As my head clears slowly, I listen to the sounds of my room and when I pick up distinct voices, I look at the window overlooking my room from the hallway. I see Zane and Carlo with their backs to my room, and Enzo’s face saddened as he confronts them over things.
It’s that which gets me moving first. I cannot stand the turmoil he is barely surviving. The tyranny in which Enzo has self-inflicted is never going to help anything, and I cannot allow it to continue. As I drag myself across the room, my movements still sluggish due to the sedative, I stand in the doorway and watch, listen, and take in what it is they’re discussing.
“I think I broke my family by taking too long,” Enzo frets, slamming a closed fist weakly into the nearby wall. “I could’ve taken them and run any time of any day, but I didn’t. I tried to keep the peace while making sure everything was flawless. If I had just cut a loss and ran with them, we wouldn’t be here.”
“And haphazardly gotten us all out,” Carlo admonishes, his tone brisk and unkind. “Your logic wasn’t warped on this one, Enzo. You were creating the perfect life so that Papà couldn’t think anything was any different with Amelia being back and Zane joining the ranks. That’s what we do when we get people out. We create a perfect life for them, one so no one suspects.”
“And it paid off,” Enzo’s gruff tone states. “It’s a little too late to be thinking that what we were doing was perfectly executed when the one thing executed in this life is our brother!”
“Enzo,” Carlo tries, stepping in, but Enzo pushes him away, taking a step back away from him.
“Don’t!” Enzo bellows, throwing his hands up into his hair. “I will forever bear this cross because it’s down to me, as the heir of the Dio Lavoro, to protect you all. That was my duty, Carlo. Can’t you see that? I only ever stuck around to inherit it all so I could make the world a little safer for Amelia and Manuel. Now, look where it’s got us. Our own is dead while our little sister is breaking into pieces because of me. The one of us who showed more strength than any of us is now a shadow of herself, and that’s on me. I broke her before I could save her. I broke us all before I could save any of us.”
“You could never break us,” I break into the conversation as I linger in the doorway. “But I could.”
“No, Amelia,” Enzo whispers, his dire tone wraps around me and makes me close my eyes. He advances toward me, clearly evident that he never wanted me to hear a word he had to say. “No.”
“But I did,” I answer; my voice quivers and I hate how weak I sound again. “We’ve been on a downward spiral since my first kill. You would’ve been out and happy if I hadn’t have killed him. Carlo, too. You’d both be living real lives with real happiness if I hadn’t done what I thought was right back then.”
“Amelia,” Carlo breaks, stepping forward in the same manner of Enzo. “Real happiness for me includes you. I’m sure Enzo will agree with me on this one.”
“But I’m worried you’ll never get it trapped with me,” I admit, solemnly casting that burden out.
I have always felt like the root of all evil. I was built up to be a killing machine, one without a heart. My father devised a plan that saw me become exactly what he wanted, but he never anticipated for a force like Zane to come in and obliterate everything. There was never room for love until it walked straight into my fist that day. Zane Maverick was a blessing in disguise, and even with our tumultuous relationship, he is the one who has kept my conscience alive and thriving. Without him, I wouldn’t feel anything but the thrill of every kill. With him, I continue to feel absolutely everything – just how he wished it for me.
But now, me feeling everything is becoming a cataclysmic storm.
I can see they’re all about to argue with me. They know I’m wrong, but how do I know I’m not? This, whatever I’m feeling –this mix of grief, responsibility, woe– is all so strong it’s suffocating. How do I know that this isn’t the punishment of a lifetime I deserve? Because, in my eyes, for my acts of violence, death, and torture have me believing that I deserve more. The burden my father has forced me to live within is imprisonment for life because I won’t be able to break away and seek absolution in any form in this lifetime.
“I mean that, I only ever seem to bring bad news down onto this family. I watched him kill a man when I was younger and I saw him kill our mother. I knew the differences between right and wrong. I knew the things he was doing were atrocities, but instead of fighting against him, I joined him. Now, look where we have wound up? We’re lost and it’s all because of me. You’re trapped in this life because of me.”