Episode 75
Episode 75
Unforgivable
GIOVANNI
“And the nightmares? Have they lessened since the attack?” my therapist asked, her eyebrow cocked when I sighed deeply.
I crossed my ankle over my knee and tugged at my tie. The damn thing felt so tight that it was restricting my airflow.
“Is there a reason you are ignoring the question?” She tilted her head and stared at me.
When she did this, sometimes I felt like it was a game of chicken. Who would break eye contact first? Except uncharacteristically, I was always the one that looked away.
“Not exactly,” I gave in. “It’s frustrating to have my nights plagued by this. I eat dinner with my wife, make love to her, and then fall asleep with her scent in my nose, and her body tucked tightly to mine. Everything is fine. Fucking great even. I’m living the dream. I’ve always wanted Julianne. Always .
“Now I have her, and this shit creeps up when I’m sound asleep and attacks me all over again in the middle of the night. Why isn’t it going away?” I snarled and then clamped my mouth shut, realizing I was physically growling like an animal.
“It’s been a week, Giovanni,” she stated rather gently, then leaned forward and pushed the tissues closer to where I sat across from her.
“And?” I looked at her blankly and then felt the wetness around my eyes. “For fuck’s sake.” I reached forward, grabbed a tissue, and wiped at my leaky eyes. I didn’t even know I was tearing up. That’s how removed from all of this I wanted to be.
“And these things take time.”
“How much time? Give me a realistic timeframe to work with.”
She smiled and pushed a long strand of curly dark hair behind her ear. When she smiled freely, she was a knockout. A rather stunning, long-legged, curvy Black woman with style, elegance, and class. Which would put me off speaking about my private life with her—if she didn’t have this comforting way and lilt to her voice that somehow made me believe everything would be okay.
“Healing doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. It takes as long as it needs.”
I groaned.
She held up a finger. “With that said, I can already tell you’re a lot calmer than you were the last two visits. That in itself is progress.”
I spun my finger in a circle. “Whoop-dee-doo. I don’t want to appear calm; I want to stop having flashbacks and waking in the night after having horrible nightmares that scare the hell out of my wife. Julianne is worried about me, and she has enough to worry about.”
“Oh?” she prodded, one of her overtly obvious ways of getting me to talk about something or someone.
“The judge sided in her favor regarding her case. And I, in turn, handed over my family’s percentage of our shared company so she’d have governing interest, and her brother can fuck right off.” I grinned, imagining how Brenden probably took the news when his lawyers were notified. He’d lost his wife and now primary ownership of FM Enterprises. It was the least he deserved for all the shit he’s pulled.
“Brenden, the brother. Your ex-best friend. The man married to your ex-fiancée, the woman who attacked you.” Her dark eyebrows rose toward her hairline.
“Exactly.”
“And how do you feel about sticking it to Brenden in this manner?”
I grinned. “Fucking fantastic.”
She shook her head.
“What? He deserves all of it. You disagree?” I scoffed.
“No, not at all. He has wronged you both deeply, and he’ll have to deal with the repercussions of his choices.” She nodded. “Doesn’t change the fact that what he did to you, to Julianne, still hurts. He is family.”
I made a rude noise with my mouth. “Not anymore.”
“Is that how Julianne feels? Have you discussed her brother and the chaos he and Bianca brought into your lives?”
“Well, yes and no. We’ve discussed the business, the forgery, and, of course, the fight her brother and I had. But, at the moment, she’s more concerned with me and my mental health after what occurred.” That tight feeling in my neck crept up, making me want to remove the damn tie all together. Instead, I tugged at the offensive thing once more.
“What about the baby?” She asked the one thing I wanted to talk about less than the attack.
“What about it?”
“It?” The single word sounded more like an accusation than a question.
I ground down on my back molars, feeling like a dragon, ready to blow fire and burn the world to ash.
“There’s no proof that I’m the father of her baby, and we won’t know unless she gets a pre-natal DNA test done or until after the child is born. If it’s mine, Julianne and I will raise it. There’s really nothing more to say about the issue, and I’d appreciate it if we moved on.”
She stared at me for a long moment. This time I didn’t back down, staring lasers right back.
“Okay. Let’s get back to the nightmares.”
* * * *
When my session ended, I felt emotionally fileted. My therapist assured me that the nightmares would eventually subside. Her theory was, the more I worked through the trauma, the more likely they’d come to a natural end.
I wasn’t convinced, but I was tentatively hopeful.
That hope died when I finally made my way home. I’d barely stepped a foot in the door when I heard glass break from deeper within the apartment. I moved quickly to the kitchen. Instantly my hackles rose, seeing Brenden sitting at the bar top, his hand wrapped around a beer. Directly behind him was a dent in the wall and a shattered beer bottle, the contents splashed everywhere, strewn across the tile floor.
“What the hell is this?” I snapped.
Brenden popped off his stool so fast it crashed to the ground as he backed away, hands in the air.
Another bottle flew across the kitchen and slammed into the wall again, just barely missing hitting Brenden in the head.
“Jesus, Jules!” he screamed as he ducked out of the way. “I’m calling a truce!”
“Fuck your truce!” she screeched. “I thought I could listen to you apologize, but you’re not sorry!” She reached for another beer, the fridge door hanging open as she launched another full bottle.
That one hit the target, hitting Brenden in the center of his chest and then exploding into a million pieces when it hit the tile.
