“Maybe not, but they’re also the only thing of Madre’s you still own,” Enzo fights, pushing the pearls toward me.
“I have her gun,” I counter, trying to be playful in order to break some of the tension weighing in the room. “It’ll always be a threat to Papà and Gio.” I see my cheekiness won’t win favors and I growl. “They’re just pearls. They have a sentimental value, yes, but if they’ll be our way out of here, then for fuck’s sake, please use them!”
“Grandfather is helping us,” Bruno casually interjects. “He’s acquired quite a business behind him since Madre died.” He puts his arm around Allana and draws her close to his body. “I met up with him after I called him and he told me all about Sal’s threats and showed me exactly what he did to our grandfather. I swear to God, had I known before, I would have made sure that asshole knew exactly what hell looked like.”
“I think it’s safe to say, he’ll know that,” Enzo quips hearing my father’s voice resonate from somewhere in the house. “I’ll start setting up viewings for the houses we have all agreed on.” Enzo stands up, picking up the posts of houses we have all chosen so far. It’s many, but it’s a start. “It might be a bit more cramped than we’re used to, but at least it’s the start of freedom. Now, keep quiet. We want to make sure he’s surprised when he finds himself all alone.”
***
I’m a glutton for the punishment.
I will always be the one to deliver some sort of penance to myself than enable someone the ability to do it first. I’ve come into the room that’s filled with demons and death and I’m sitting in the very spot I crumpled after Giovanni stabbed me.
The house has been so still, so silent, so gentle since I woke up in the middle of the night. No one is awake; no one is wandering, plotting, or planning. The tranquility that has hit the house since the funeral is one I hope won’t stick with us forever. Life without Manuel will be painful, but I can’t live with this overbearing feeling that we daren’t live. In the same sense, I find it painful to make a start on healing and moving on. Grief is a confusing time of life. While you fear each labored breath, you know you have to fight for your heart to keep beating. You have to keep your nails dug into those you hold so dearly, but who can you trust when death hangs over us all waiting to snap its fingers and claim us? How do you push yourself through the moments your life changed and imagine a life beyond that when nothing is set in stone?
This is why I’m putting myself through the slow burning torture of reliving what happened that day in this room. I need to first prove to myself that I did try to help him, that I was overpowered, that I wasn’t to blame for Manuel not surviving. Then I need to remember Manuel as he was, not how he became. I was granted a second chance; therefore, I have to live for him. I can’t ruin that.
I look at the very spot I remember him lying – the bloodstain on the wooden flooring - and I'm haunted by those piercing blue eyes. They showed life slipping away and I never fought hard enough to save him. I allowed Giovanni to have the upper hand when I could have outsmarted him.
I came back to this house from Italy to be a stronger, harsher, more memorable version of what I had been made into. I wanted to be Femme Fatale Reloaded. I wanted men to quake with fear while simultaneously getting a hard-on with just one look at me. I wanted that mind melt of being their strongest desire and their biggest downfall. I so wanted to come home and hide my heartache by being a siren to men who should have known better, but I was anything but that. I don't blame Zane for ruining that by turning up; I blame myself for not being strong enough, for not seeing Giovanni’s downward spiral, for not being enough to save my baby brother as I had always vowed. I blame myself for being the biggest Abbiati failure.
But I need to stop.
I cannot play God and expect to achieve the greatest in life at the same time. I need to remember my mortality, adjust to its weaknesses, and love within it how I know to – unequivocally. It should never have come to this point to remind myself that I am just a human. I’m made of bone and muscle sheltering a beating heart like everyone else. If you cut me, I bleed; if you hurt me, I cry. I was once before made to feel invincible by my father, but now I own a new version of that word. I know my downfalls, cut losses when I know I’m in uncharted water, but my invincibility comes from the love Zane has painstakingly kept offering. I may miss the power I used to possess, but this newfound transience I’ve been delivered feels like my second chance. I feel I could live forever enclosed in the life Zane and I have found.
“Hey,” Zane’s voice breaks into the room, thick with sleep.