My eyes water heavier than ever.
“I just want you to have everything,” I reply miserably. “I used to think it was me, but now, I feel like there’s a chance I can’t do that. You deserve only the best.”
“You are my best, Amelia Abbiati.” He now pulls me wholly into his embrace. “I have my family by just having you. For today, please mourn your brother. Tomorrow we’ll deal with everything else.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“This is the end of the Dio Lavoro, isn’t it?”
My question gets a lot of shocked looks, but I don’t feel threatened to change my mind. I watch them all look baffled and I just smile.
“If you ask me, it’s been a long time coming.”
It’s actually a notion I wanted to see happen when our mother died. How did I believe that her death was part of God’s work? Now, however, I am not young nor am I naive. I feel stupid for not taking a stand, but I know that everything that has happened has built me into a conscientious lover, one who will adore unmistakably, who will breathe freely, and one who will never trust a man just because of a blood relation.
“I’m with Amelia,” Carlo chimes in, twisting his tumbler of scotch around in his hands. “I’ll be happy to finally just be Carlo.” He shrugs and looks around the room. “There is no love lost now. In my eyes, we said our goodbye to all family ties the moment that crypt was locked up tight. Our father wasn’t a part of the funeral, he wasn’t part of remembering Manuel like we did, and in his eyes, he wasn’t a part of letting Giovanni get to the point he did.”
The anger that boils beneath Carlo’s skin is only becoming evident as days pass. I know he blames himself far more than he let us know and I know he will bully himself into being an alcoholic if we let him. I’ve lost enough family; I refuse to do it anymore. I’ll allow him to vent off his grievances, and I have to pray Enzo will finally step up or I will have to do it for him.
“He deserves to be left behind in a revolution he created if he’s not even fucking man enough to stand up and accept responsibility anymore. He did this to us. He brought us all to our knees. It’s time we found our own footing and we lived for us.”
“We’ll do that when you wipe that look of guilt from your expression,” Bruno mutters, taking a sip of his own drink. “We can’t start fresh until we all reach a point of acting like this wasn’t our damn fault.” He looks around accusatorily. “I could blame myself until I’m blue in the face, lose time with my kids over guilt tripping myself, deny myself the life I fought for because I wasn’t here to save any of you from getting caught up in what Gio became, but I won’t. Giovanni Abbiati is a sick and twisted bastard and he would’ve gone after the weakest in his eyes whether we were here together like we are now or sleeping in our own beds.” Bruno sets his glass down, pushing it away to soberly look at us all. “No one in this room needs to find fault in themselves when they weren’t the ones who cut our baby brother up. If you were, I would’ve disowned you, too, and I’d never have regretted doing that.”
“Bruno’s right,” Enzo finally speaks. “We have proven we are still a family. If anything, we’ve strengthened that, but we cannot continue to carry on in this house. I want us to remain close, really show that we don’t need anything Papà has to offer us. We’ve all laundered money across the years. Especially Carlo and I. When we were fixing it to get you out, Lia, we set up a bank account, so we have some money set aside.”
“And I don’t plan to skip out on helping people escape this life,” Carlo speaks, shrugging. “So I’ll still have some sort of income to make sure we’re all good for a long, long time.”
“I might not have saved Manuel, but I can have a hand in making sure people never end up in this predicament. I can have a say on that, I can make a difference.”
“So you really have stopped blaming yourself then?” I ask, giving him a small, knowing smile. I watch as he begins to nod his head and I finally see a change in us all. It might be a tiny step, but it feels like a gigantic jump after the passing days. “Well, then let’s find a house so we can finally start a new chapter in life.”
With merry agreement, everyone turns back to the laptops or papers they’re searching through. I start flicking through the photos of houses on the website that Carlo has been searching through and I stop at one. I look at the architecture, the rooms upon rooms of open spaces and start to imagine a life within those walls. Stupidly, I imagine Zane.