“But with Zane here, it’s looking worse for me,” Manuel says as he stabs his spoon back into the defrosting ice cream. “He’s making it uncomfortable for a lot of people and he’s making me look bad.”
“Zane is here for other reasons than upstanding you.” I find myself getting angry at how belittled my brother has come to feel. “He’s here for me, but he has to do this right in order to.”
“And when he’s done with that?” Manuel asks, his tone stiffening in agitation. “Are you going to leave us like Bruno?”
“Manuel,” I begin to say, my voice nothing more than a guilt-riddled whisper as I realize my brother is suffering immensely at the plans already set into motion without any of us noticing. “I’m never going to do what Bruno did. If I leave, it’ll be with you by my side. You do know that, right?” I ask and he shrugs. “Shall I let you in on a little secret?”
“What?” he asks me, his eyes scrutinizing me slightly.
“Back when Papà first gave the hit on Zane, I asked Carlo to free me from this house. I was going to cut free and run with Zane. Admittedly, do exactly what Bruno had done just to secure some sort of future. But when you came out gay and I saw how much hatred that inspired in Giovanni, I asked Carlo to forget about me and get you out instead.”
“You’d have done that?” he asks and I nod. “What happened to change it all?”
“I found out Papà had lied about everything. The men I killed weren’t all guilty. Some were just innocent men who Papà didn’t want to kill himself, so he sent me.” I gulp, hating the true horror of my killer past. “I never want for you to become corrupt as I am. I realized that when Giovanni beat you. I would do anything to make sure you’re the one who gets out and gets the good life because we’re all too far gone. I still don’t want that.”
“And that’s where Zane comes into it?” Manuel asks, suddenly a lot calmer than before. I just nod and finally he gives me a bright grin. “He really loves you, huh?”
“I guess he does,” I mutter and turn back to the ice cream. “It just can’t end well for us. I love him, I know I do, but for him to risk so much of his life for this? For me?” I ask rhetorically, shaking my head. “It’ll all end in tears.”
“Is that why you won’t get too close?”
“Fairy tales aren’t made for us,” I reply sadly, offering him the same motto that I have grown to believe in. I then melt into a small smile, not wanting to make my brother a disbeliever in love. “That’s a lie.” I look at him to garner all the honesty in me because I need him to believe in what I’m about to say. “There’s still hope for you. You’ve managed to abstain from doing what Papà wants where all of us have caved. You’re the strongest of us all, Manuel. You’re the one who can have the life that Bruno has because you’re not tainted like the rest of us.”
“You’re not tainted,” he remarks, forcing me to laugh. “You’re not, Lia.”
“I am,” I say and divert my attention back to the ice cream before me. “Look at what I’ve done. I’m never going to be free of that and it’ll be something I carry with me forever. I’m the weakest of us all and that’s not a feeling I ever want you to feel.”
“You’re not if you feel something.” Manuel is quick to respond. “You’re not emotionless which doesn’t make you weak. You’ll never be corrupt to me because you still feel something.”
“Funny you should say that. Zane said exactly the same,” I muse weakly.
“Well, it’s true!” he chirps up, putting his spoon down and now turning to me. “Gio doesn’t care who he kills, just that he gets to. Papà, too. They love that feeling they get from exerting power to the extreme, but you don’t. Amelia, you just do it out of obligation. I look up to you because you are strong and you still fight back. Papà made you something men in this world want... strong, beautiful, killer. He exploited that, but you still love undyingly. Can’t you see that? Because Zane clearly does.”
“When did you become so wise?” I ask, feeling incredibly proud of my baby brother.
“When I finally realized that I don’t have to be what the likes of Papà want me to be. You taught me that,” he comments, leaning into me a little. “You taught me that when you gave way to your heart and not your head.”
“It works both ways,” I tell him and watch him question me with one gaze. "You do know I'm proud of you, don't you?" I say as he goes back to eating his ice cream. I didn't want this moment to slip away from us and be left forgotten. When he looks up at me with utter incredulity, I smile. "You came out to us as gay without worrying. Even after how Giovanni reacted, you didn't lie or give us some spiel about another matter. You trusted us to know."
