6. Mia
6
MIA
T he scent of cedarwood and citrus fills the air, the warm fragrance mingling with the sharp tang of leather and wood. It’s a sophisticated scent, one that carries weight—like time itself has settled here and found a home. The atmosphere is heavy, but intoxicating, like something you don’t quite trust but can’t tear yourself away from. It replaces the musty, stale air that lingered when I first walked into the space that feels forgotten by the world.
The room, despite its size, feels like it’s been tailored to his presence. Brando fills it effortlessly, his towering frame making the modest space feel even smaller. He stands there like a storm contained within the perfect confines of a well-fitted suit—impeccably tailored, every line and crease sharp, as though he was born to wear such clothes. His presence is overwhelming, yet strangely comforting. There’s an undercurrent of power to him now, something magnetic, as if he draws the room to him just by existing in it. I can feel my pulse quicken, my heart thumping louder than it should. He’s always had that effect on me.
Brando Gatti.
My heart stutters in my chest the moment he walks into the room at the store. It’s the kind of jolt that stops time, the world pausing on its axis as I realize exactly who is standing there. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him—not when he refuses to acknowledge me. Not when ten years have passed, and he barely spares me a second glance.
It’s been a lifetime since I last saw him, yet everything about him is burned into my memory, every detail clear and unyielding. But today—today, he’s nothing more than a fleeting shadow of the boy I once knew. That boy who disappeared from my life without a word, without any explanation, leaving behind nothing but an echo of what we had. No goodbye. Nothing. I almost forgot him over the years, forced myself to bury the wound he left behind. Yet here he is, standing before me, and everything I thought I had forgotten comes rushing back in waves.
The memories flood in—brutally sweet, almost too much to handle. I was fifteen then, too na?ve, too stupid to realize that giving my heart to Frank Falcone was a desperate, foolish attempt to grab Brando’s attention. I wanted him to see me—really see me—instead of just that girl who tagged along in the background. To notice me, the way I had noticed him, the way I had crushed on him in a way that made every other guy in the world seem irrelevant.
But Brando never saw me. Not like that. He saw me as a friend. A childhood companion. And that was all I would ever be to him.
“Are you sure we’ve covered everything?” Brando asks, and I have to shake my head, get out of my thoughts before I can even coherently start to think of an answer to his question. He’s so damn beautiful, it’s blinding.
“Nails. They were concerned about their nails,” I stumble over my words.
“Nails?”
He looks at me like I’ve gone crazy. I hold up my short, perfectly manicured nails and flick at them.
“My sisters are vain like that - they wanted to get their nails done.”
“And you let them!?!” Uncle Mason roars. I should shrink back into the sofa at his tone, but I don’t. I’m brave like that. Foolish, but brave. Brando throws an arm out, holding my uncle back as he rages. He places an index finger to his lips, asking for his silence. It’s a sight to behold, because Uncle Mason bends to no-one . And yet here he is, taking orders from Brando Gatti, a man maybe half his age.
“I didn’t let them do anything.” I’m just as defiant as he is.
Brando’s magnificent blue eyes cut me down to size, daring me to say another word. Those eyes had once held my teenage dreams in their depths. They probably still could hypnotize me, with the way they reflect his intensity and intelligence. Even though I haven’t seen him in years, I can still remember every last devastating detail about Brando Gatti, because that’s how much of an impression he left on me.
I watch him as he flicks his eyes at me from across the room, my heart thrumming in my chest like it did back in high school, only now it's deeper, more resonant. There’s a familiarity in his expression that tugs at something deep within my soul. His hair, once a wild tangle of boyish curls, is now styled back from his face, the dark waves catching the soft light, drawing him in an almost ethereal halo. His jawline is sharper than I remember, so sharp it could probably cut glass, each angle and curve more pronounced, more defined.
And his arms…damn, those hands and arms. He’s discarded his coat and rolled up his sleeves to reveal impressive forearms with scrolls of ink lining his skin. He moves too fast for me to make out particulars, but the shadows against his hands and arms speak of power and strength, two things my life is sorely lacking right now.
