I guess this is the most I can ask for from her. I still don’t know how we’re going to have a relationship when I want her father dead more than anything else on this planet. How could she ever forgive me? And Michael? I doubt he could move past it either.
“I will kill him. He deserves much more than death, but even I’m not sick enough to make him watch his children be sliced to pieces.” She stands stock still at my words but doesn’t break eye contact. I force myself to be as honest as possible because regardless of how I feel about the situation, regardless of the memories she stirs, she’s still my sister. “I would never hurt you or Michael. Not just because it would hurt our mother, but because you’re my sister. Michael’s my brother. I won’t hurt either of you.”
Tears well in her eyes. Oh, for fuck’s sake. No fucking crying. They don’t fall down her cheeks, but they’re there.
“I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve any of it,” she says. “Chief would be alive, so would Tegan, and Tall, and Michael’s friends. Mindy never would have gotten hurt if it weren’t for me.”
“That’s not on you. That’s on Pop,” I say with a nod. Because it is. If Alex has been carrying around this guilt, then it’s time she drops it. My dad put the wheels in motion long before this war started.
“I like talking to you. I want to get to know you.”
“What’s the point in getting to know me when you’re just going to end up hating me eventually anyway?” This is why I don’t want to bond with her. I don’t want to let her in and to love her the way Ma does, the way Michael does. Even Ryan loves her, and I’ll be damned if Pop doesn’t love her, too. She’s squirrelly like that.
“I can’t hate you. If I can’t hate my father, then I can’t hate you either. I won’t ask you not to hurt him, and I can’t tell you how I’ll feel when he dies, because I don’t know how I’ll feel. But I can tell you this—he stole you and my mother from me. My father hurt you, and he hurt me in a different way. He hurt Michael, too, but he might be too proud to admit that just yet. Carlo Mancuso has his family, and I have mine.”
She takes a step closer and reaches out, grabbing my arm. The tears she was holding back slide down her cheeks as she stares up at me.
“I don’t like violence, and I hate to see people get hurt, but no matter who I am today, I was a principessa, a Mancuso. I understand the need for justice, and deep down, I know this war goes back further than last year and that it’s only a matter of time for my father to get what’s coming to him.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I find myself saying. My chest aches and my jaw is tight. I reject the emotions that make me weak and force myself to think about anything but how good it feels to get this gift from her. “Every year on your birthday, we have a party. It used to be just me and Ma, and then when Pop and Ryan came around, they’d join in. It was always just something we did. Ma never wanted to forget either of you, and she made sure I never could. I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to make this better for her.”
“Will killing my father really make this better for her? Is that really going to help?” It’s not judgment in her tone, I don’t think. It’s a young woman finally understanding why a man she loves has to die.
“Ma’s never killed anyone. She came damn close once when I was a kid, but she stopped just before finishing the guy off. Motherfucker deserved to die, but she left him paralyzed. What that man did was far less brutal than what Carlo did to her. You might not understand the need for his death, but I do. I know a side of Ruby that I hope you never meet.”
“What did the man do?” Her words come out so damn quiet that part of me wants to fucking hug her. Hugging usually makes women feel better. At least it does with Ma.
“Not important, but he deserved worse than he got. Everything that I am is because of our mother. I don’t want her to go back to that dark place she was in before Pop came into our lives. I won’t let her suffer any more. If taking out Carlo Mancuso gives her even an ounce of peace, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“There’s so much I don’t know about your lives before I got here. I feel like I barely know you, and yet I feel like I know you all so well.”
“You know us because you’re one of us. You can’t bring yourself to want Carlo dead, so that’s why I’m here. I’ll take care of what you don’t want to do.”
“You’re more open than I expected,” she says.
I let out a heavy sigh and swallow the lump in my throat. I’m more open than I expected, too. Fuck. When I don’t say anything for a long while, she lifts her hand from my arm to the side of my face and softly brushes the scar her father put there. I flinch at the contact. It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t like people touching it. I’m selfish like that. This pain, this memory, is all mine, and I refuse to share it with anyone else.
“Anyone would be considered open compared to Ryan.”