Chapter 11 #3
He disappears down the hallway. I sip my wine, my gaze moving to Liliana. She's watching the door he left through, her face unreadable. She senses me watching, and turns to look at me. I hold her stare.
The heat in her eyes is maddening. She wants me too, that much I can tell. I want to drag her close and finish what we started three days ago. I want to thoroughly sate this hunger she dredges in me. Instead, I grip the table hard.
Tomasso returns a few minutes later. I study his face.
“Nothing urgent,” he says when he sees me staring. “I’ll handle it. You enjoy your evening. But I should get going. I’m expected elsewhere.”
“Your harem?” I throw the dig at him. He rolls his eyes while my mother laughs. Liliana smothers a smile.
“Enjoy the family time, Gio,” he says, his voice reeking of sarcasm.
He leans in to kiss my mother’s cheek, then gives Liliana a smile and a gentle squeeze on the shoulder before he strides out.
After he leaves, the silence breathes around us. I refill Mother’s glass. The air is still sweet with wine and garlic. I want to take Liliana upstairs. I want to touch her until every wall between us is stripped bare. I almost rise, call it a night, but my mother's voice stops me.
Her voice is calm. “I saw Emilio at Ricco Salvatore's wedding last week.”
The name snaps something inside me. I stiffen. Liliana, as though sensing it, sends a furtive glance at me, but I don't look at her.
“Who?” I ask, though I already know.
“Emilio,” she says, watching me. “Alessio’s old friend.”
Alessio’s name douses me in ice. My pulse spikes, and from my periphery, I see the room start to shrink. Not many things affect me in this life, but the memory of my brother makes me go cold.
I set my wineglass down, slower than necessary. “Mamma,” I say, the warning in my voice clear.
She ignores it. “He’s doing well. He looks older, a little tired, but he's doing well.”
I feel Liliana shift beside me. She's gone completely still. She's watching, listening.
“Mamma,” I say again, my voice deceptively calm.
She presses on firmly. “He's the same age Alessio would've been if he hadn't died,” she laughs bitterly. “He recognized me. I didn't think he would. I think he wanted to speak, but thought better of it.”
I grip the table tighter. “He shouldn’t have even looked at you. Perhaps, he's forfeiting the grace to live.” My voice is a growl.
Mother's voice softens. “Giovanni. It’s been six years. You have to let it go. They were just children. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“If I forgave every wrong done to me, I wouldn’t be Don,” I snap.
Her mouth presses into a line. “It wasn’t Emilio’s fault. Not entirely.”
“We're not talking about this, mother.”
She looks at me sadly. “Giovanni—”
“He didn’t put the rope around Alessio’s neck, no," I cut in. “But he built the silence that pushed him there. He was just sixteen. Sixteen,” I pause, the sadness almost choking the words in my throat. “I won't entertain this.”
Even now, the weight of his name tastes like rust.
Mother's gaze softens. She sighs, then she turns to Liliana, signing. “Did Giovanni tell you about Alessio?”
Liliana shakes her head, her face already drawn, eyes wide in her beautiful face.
She speaks. “He was my son, Giovanni’s younger brother. He was mute and deaf, just like you. He took his life at sixteen.” The words choke the air, and I feel Liliana’s stare like a weight, but I don't look at her.
Mother continues. “He had quiet eyes, but he was always watching. Dio, he was gentle. He loved the garden. He's the reason we employed staff who understand sign language.” Her face fractures, her smile bittersweet. “I believe he was too fragile for the world he was born into. He was bullied,” she says, her voice a broken whisper. “Mocked for what made him different. Until one day, he decided he couldn’t bear it anymore.”
“That’s enough,” I say sharply, banging my fist on the table. “Enough, mother. Alessio is not a story to be passed across the table.”
Mother's gaze holds mine. “I know you blame yourself for what happened. You always have. But how could you have known? You need to forgive yourself, figlio mio.”
I can’t sit through this. I can't let her keep looking at me like that, like she sees the boy I used to be and the man I’ve become all at once. I push up from the table, muttering something about needing air—though it’s not air I need, it's silence—and I walk, fast, until I reach the study.
The walls close around me like old arms. My fists are tight, my jaw tighter, my chest hollowed out in places I forgot existed.
I reach for the bottle of Vecchio Amaro I keep for whenever I need to think strategically.
But tonight, I want it for something else.
The past has risen without mercy, and I need it to dull the ache in me.
I pour the Amaro into a glass and watch the dark liquid settle. It smells sharp, like regret made drinkable. I down a mouthful and let it burn. The familiar taste settles in my stomach like a dead weight.
Then the door opens behind me with a soft creak. I don't have to turn to know it's Liliana. Her scent precedes her.
She doesn’t knock, doesn’t pause. She just walks in like this room has always belonged to her too, and maybe it does. She doesn’t sign either. Not questions. Not sympathies. She crosses the room slowly, her footsteps soundless.
Then, she sits beside me, close enough that I feel her warmth before I even look at her. She just sits there, not moving, like that’s enough.
And somehow, it is.
I want to reach for her, to bury my hands in her hair. I want to pull her into me, feel something real. I want her to take this ache I can’t name, the grief that’s burrowed into my bones. But I don’t move. I stare straight ahead and drink.
And then, she does something totally unexpected. She moves without warning.
I turn in time to see her lean in slowly before her arms rise to slide around me. It floors me, and I freeze for half a second, not because I don’t want it, but because I need it more than I realized