“Here you go.”
The comment is accompanied by a large steaming cup of coffee being presented to me. I take it and smile with appreciation as I look at my brother. He let me into his house at nearly two AM, held me when I cried, and left me to sleep. He also gave me fresh clothes and left me to work through the demons my father pressed upon me only hours ago.
Bruno Johnson – aka Bruno Abbiati – is the one who got away.
One night, he had just vanished by the time dusk broke. We didn’t hear from him for five years after? and when we did, he became our little piece of normalcy in an otherwise crazy world. He’s married, has three children, and lives a perfect life – no Italian baggage to drag around with him. Our father never took kindly to Bruno’s disappearance, but it worked in the long run – my father wants nothing to do with Bruno, and Bruno wanted out of the family. However, he still comes to the house, much to my father’s chagrin, just to keep up appearances and put the fear of Christ in our father. Bruno knows too much to be eradicated; he made damn sure that if he ever died, the world would still know everything, so he gets the deal of exoneration. Bruno involves himself in what he wishes to, not what he’s told to.
Although, Bruno rekindled relationships with myself, Manuel, and Carlo, his relationships with Giovanni and Enzo are either non-existent or rocky. Enzo took Bruno’s leaving hard because they’re twins. It’s understandable. They went through everything together. The firstborn children were twins. It was like a glorious start to Salvatore’s bloodline. Why have one prince when you could have two? The only thing that caused a problem was the fact that they were not identical twins.
Even though they look very little alike, Bruno is much like Enzo in his protectiveness of myself and Manuel. However, unlike Enzo, Bruno cannot stow away a clenched hand and not react with physicality. If something angers him, he will go in all guns blazing. Giovanni likes to think he’s the first tough guy in the Abbiati family, but Bruno was and always will be.
It’s one of the many reasons he had to get out.
“I didn’t pressure you last night, but do you want to tell me what the hell happened?” Bruno presses lightly for details as he takes a seat opposite me as we sit on the front porch of his house. “You’ve got until Allana is done feeding the little monsters.”
I give myself a silent pep talk to garner confidence together. “Papà set up a guise to use against me.” I wrap my hands tighter around the cup of coffee. I swallow around the lump in my throat and look at him. “He tried to sell me.”
“What?” Bruno’s voice bounces back, captured in a whisper while his face darkens and contorts with confined anger.
“He presented me to a gang of men and offered the starting bid at one hundred and fifty grand.” I don’t stop the tears from falling. At first, I had been so numbly hit that I hadn’t released any sort of cathartic cry, but now it’s all bubbling below the surface. “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Bruno. I know what those men do to girls they buy. I don’t want to be one of them.”
I watch an array of emotions flood my brother’s face. There’s such a range that it’s hard to depict what he’s truly feeling. In one instant, he looks so enraged I’m scared he’ll show his roots, but in another, he looks ready to just hide me away and never let me go because his concern for my welfare is his utmost priority.
“Giovanni was so ready for that to be it, too,” I speak, reminding myself of my own brother’s excitement at what could become. I flash my gaze to Bruno and bite my lip before I say another word. “Why did you ever have to leave?”
Bruno looks taken aback, and I don’t actually blame him. But he needs to realize that life took another dive after he ran. Our father grew darker from the betrayal, and Giovanni saw it his place to step up. Life altered into this hellish reality where we feared more of what could be done to us and how it’d be condoned. The biggest problem of all is that there is no escape. We had lived so long under the same roof that only one showed the strength to leave, and now no one does.
“For reasons like this,” Bruno states solemnly. “I wanted a life, Amelia. I wanted a life without having to see what heinous crime our father could do next. I didn’t want to have to worry about the job placed upon me.”