I remember the single eager glance I received openly from Lorenzo. I recall his greedy hands—though gentle compared to the tormentors who surround me, seeking to tarnish what little innocence I still had left.
The innocence I had until the night my mother was killed—and which was consumed once more when Alexandra was arrested and I was flogged. That remnant, almost imperceptible, that I didn't even know was still there.
There was still innocence in me, and now they were taking it away from Valentina. The little brown-haired girl who used to run among the vineyards is now just a distant memory. The young woman who used to kill criminals on the streets of England and Sicily seems like a stranger whenever any of those wolves of Hades so much as touch her.
I think of my mother, who could ha
