Chapter 20 #2
I couldn't take him to a vet's office. Couldn't let strangers handle his death. Couldn't bear the clinical coldness of stainless-steel tables and fluorescent lights for a creature who'd been my brother.
So we did it at home.
My father, Manzu. Giovanni. Me.
Winter night, frozen ground. We dug for hours, breaking through ice-hardened soil behind the estate. My hands bled. Giovanni's did too. Neither of us complained.
My father made it quick. One shot. Enzo didn't suffer.
We wrapped him in his favorite blanket. Buried him under the oak tree. Marked the grave with stones.
Giovanni stood beside me the whole time. Silent. Steady. Present in a way that mattered more than words.
That was before Auggies turned my cousin into someone who talks about himself in third person like he's afraid of his own hands.
Another memory pushes forward. Unwanted. Uncomfortable.
Christmas of senior year in high school. Giovanni brought Lorcan home for the holidays. Lorcan ó Fearghail—the Irish kid from Auggies whose family controlled Boston's docks. Polite violence wrapped in good breeding. Storm-gray eyes and a smile that promised either friendship or a knife, depending.
I remember being annoyed. Three's a crowd, especially when two of the three share secrets you're not privy to.
I spent that entire break in the backseat of Giovanni's new Jeep—Salvatore's guilt gift, because while he might've considered his son disposable, gifts were a reflection of the giver, not the son receiving them.
I was always in the backseat. Invisible. Forgotten.
That’s why I heard them.
Lorcan and Giovanni, talking low in the front. I was half-asleep, head against the window, watching the Pennsylvania winter scroll past.
"...the dog story..." Lorcan's accent made it sound foreign, ritualized.
I perked up. The dog story. That was our private ‘code’ for that night we buried Enzo. It was something that bound us together. A cold, dark night of mourning. Giovanni’s arm draped over my shoulder. No words, just the sound of the midnight woods.
"You ever think about it?" Lorcan again.
"Every day." Giovanni's voice was flat. Empty.
"Me too."
Silence. Just the road and the heater and my confusion. At the time, I didn't understand it. Just assumed they were talking about Enzo.
But now... with context. With the monster comments. With Giovanni's complete unraveling tonight.
The dog story.
Not Enzo.
Something else. Something that happened at Auggies. Something that replicated the night we buried my best friend. Something with frozen ground, a pickax, and secrecy between two boys who've carried it ever since.
Something they buried together.
Someone.
My stomach turns.
The pieces assemble themselves against my will.
I can pinpoint it now. If I had to choose the exact moment my cousin became a stranger, it would be then. That Christmas with Lorcan. That spring when he graduated. That summer when he stopped meeting my eyes for longer than necessary.
I thought it was Auggies changing him. The military discipline, the regimentation, the brutality of that place.
But it wasn't the academy.
It was what happened there.
What he and Lorcan did there.
The dog story. But it wasn't a dog. That was just code. They buried a body together. Who?
On the monitor, Giovanni lifts Emmaleen. She's limp, boneless, deep in subspace's aftermath. He carries her like she's sacred. Like she's breakable.
Like he knows exactly how fragile a body becomes when you've already broken one before.
I watch him navigate the dungeon, moving through the door to the sparse bedroom. He places her on the vinyl mattress with surprising gentleness. Straightens. Walks over to the tub.
Water runs.
The tub fills.
Giovanni returns, lifts Emmaleen again, carries her to the bath. Lowers her in with hands that shake slightly—barely visible, but I see it. I see everything now.
He kneels beside the tub. Starts washing her. Shoulders first. Arms. Each movement deliberate, careful, tender.
His mouth moves. Talking. Always talking.
I adjust the audio feed again, fine-tuning until his voice clarifies.
"...loved words too. My mother. Remember how I told you she'd read to me before bed. The Little Prince. She called me that…"
Aunt Priscilla. Giovanni is talking about his dead mother.
To a girl who can't hear him. Can't process. Can't respond.
"...poetry. She's the one who taught me about terza rima. I told you that, right? The trinity structure. Past, present, future all woven together. She said it proved time wasn't linear, just... circular. Everything coming back around..."
He's washing Emmaleen's hair now. Gentle. Methodical.
"...died when I was twelve. Car accident. Except it wasn't. Angelo told me years later. Suicide. She drove into that bridge on purpose..."
Emmaleen's eyes are closed. Tears slip down her cheeks, mixing with bathwater.
Giovanni doesn't notice. Or pretends not to.