"I trusted you to protect me," he states wryly, a small smile gracing his face as he looks back at his tub of ice cream. "I always trust you to protect me."
"Good," I utter and turn back to my own ice cream. "I'll be doing that until my last breath, Manuel. You, baby brother, are the one who's got the brightest future, and I won't let anyone take that away from you like us lot."
"Not even Gio?"
I splutter on a chuckle. "Least of all him, and least of all, Salvatore,” I quip, reverting back to using Papà’s real name. “They think they know how the Abbiati name is going to look ten, twenty years from now but I know otherwise, and I would rather have faith in the little I know than the mass information our father and brother like to tell us."
“What is it going to look like?”
I don’t say much, but what I do say comes with a bright smile. “Something unforgettable.”
***
“So, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve been going to gay clubs without me?” I ask, feigning horror and hurt all in one. “You’d dare to go there without me as your wing woman?”
“You only need a wing woman if you’re looking to pull,” Manuel remarks, winking at me before diving in to take one of the few remaining scoops of ice cream left.
“And you aren’t?” I ask, amused at his coyness. I watch him bashfully shake his head and my jaw slackens until my lips form a perfect ‘o’. “What aren’t you telling your big sister?” I ask, excitement brewing for me. “You’ve met a guy, haven’t you?”
“Might have,” he replies in a small whisper, delving back into the tub of almost fully melted ice cream.
I reach out, snatch the pot away, and pull it a little further down the counter away from his arm’s reach. I sit and watch him and slowly, but surely, his lips begin to pull into a small smile that reminds me a lot of the smile I used to wear when Zane and I started dating.
“Spill it,” I coerce him, pressuring him with a harder tone. “Or I’m removing all ice cream from the house forever.”
Manuel remains silent.
“I mean it, Manuel Abbiati!”
“His name is Ryan,” he begins. His tone is impish, squandered by that burst of feeling over your first true love. “We met a few months back at that same club you and Zane argued at. He’s six foot of handsome. He has blond hair and blue eyes. He’s tougher than he looks and he loves me unconditionally,” he comments, coy and yet proud to finally tell. “Enzo knows all about him, but only because he overheard a phone call.” Manuel looks at me, his eyes now full with so many mixed emotions it’s hard to assume where he’ll go with this verbal assault. “He knows nothing about who I am, Amelia. I’ve been lying to him but only about that. He knows I have a dysfunctional family, that I have a sister and three brothers, that my madre’s dead and my father couldn’t care less. He knows all that, but he doesn’t know who I really am.”
“That’s a formality,” I say, squishing his worries over that. We can deal with that part of his deceit later. “Do you see yourself heading toward a future with him?”
“Do you see yourself heading toward a future with Zane?” he bats back.
I shake my head and laugh a little. Touché, baby brother, touché, I think to myself. I push him a little and try to compose myself. This isn’t about me right now. This
is about him, and I won’t let him use my tattered romance as a scapegoat.
“Do you see a future with him or not?” I ask again, making my tone a little harsher so he doesn’t try to go off on a tangent because I will not let him fucking run from him this like I did. “Because if you do, tell him about who we are. I’ll even come with you to meet him. Hell, I want to meet him. For the most part, he’s been keeping a pretty, little smile on your face since I got back.” I now take note of my brother’s soured expression. “Was the frowning to do with not being completely honest with him?”
“Yeah,” Manuel answers and sighs in resignation. “Why did everyone else have to get the simple life?”
“Because then we wouldn’t have anything to strive for,” I muse wistfully and bring the ice cream back. “Life can only get simple.”
“Those fucking assholes!”
My father’s shrill tone rings through the house, shattering the idealism I have. It was short-lived – mine and Manuel’s moment – but I cannot wait to see what shit storm has hit my father now. I can hear him getting closer, hear his stomping steps, and feel the heat that radiates with his evident anger.
