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by Kirsty-Anne Still

  Death is like a thief in the night. It’s silent, relentless, and after every last remnant of joy from those who possess it. But once it has exactly what it wants, it clings so tightly you fear you’ll never know what life without it will be.

  Right now, I fear I’ll never know a life past the grief I feel at losing Manuel.

  I roll my eyes closed as the tears begin to weave a fine line through my lashes. Beyond my own physical pain, the resonating hollowness in me is a pain I’ll never forget. The pain my body feels is nothing close to the pain my heart is clenched tightly in. I feel like my heart doubts its own beat. As if it does so, life will resume as normal and nothing is normal about life anymore.

  "You should be sleeping."

  I bring my gaze down as I turn my head stiffly to the side and feel my breathing hitch. Enzo. He’s sitting across the room, directly next to the door, looking like an absolute wreck. His hair is scruffy, his normal clean shaven appearance is replaced by abject stubble giving him a scruffiness he never suits. When he looks at me, I take note of the red rimming his eyes. They’re red raw and full of tears and it further affirms the one thing I panicked over – how will we ever recover from this?

  “Enz,” I whisper, my eyes watering more so just at the mere sight of him.

  “You gave that man quite the scare,” he responds, unmoved apart from the swift head nod to Zane, who sleeps beside my bed. There’s a sense of detachment to him and it rocks me to the core to hear how lifeless he’s become. So much has changed in such a short succession and the only constant is the man sleeping beside me. While my family falls apart from around me, he’s remained by my side, calling my name and vowing to never leave me.

  “I know,” I reply, my tone remorseful as I remember that harrowing cry Zane screamed out with. “Are you okay?” I ask, finding words failing me most here.

  “Fine. Better than you, right now,” he grunts, sitting forward slightly. “I take it they told you...” he trails off, his eyes unable to meet mine.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, taken aback by his harsh tone toward me. “Why did this have to happen?”

  He shrugs, a very uncharacteristic trait for Enzo.

  “Why does any of this life have to happen, Amelia?” he asks, the use of my full name bites at me, wounding me further. “We should have seen it coming.”

  “We were changing things, though,” I reply, my voice betraying me as it travels softer than the conviction I wanted to empower. “You were changing things. You told me so.”

  "What was the point? What's there to change now?" he asks me, his voice rabid with intense emotion. "Gio proved that power wins. What we've been doing is nothing short of a waste of time."

  “No,” I whisper, pushing myself up. I’m crippled by the amount of pain that bursts through my stomach. I whimper but bite down hard on my lip to shift more. I sense Enzo moving, rushing forward, but now is not the time for any physicality. “You do not get to condemn this family when you’re the one who fought so hard for us.”

  “I fought so hard that I managed to get Manuel killed and you in this state,” he tells me, his tone elusive of anything but bitterness. “I’m such a fucking protector, I allowed Giovanni to win. You and Manuel were stupid to ever believe that I was ever going to save any of us.” I watch as he throws his hands onto his head, tearing wildly at his own hair. His hands fall, leaving his shattered expression to stare at me. Everything he is feeling is raw as it sits etched into every contour of his handsome features. “I failed you all. There is no coming back from that for me. I let you down, Amelia. This is proof you’d all be better off without me.”

  “You’re letting him win now,” I snap, feeling my own bitterness rising. “You don’t get to do that!”

  I don’t even calm as Zane fully rouses from his slumber and now sits up wondering what the fuck is going on. My grief is transcending into something far more dangerous than I could have imagined and far quicker than I had anticipated. My denial is swept aside for a quick assault of anger. I don’t know how long this will last, but I can only allow absolute consumption.