“Ouch, holy hell. Stop! Stop!” he cried. “Are you going to do anything about this? She’s going crazy!” Brenden looked at me for help.
I leaned against the counter, crossed my arms over one another and watched him dance while my wife lost it.
“I’ll show you crazy, you rat bastard!” She tossed another bottle.
That one clocked him in the knee, and he went down to the floor and curled into a ball. I grinned at the sight.
“Nice one, baby,” I praised.
She blew the wild red curls out of her face. “Thank you,” she panted and shut the fridge door.
“Feel better?” I asked.
“A little bit, yeah. How was ther—uh, your appointment?” Her eyes went wide as though she were afraid she might have unintentionally shared my private business.
“ Therapy was good,” I admitted loud enough for the cretin to hear. I wasn’t ashamed of having a therapist. I was ashamed of the specific reason behind why I needed one. “She gave me a few things to think about and try. We’ll discuss them later. I see your day has been productive.” I gestured to Brenden, who was using the kitchen table to balance as he shifted a chair and folded his body into it.
“Brenden said he wanted to apologize in person,” she sneered, her focus on her brother.
“Did he now?” I asked, surprise evident in my tone.
“Jules, I didn’t try to take the business away from you, but that’s exactly what you are doing to me,” Brenden blustered, his narrowed gaze on my wife. Then he turned toward me. “Both of you want to remove me from my birthright.”
“You mean, like you did to me!” she screeched, and I winced at the piercing timbre. “You tried to fire me, Brenden! Can you even imagine how that made me feel to have my own brother push me away, and right after our parents died!”
He held up his hands. “I will admit, that wasn’t one of my best moments.”
“Your best moments? Are you fucking kidding me right now? You screwed Giovanni’s fiancée on their rehearsal night. You then married her three weeks later. You tried to fire me and push me out of a job I loved, and out of your life. And now what…because your wife is in jail, and I now own full say in everything FM Enterprises, you come crawling back as though you all of a sudden have a fucking heart? I don’t think so big brother!” She picked up the beer he’d left on the counter and catapulted it at his head.
It barely missed as he hollered and ducked.
“Okay, okay, I get it! I’m an asshole. I fucked up. Royally. I want to make amends.”
Julianne burst into full belly laughter as tears scored down her pink cheeks.
“I mean it. I do want to apologize. I did you wrong.” He looked at me. “Both of you. And I’m sorry.”
I didn’t have to say a word, Julianne said it all on our behalf.
“You’re not forgiven. Don’t you see? The shit you pulled Brenden is unforgivable .”
His head dropped forward, and his shoulders sagged. “I’ll put in the work. Whatever it takes to win your favor back.”
Julianne closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Brenden.” The tears kept falling, and I wouldn’t stand for that. I moved through the muck and pulled her into my arms.
“I think you need to leave—unless you want me to make you leave again,” I grated.
He shook his head and stood up. “You fractured two of my ribs last time,” Brenden muttered and cupped the side of his rib cage.
“Less than you deserved,” I warned.
He scowled as he pushed his chair back in. “I really do want to fix things between us. Mom and Dad would hate that we’re fighting.”
Julianne removed her face from my chest and glared at her brother. “Mom and Dad would be so disappointed in you. They wouldn’t be able to see straight through their fury. Whatever this is”—she waved her hand up and down, gesturing to his entire body—“it’s not the brother I was raised with. I don’t know where he went, but my guess is he was brainwashed by an evil bitch.”
“Bianca’s in jail. Exactly what you both wanted. My pregnant wife is rotting in jail because of you two, and here I thought we could try and work things out,” he huffed.
“You’re delusional. That woman assaulted my husband.”
“Oh, come on, like my tiny wife could overtake a man of Gio’s size and stature. He’s got what, a hundred pounds on her? Puh-leeze. Sexual assault? Really, Gio? No jury in their right mind is going to side with you.”
I could feel my wife tense, and her entire body trembled with anger. Thankfully, I had my arm wrapped around her waist, because she flung herself forward like a deranged cat that had just been sprayed with water and was going to scratch his eyes out. I locked her tight against my chest as she kicked and windmilled her arms.
“I’ll destroy you! Let me at him!” She wailed and screamed like a banshee ready to commit murder.
“Get ahold of yourself, Julianne. You really have lost it. I don’t know what I was thinking coming here, hoping to be forgiven. I genuinely thought maybe we could talk things out, and you’d drop the trumped-up charges against my wife,” Brenden spat. “She’s pregnant. She shouldn’t be in a jail cell.”
“No, she should be in the black hole for drugging and assaulting an unsuspecting man. I hope they throw the book at her!”
Brenden rolled his eyes as not one, but three phones started to ring. Brenden’s, mine inside my pocket, and Julianne’s, which was lying on the counter.
“Jesus, what now!” Julianne barked.
Brenden answered his phone while I ignored mine and kept Julianne from getting into trouble for attacking her sibling. Not that I wouldn’t love to see that show, because I truly believed she’d kick his ass.
“She what? When? Who?” Brenden asked the caller.
A huge, evil smile stretched across his face as he looked at us.
“I’ll be right there,” he spouted and then hung up. A smarmy expression flitted across his face. “Good news. Looks like I don’t need your help with Bianca after all.”
Julianne frowned.
“Why is that?” I dared ask.
“Because Bianca just made bail.”