With time, the boy I once knew has become a man, his posture confident, his height intimidating. He fills out his suit like he was born to wear it. Each contour of his tailored shirt hugs his broad shoulders, tapering down to a waist that shows the years have been kind to him. He could very well have just stepped out of the pages of a magazine, with his height and build and the air of mystery that surrounds him. I didn’t think it was possible, but Brando Gatti, with time, has become a force of nature. Everything about him is big. His presence, his heart, his soul. No matter how hard he tries to hide it, Brando wouldn’t be here to help if he wasn’t a certain type of man.
“You two can kill each other later,” Brando says, shooting glances between Mason and me. “We need to get to the city.”
We drive around the city for hours. We criss cross the same areas over and over, without luck. We’ve checked every possible place that I think my sisters could have gone to, and we’ve come up empty handed each and every time. There’s not a single shred of evidence that they were ever even in the city.
I’m losing my mind. I’m biting my perfectly manicured nails. I’m pulling at my hair. Then I walk away to a quiet little corner, bend over with my hands on my knees, and hurl all over the ground of the derelict carpark we’ve pulled into. Brando leans against his car with his arms folded against his chest, watching from a distance. Mason approaches and grabs me, taking me in his arms as I sob mournfully into his chest. He smooths down my hair, telling me everything’s going to be okay, and I cry harder. I don’t for one minute think I believe him.
Brando pushes off from the car and decides to walk around the perimeter, putting distance between himself and the emotional turmoil swirling around me. As I watch him move, my mind slips back to those summers that now seem like they belonged to someone else's life. Brando and I had been inseparable - two halves of a whole, exploring the woods behind our neighborhood, building forts, and telling each other stories that only we believed. The world was magical then; it was ours and ours alone.
The rift between us didn't come suddenly or loudly. It crept in quietly, like mist rolling over a river at dawn. First, we migrated from childhood to early adolescence, and then entering high school, we each formed our own little group of friends. Our time together was relegated to those lazy weekends when we happened to run into each other, or as I like to remember it, how we went out of our way to run into each other, because it was something to look forward to. Then I became more and more fascinated with my books; all I ever wanted to do was sit under a tree and read, daydream and hang out with my friends at the mall. And all he wanted to do was play football and be like his father. Our time together outside of school grew less and less as more time passed. Until the most time we spent together at school was when we were thrown together to work on class projects, and the scent of what we once had been to each other threatened to smother me.
Now here we were, years later, thrown back together by circumstance, searching for my twin sisters who vanished earlier tonight. Despite the chasm between our past and present, an unspoken agreement hangs in the air, that he is here to help. Never mind that he once broke my heart; some things don’t get a perfect ending. Some things are just left to unravel, pushing forward into the unknown.
As Brando circles back to where Mason and I stand, I wipe my face with the back of my hand, trying to compose myself. Mason looks up and nods faintly at Brando, as if acknowledging his return from self-imposed exile.
“Are you sure you haven’t forgotten any place they could be?” he asks me. His voice sounds more forceful than it did before, as though he is slowly losing his patience as the night wears on, or maybe that’s his way of dealing with his own frustrations as we try to bridge the gulf that settles between us.
I pause for a moment before nodding slowly. “I can’t think to look anywhere else,” I whisper. “These are the usual places they come to.” My voice cracks slightly as I speak, wondering if I’ve possibly missed something.
“What about friends? Boyfriends?” he suggests, and I shake my head and tell him all their friends’ numbers are in my phone. When I tell him I left my phone back at the apartment we’d been staying in before we arrived at the safe house, he raises his eyebrows and turns to Mason for explanation. Mason shrugs at Brando sheepishly and tells him it was a security measure.
“Well, we’re going to need that phone,” he says, pointedly.
We pile silently into the car – Mason in the front passenger seat, while I sit in back staring blankly out the window. The ride is quiet except for the gravel crunching beneath the tires and my occasional sniffles as we move through the night.
Brando drives towards the address Mason punches into the navigator. My thoughts stray once again to the man sitting in the driver’s seat. His hand moves against the steering wheel, his arm flexing against the fabric of his shirt. It’s hard to reconcile this man with the innocent, broody boy who shared my childhood. Brando and I never really got a chance to “end” perfectly, and a part of me wonders if this shared crisis could repair what was lost between us long ago. We were friends, and then we were more like old acquaintances, until he up and moved away. But each glance at his downturned face reminds me that some stories don’t always get their perfect ending; sometimes they just struggle forward in search of closure or redemption—and perhaps that is exactly where we are headed.