Father Pietro

“I mean to make you my husband, Pietro.”

Pietro leaned forward, certain he’d misheard over the clatter of horse hooves and carriage wheels. Ippolita smiled wickedly.

“My family has always punished you for what you are,” she said, smoothing her skirts. Her hands lingered between her legs as she met Pietro’s gaze. “But if you do me this… kindness… I promise I shall remember you.”

Ippolita sat with her legs delicately crossed—a tiny thing, so light that the slightest jostling of the carriage bounced her on her velvet cushion. She was as dangerous as she was beautiful, but Pietro was only a fool by profession, and he wasn’t so easily played.

“Why can’t you do this thing yourself?”

“Kill my own father?” Ippolita shrugged. “I could. I wouldn’t shrink from such a thing, but it would seriously complicate my inheritance.”

Pietro watched the cypress trees marching by. He smirked.

“And yet you would openly reward the murderer by marrying him.”

“If you do it well, no one will know you for a murderer…”

“But I will be a jester still.”

Ippolita took Pietro’s hand and squeezed.

“You will be my husband, and I will be Duchess of Milan. If anyone should be so stupid as to throw your past in your face, we will simply contrive some way to remind them what you have become.”

Pietro had been a murderer, a cheat and a whoremonger, but never a husband… and never a father. The closest he’d ever had to a son was Giovanni—who had despised him and loved him by turns, and who had died upon his blade.

“We’ll have children?”

Pietro felt half a child himself to ask the question, and he blushed, but he wanted it more than anything.

“I certainly intend to try,” Ippolita said, insensible to the emotion that had overcome him. “And try, and try, and try.”

This story is my response to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge (the word was remember). My Pietro Barbino stories are pretty sporadic, since I only continue the series if the prompt really fits, but I hope it’s not getting too disjointed.

If you need a refresher, you can read the rest of the series here (rated mature for graphic violence and nudity). Let me know what you think below, or on the series home page if you prefer!