  “You do not get to act like you’re the only one solely to blame in this! He trusted me to protect him, too. He told me so, Enzo. He trusted us all, but me, I was the one who kept him safe. I kept him so safe that I couldn’t even reach him when he needed me most.” I inhale with difficulty, my stomach seizing as I do so and I swallow hard on the howl of pain that begs for release. “He lay there calling out for me, Enzo. He needed me most at that moment and I couldn’t even get to him.” Heated tears of fury begin to fall and I can feel my entire body beginning to suffer from this lack of calm Zane fought for me to be in even in the midst of my newfound heartache. “I won’t ever forget how he cried out to me while he lay there dying. So, don’t you dare stand there playing a blame game like you’re the only one involved!”

  “I was meant to save you all! That was my battle,” Enzo quietly declares, not reacting with the feistiness he usually keeps alive in him.

  I didn't think my heart could break more than it is right now. This moment eclipses how I felt in the aftermath of my mother's death, and when Zane left me doesn't even shed a piece of light on this feeling. Enzo losing his fight is what kills me most. He has taken the blame for Giovanni and allowed it to destroy the man he has become. My brother is the one who gave up his life and his love to be here for us and in return, he’s had his faith stripped from him. My strong, heroic, and beautifully courageous brother is now nothing more than a shell. He no longer embodies a ferocious fire that could outshine any enemy. He’s lost, vulnerable, belittled by reality for the first time in my entire life, and that scares me.

  This reality is becoming warped. I want to wake up from this fascicle gauntlet of plaguing emotions. I want to pinch myself from this dreadful slumber and leave the nightmares haunting me behind. But, instead, I only remain living in the moment – trapped, tortured, suffering.

  “There is no way I can fix this anymore.” He hangs there on the spot. He’s dead behind the eyes, swallowed by his anguish and the idea that he deserves to condemn himself most. “I can’t fix this when I had to watch you both bleeding out. I fought for you both, but it wasn’t enough,” Enzo continues, persecuting himself furthermore.

  “Enzo, you got yourself hurt trying to save them,” Zane interjects, almost acting as a negotiator.

  “But it wasn’t enough! I could’ve done so, so much more! I could’ve saved them!” he bellows, wincing at the tension that overcomes him. “I will never be enough to save us when I allowed Manuel to be gutted and left for dead.”

  I feel my stomach drop as he mentions that one callously, evil word. My brother was physically tortured to a slow death and now another is mentally torturing himself with the culpability he feels he has earned. The self-reproach he values so highly is going to splinter him into so many shards, he‘ll never find peace again. And the worst part is I can’t even save him when I am dependent on someone else to hold me together.

  “Evil will always win,” Enzo murmurs, desolation befriending him. “We were brought up to believe that and I stupidly favored being the hero over just going with it. How am I meant to run the business when Papà dies when I can’t even keep our own alive? How do I bear to look at myself in the mirror when I know all I’m going to see is Manuel looking back me?”

  Enzo is only angering himself more by the second. He’s on the brink of no return, teetering on the point of being forever a wounded man by Manuel’s death. His tone is rugged, sharp, and hits me square to the heart the more this conversation drives onwards. He’s now an angry man, and I wonder what it will take to disperse such heated emotions.

  As one tear falls, so does another until the onslaught is something I can neither prevent nor stop now that it’s started. Death once brought my family together, proved who was true family and who wasn’t, but now it’s tearing us apart. Carlo is grieving on his own; Enzo, too. I have no idea how Bruno is coping with the news, nor how my
father is dealing with this sudden twist in his family fold. I sure hope the Dio Lavoro never anticipated for this riptide to crash into this.

  “What happened will never leave us,” Zane jumps in, now taking command as all hope becomes lost. “That day will very much live with me forever, but only because it has shown me that you have to cherish every moment. I was stupid to not live like that after my mother passed away and it’s easy to forget to be thankful, but we all got another chance. It’s a chance that Manuel doesn’t get, but it’s a chance we can use to really change the direction we were all leading.”

  “It’s not,” Enzo growls, unable to hear Zane out on what he’s getting to.

