that Giovanni lived.
    "Mia nonna saw me that evening. Your mother would not come to my bed, and she threatened to go to mio fratello. Giovanni would have protected her. Mio padre would have given her to me, and I think she knew it, but she would have told Giovanni, not mio padre. I lured her out to the ramparts." He pushed Nicoletta to the crumbling steps that led down to the cove. Without the protection of the mountains or trees, the wind was battering at them, the cold numbing.
    "How?" Nicoletta tasted fear and anger in her mouth. "How did you get her out there on such a terrible day?" Her foot slipped out from under her, and she nearly fell to her death. Like her mother. Vincente yanked her closer to him.
    "It wasn't really all that difficult. I sent a maid to tell her mia nonna needed her in the tower. It always worked for my father when he sent for women. I used to hide and watch him. Sometimes I joined with him, or he with me. Your madre was not the first woman I had led to the tower. Up there we could take our time, do what we wished without fear of interference. That day, everyone knew Nonno and Nonna were fighting, and they knew Nonna often walked the ramparts or retreated to the tower when she was distressed. Of course your mother went. Everyone loved mia nonna. Your madre believed she was summoned, and she would never turn Nonna down. I knew no one would be up there on such a rainy day. The wind was howling, I doubt any could have heard screaming. She fought me. I had no choice really; she would have told Giovanni. I had to kill her. It was only bad luck that Portia and Nonna came out in the rain onto the walkway. They saw me struggling with her. Nonna tried to stop me. You can see Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    I had no choice."
    He sounded as if he