“Shall I get the wine?” I whisper to Manuel teasingly. He nods, trying to stop the laughter that’s overcoming him. “Or will we need to hit the scotch?”
“This entire life is a shambles!” my father’s bellowing tone continues to get closer than ever. He barges into the kitchen and looks at Manuel and me with such a venomous gaze, I feel a need to protect my brother from whatever is about to billow from my father’s mouth.
“What’s happened now?”
“Another mess up!” he shouts, the veins on his neck convulse with his aggression. “Do you know, since letting Zane be your hit, this entire life has turned on his head and gone to hell. Now, now I don’t even know what the hell is going on here. I want a job to go right.”
I resist muttering that the past handful of jobs has gone perfect, but I know that’ll rattle his cage.
“I’ll ask again,” I start, waiting to reiterate myself. “What’s happened now?”
My answer isn’t a verbal one. No, it’s answered as I watch movement and see three figures walk into the room. They all three stagger in, each dirtied with dust and blood. Each of them sporting their own wounds, each looking despondent as hell as to what just happened. I stand up, immediately find myself rushing to Zane’s side.
“I’m okay,” he tells me, pretending he’s not feeling some sort of backlash of the evening.
“Yeah, all right,” I quip sarcastically but take note of his hesitance to allow me to help him. “I’ll go and grab the first aid kit,” I mutter, my hands falling away from him and I rush from the room.
As I make my way to the downstairs bathroom, I find my hands beginning to shake as my heart thuds heavily over and over again. They’re hurt. All three of them hurt somehow because of the job given to them. My head races over the thoughts, striving to see sense and I take note of the one pit of dread that’s screaming out louder than most – will Zane now see sense?
On autopilot, I dig through the cabinet above the sink in the bathroom, taking everything I need – the first aid kit, antiseptic wash, gauze, anything I think we’ll need. Once they’re bundled into my arms, I race back to the room, my head swirling a million miles a minute.
“This is all driving me insane,” my father bellows, his yells tight with agitation. “Everything is fucking up and I’m getting sick and tired with all of this. You’re my blood and things are just looking embarrassing for me.”
“Knew there was a reason Costello didn’t want me on this,” Giovanni gloats, laughing at the state of them all.
“Shut the fuck up,” Enzo grunts, shifting slightly, an arm wrapped around his obviously tender ribs. “Costello lost a lot of good men in that explosion.”
Explosion – the word resonates, echoing around the room until it burrows into my mind. They were caught in an explosion?! Zane notices that I’m frozen in the doorway, unmoved, staring like a deer caught in the headlights. He goes to move, obviously to comfort me, but I move quicker and set all the things down.
“I want you out of my face,” Enzo states to our father. “You make it sound like we’re the fuck-ups in this, when really this life is falling down around you and you just won’t accept it. The life you grew up in, Papà, no longer exists. There’s no hierarchy in what we live in. It’s just one fucking war. The Dio Lavoro has been losing value and this just goes to show that men like you and Costello aren’t invincible and untouchable.”
“Thought we could do with these,” Carlo announces as he comes back into the room with a golden box. I know what’s in them – cigars. When the chips are down, you smoke – or drink. Whichever the fuck takes your fancy, I guess, and while Zane and Enzo accept a cigar, I wonder where the closest bottle of tequila is.
My father leaves the room – angered, bitter, and downright seething by the sudden attack Enzo has unleashed – and Giovanni trails behind him. I have no idea what was fully said, but from what I heard from my father before the boys came home, I can assume he blames us and no one else.
I look to see as he now sits before me, cigar hanging from between his kissable lips. There’s a cut on his brow, the blood running like a ribbon down the side of his face until it starts to hit his shirt and spread across the crisp whiteness. Immediately, I tend to that wound first. The moment I touch the cut, his bright blue eyes look up at me, and the look is so powerful, my eyes water. My hands pull away, and unbidden emotions that I don’t want to face overcome me.
"This is just the beginning," I whisper, dousing a piece of cotton in water.