  “I have been in this family only a short time, but I have loved Amelia for a long time. The one constant that has been there is the true family you have formed without the likes of Gio or Sal. She dotes on what you bring to her life, Enzo. You, Bruno, Carlo, and Manuel were her true family. When all else failed, she had you four. I know you are reeling from Manuel’s death, but you either let people like Salvatore and Giovanni win or you do what you set out to do,” Zane breaks off, strengthening his fervor. “You make a life that you always promised Manuel you’d all be living.” He stands beside my bed, strong and unrelenting. Even in his exhausted state, Zane looks unprepared to back down and allow us to tear one another apart. “I might be overstepping so many boundaries here, but I cannot sit and watch this family fall apart anymore. I came into this family to fight for Amelia, and when I was here, I saw something I wanted to be a part of far more...the revolution. What I saw happening beneath the facade of the Dio Lavoro was so inspiring that I counted myself lucky to be able to be a part of it.”

  “Manuel died,” Enzo comments, his tone quivering as he repeats that solemn truth.

  “And that is a fact that won’t change if you decide to give up,” Zane states. His response holds strong as he acts as the final pillar of support we need. “This is going to be painful and it won’t get better overnight, but it will never get better if you start giving up on all what’s important to you. Manuel would hate to see this happening when he always had you to protect him most when he faced moments of such diversity. You are a family that doesn’t think any less of one another regardless of what happens.” Zane briefly pauses, watching the both of us and even as Enzo stands a broken man, his fight to break away is diminishing. “When Manuel came out gay, you were all there to make sure he wasn’t going to become an outcast. When Amelia chose me over your family, you stuck by her. You all love one another so unconditionally, I cannot and will not sit on the sidelines and allow you to tear yourselves apart.”

  “Enzo,” I whisper to my brother, in the hope that he’ll listen to Zane. “Please, don’t let them take more away from us than they already have.”

  “How do I not? I love you all so much, but what good have I done for the family if this is how we all end up?” Enzo is becoming as torn up as I once was by the demons that reside within. The ones I have been saved from on copious times. “Carlo is a broken man, Bruno is distraught, and you’re laid up in a hospital bed, Lia. Right now, I can’t see past that. I cannot start to piece us back together when I don’t have the strength to keep myself together. This is too much to cope with.”

  “We are all going to have monsters, Enzo. I know that more than anyone, but you cannot let them win now,” I start to say, but I’m cut off by my brother shaking his head vigorously at me.

  “I can’t do this,” Enzo mutters. I can sense he’s about to leave, but before actually doing so, he says one sentence that cuts me up more than anything ever before. “Sorry to disappoint you, Amelia, but all the monsters in our life are human and family.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The irritating scent of battling flowers infiltrates my sense. I have so many bouquet arrangements that not only is the smell nauseating, but the various colors dotted around my room is dizzying. What makes it worse is the name attached to every single card buried within the petals – Papà. The offending peace offering is enough to make me physically throw up and it only hastens the anger burning up through my veins.

  I don’t have much of a clue of what’s going to happen to me and my life once I’m free of the hospital, but I know I won’t be able to tolerate being under the same roof as my father or where hell broke loose. I can barely comprehend surviving without my little brother there to offer me that one piece of salvation that no one else can offer, let alone how I’ll survive stepping foot into the house where life has only been an upward battle.

  I allow my attention to drift across the room as I notice a newer presence to my right. I look to see a middle-aged man dressed in scrubs with a white coat over them standing in the doorway to my room. He’s handsome with a serene face and the moment he sees me look, he offers me a small grin.

  “It’s nice to see some color in your face finally, Ms. Abbiati,” the doctor announces, allowing himself into the room.

  “It’s Amelia,” I tell him dryly, correcting him as I push myself up slightly.

  “Amelia,” he remarks, smiling as if to say he’s taken notice. “I just need to check on your wounds and see how you’re healing.” He waits a moment, taking an opportunity to grab my chart and look over all the details the nurses have been endlessly writing. “We also need to discuss your injuries.”