Just keeps talking. Keeps confessing to someone who isn't conscious enough to bear witness.
"...left a note. Just one line. 'I'm sorry I couldn't love you enough to stay.'"
Disturbed.
The word arrives as a clinical diagnosis.
My cousin is deeply, profoundly disturbed.
Not broken the way Emmaleen is broken. Not fragmented by external forces.
Broken from the inside. Shattered by accumulated trauma he's never processed, never addressed, never allowed himself to feel.
The kidnapping. Aunt Priscilla's suicide. Whatever happened at Auggies with Lorcan and the dog story.
And that's just shit I know about. God only knows what he's been up to since. There's at least a decade between us now where I wasn't even around. Too busy with my own life on the Pittsburgh riverfront.
Meanwhile, layer upon layer of violence and grief has calcified into the armor Giovanni calls control.
But it's not control.
It's dissociation. Compartmentalization. The monster and the man, kept separate because allowing them to merge would mean confronting everything he's done, everything he's survived, everything he's become.
I watch Giovanni rinse Emmaleen's hair. Watch him drain the tub. Watch him lift her out, wrap her in a towel that's too thin to provide real warmth, carry her back to the bed.
He dresses her in the transparent nightgown and lies her down, posing her in the fetal position.
No covers. There were never any covers in that room.
Hell, the bed doesn’t even have sheets. And while I do realize that it was planned that way for a reason, for fuck’s sake, how the hell can he look at her—shivering and shaking from the cold—and not be compelled to go find her a fucking blanket?
He doesn’t notice her. Not really. He’s not seeing her at all.
He’s seeing… something else.
He’s somewhere else.
I watch as he sits on the floor beside the bed, back against the wall, head tipped back, eyes closed.
Staying the night, I guess. Keeping vigil.
Protecting her from the monster he believes lives inside him.
Giovanni is unraveling, and he's taking Emmaleen down with him. Using her as a vessel for his trauma, a mirror for his self-hatred, a proof that even broken things can be possessed.
But that's not training.
That's not even control.
That's just mutual destruction dressed in protocol.
I sit down in the control room chair. Settle in. Wait.
On the monitor, his lips move again. Soundless now, the audio too distant.
But I can read the shape of the words.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Please don't be afraid.
Maybe an hour later, the back stairwell groans.
Footsteps—heavy, deliberate—ascending from the dungeon below.
I straighten in the control chair, forcing my mind into stillness. Knuckles still raw from our earlier fight. The split in my lip throbs, a reminder of how that confrontation ended—bloody and unresolved.
I should stand. Should meet him at the door. Should demand an accounting for what I just witnessed—the violation of every protocol, the weaponization of aftercare, the confession to an unconscious girl who couldn't consent to hearing his trauma.
Should. Should. Should.
But I don't move.
The door opens. Giovanni enters, and the air shifts—charged, electric, wrong.
His eyes are too bright. Pupils dilated despite the dim lighting. Energy radiates off him in waves, manic and uncontained. He's shirtless, dried blood—Emmaleen's? His own?—smeared across his ribs.
"Jino." My name comes out breathless. Excited. "You should have seen her."
I remain still. Watching. Cataloging.
"The way she took it. Every strike. Counted them perfectly—no hesitation, no begging." He paces, three steps left, pivot, three steps right. Caged animal energy. "She never once used her safe word. Not once. She's ready for more. She wants more."
The fuck? "Giovanni—"
"No, listen." He cuts me off, hands moving now, gesturing wildly. "I know what you're thinking. That I went too hard, too fast. But you didn't see her face. The way she looked at me after. Trust. Pure fucking trust. She enjoyed it, Jino. The pain, the submission, all of it."
Enjoyed it.
The words land like a sickness.
She cried. She trembled. Not because her muscles were being put through paces to make them strong, but because she has been conditioned to accept violence as inevitable. To equate pain with love.
That's not enjoyment. That's survival.
But Giovanni sees what he needs to see. Interprets her compliance as consent, her endurance as eagerness.
"Tomorrow morning," he continues, still pacing. "Don't go slow with her. She can handle more than you think. Give her positions that challenge. Make her hold them longer. Push her limits."
I find my voice. "The contract specifies gradual escalation—"
"Fuck the contract." He waves a hand dismissively. "I cleared all her demerits. Fresh slate. But I want her to earn at least a dozen by tomorrow night. Can you do that?"
Can I.
As if this is a request, not a command.
As if I have any power here to refuse.