Taking the unlit cigar from his mouth, he places it down only to take his hand and use it to cover mine, stilling my motion and forcing me to look at him. When I do, I truly take in all this appearance – he's disheveled, bloodied, but still as beautiful as ever.
"Let's clean you up," I utter, forcing myself to calm down and not think anything of him. "Then you can go and rest and I can go back to my wine."
"You don't have to be so off with me, Amelia. I know what I did, I know what I’m doing, but the old Amelia-"
"The old Amelia's gone," I state back, fighting for a convincing tone. I feel like I have to keep voicing that because no one seems to realize that Amelia Abbiati is a reformed character – and not one of a good kind. "She left when you let me go again, Zane. You have to accept that or we’ll be in a vicious circle for a long time to come. This, whatever we are now, is going to take a lot of work. You being almost blown up doesn’t just solve all our problems."
“I wasn’t expecting it to,” he states wryly, his lips toying at the corners, threatening to smile a little. “But I do love you playing my nurse again. It was almost instinctual.”
I pause, living in the memory of when he was shot all those months ago and I just revel in the absolute domesticated bliss that stole us both away in the aftermath of such horror. However, the longer I stare, the longer the red staining Zane’s shirt drives into my distant gaze. I slowly drag myself back and allow my shoulders to slump.
“That was a lifetime ago,” I reply, sadly putting a dampener on that memory. “I can’t worry that you’re going to get hurt along the way. I have enough stress waiting for news of my brothers as it is, without adding you to the stress of all of this.”
“I know,” Zane agrees. “This was just a botched job.”
“But that’s the point!” I exclaim, dropping away from the proximity we share. “There are always going to be shoddy jobs, botched missions, and twisted fucks wanting to change the game. You’ve experienced it all, but I can’t live with that constant threat that someday it won’t end as well as it did tonight. Cuts and grazes are fine, but what if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? What then?”
“I don’t know,” he mutters, unable to look me in the eye. “But I can’t back away now. Not just because of my position by your father, but because of you. We’r
e much too close for me to cut a loss anymore. This is it, Amelia. I vowed to you that I just needed this chance and now that I have both hands on it, you can bet your pretty inheritance that I won’t ever let it go. No matter how much you fucking fight me.” As I turn to leave, he reaches for me, clasping his hand around my wrist. I turn, gently by force, and face him only to see his eyes sadden and his lips part. He speaks so quietly. “I just want to be your hero.”
My response should be with my heart bursting with pride for this man’s love and fight for me. I should melt a little at his words and fall gracefully into his arms, enraptured by love, and lost in desire. Except, it’s with that, I explode into a frenzy and snap entirely. “Most heroes are dead for a reason, Zane!”
With that, I leave the kitchen and scurry off to my room. I’m enraged, appalled, and furious that Zane is so blind to what he’s walking into! How can he not see that every day he is here, he’s screwing his life even more? How can he not see the danger he’s putting himself in? How can he be so stupid to the threats he’s enlisted in?
I sit on my bed, regulate my breathing, and force my hands to unclench from the balls they’ve tightly tensed themselves into. I’m trying to see his stance on this shitty predicament, but all I’m fucking hearing is, “Idiota! Idiota! Stupido idiota!”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Manuel speaks, his voice traveling from behind me. “He’s just trying to make you see sense.”
“See the sense that he’s an idiot?” I scoff and turn to face my brother as he closes in on my bed. “You know, I would be blown away with his bravery if it wasn’t such a suicide mission.”
Manuel shrugs. “It might be, but he’s still here. He knows what you’ve done, saw it with his own eyes, and is still here. He’s seen you push Lorenzo away, too, and pick him for a reason. You’ve given into temptation, Amelia, but every time you’re on that edge of getting it all, you pull yourself back.” His gaze is heavy upon me, and I feel myself struggle under it. “Don’t let your happily ever after slip away because you’re being stupid enough to let Papà win. He might be the Don of the Dio Lavoro, but he’s nothing to you but an inheritance check.”
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