  “I’m fine,” I mutter, not needing to hear about my health. As the hours have ticked past, that sentiment has stuck with me. “When will I get to leave?”

  “Not just yet, I’m afraid,” he admits in a sheepish tone. “Your injuries were extensive, Amelia.” The doctor speaks, and I can hear from that softness he executes his words with that what he’s about to say won’t be good for my already fragile heart. “We had to remove your spleen to stop part of the bleeding, but the additional stab wounds were lower in your abdomen. The damage we had to fix was quite a bit more severe.”

  I hate how he fucking dances around the crux of the issue here. I flash my gaze up at him, daring him to speak, but when he looks petrified of me, I speak up.

  “What are you trying to say exactly?”

  He begins to sputter before easing into the matter at hand. “I’m saying that due to the abdominal trauma, conceiving a child on your own in the future will be risky. If you actually manage to do so naturally, you’ll be a high-risk pregnancy. That is if you can conceive in the first place.” There’s a pause, a silence so healthy and thick with emotion that I understand how he’s suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s not impossible, but there is a higher chance you won’t be able to carry to term due to the damage.” There’s another annoying pause. “I’m sorry.”

  Is that all he can say to me? He’s sorry; as if that’s going to make the world spin correctly and my heart not shatter furthermore to reveal my empty soul. He stands apologetically looking at me as if I’m going to find comfort or acceptance in his presence. It’s not that simple anymore. Things aren’t getting better with time. My brother just keeps taking from us piece by gloriously broken piece. First Manuel is dead, and now, my future of a happy family life with Zane is in catastrophic jeopardy.

  I sit emotionally detached. The doctors began talking again and discussing what damage actually occurred, but I don’t comprehend a single word. Instead, I'm met with silence as the grief that was already so consuming now becomes unbearable. You’ll forever trap him into a life of misery, my thoughts awaken, darkening as even they take in what the doctor’s really saying – my future will always hang in the balance. At first, it was at the hands of my father, and now it’s because of my own brother. I will never be free from the ghouls I have as blood relations because they are far more superior to the weaklings who lived with a beating heart.

  There are a few exchanges once the doctor’s finished and he sets to checking me over. Even though he’s pleased with my physical state, apparently my mental condition is deteriorating. I can see it in his eyes, his deliverance has sent me into shock and I just run with whatever he has t
o say. I couldn’t say muc anyway – my life is in tatters, no verbal reasoning is going to change a fucking thing about that.

  “Ciao, dolcezza,” Zane announces his arrival, delivering a line of perfectly strung Italian.

  Even in the midst of unhappiness, he shines a little brighter for more. I know he could wallow in anguish like I am, but he keeps smiling, keeps reminding me that life does continue on. He’s that one piece of solace I greedily want to keep. Now, however, he’s that one piece of solace I’m scared I’ll destroy forever with the new change to my health.

  “Here,” he remarks and hands me over a bag.

  I reach inside and peel back the sides of the paper bag to reveal an overdose of sugary goodness. He’s brought the one thing I brought him – Pixy Stix. I look up, bafflement sinking in, but he just grins.

  “Payback,” he remarks, offering a playful wink to me. “I thought it was the least I could do.” I offer a small smile in response, but I find that I’m too emotionally unstable to say anything. That is the one thing that triggers Zane to respond, to really look at me. I know he realizes that I am grieving, but he can also pick up when I’m hurting more than I already am. The way his face changes tells me that he knows. “Have you been crying?” he asks, sitting on the edge of my bed – a place he’s favored more than anywhere else in this room.

  “Yeah,” I sniffle, wiping the errant tears away. “I wasn’t expecting you back.”

  “Sweetheart, you couldn’t keep me away,” he attempts to tease, but the notion is lost on me. The impact it usually has barely registers, and I just grin mirthlessly in response. “I took a quick shower and picked up some stuff for you and Enzo. I can’t stay away from this place while you’re stuck in here.”