16. Sicily #2
Cesare had wedded this woman. He had fallen in love and had a wedding, and I had not been there.
Mom had always said that he would wed for love, but I had not been there.
I had once stitched his split limbs and bandaged his bruised fingers.
I had rocked him to sleep as he sobbed and smiled at his biggest achievements.
I had mourned the loss of him, and I still had not been invited to his wedding—and that was my fault.
My palm rubbed at my chest where my aching heart beat as if it would ease the pain there, but it did not because my heart did not exist there. Not anymore.
I looked at who held it, looked at it in the hands of my wife across the room, and it was evident where I needed to be. Not with my brothers but amending the silence between me and Sicily.
It was illogical to believe that in another world, I might have asked Cesare what his wedding looked like, who his wife was, and how I could fix what had happened between us, so I chose to live in the present one, in the one that Sicily was in.
“It was nice of you to come,” I said, my attention still fixated on my wife. “You can leave now. Good—”
Brenno’s hand shoved around my throat, silencing my words, snatching away my air. My spine cracked against the wall and my ears popped with some woman’s unnecessary scream, but the pain was unrecognizable, like a distant ache and not a splitting agony.
I did not notice Brenno’s knife slitting the front of my shirt, causing a shallow slice through my muscles, not until he stared at the blade sprinkled with crimson as if it was something fascinating.
“Stop it, Bren!” Ezio hissed, grabbing at his arm, but Ezio was twelve and Brenno’s arm was the size of the boy’s entire body.
Ezio was a good boy, not yet tainted by the corruption of his family, but he would never be able to keep his innocent kindness, not in Brenno’s world of such anger and hatred.
“It is okay,” I breathed, panting through the sudden sting as the air hit my wound. I held up a hand to my men, all moving to attack, telling them not to come any closer.
My fingers moved themselves, naturally clutching Brenno around the neck as I had when he was younger.
His curls were warm, almost childish still, but there was no hint of the boy I had helped raise in his eyes any longer.
Here, there was someone that I had hurt, and I logically deserved to be cut by his knife for what I had done to him.
His knife was a tickle compared to Hugo’s anyway.
I focused on his eyes as he held his knife to me, my brain tracking the tear that slid down his cheek as something that was expressing sadness and anger at the same time.
I nodded once, brushing the tear away with the pad of my thumb, informing him that he could hurt me to relieve the pain, that it was okay to be angry with me.
Everybody seemed to be angry with me, yet I did not understand anger enough to fix it.
Brenno slit a parallel cut beside the first one, only shallow enough to swell with blood. “I should kill you for what you’ve done.”
“I should also kill you for what you have done.”
What was that feeling? The one that was heavy and physically painful, the one that told me I was doing the right thing by not killing them when I was logically aware that I would have punished anybody else for less.
“You’re weak.” Brenno sneered as he cut me again. “You feel nothing.” Another. “That’s why you gave us up. That’s why you made me sign that fucking contract. Reverse it. Now.”
My eyes closed. The pain was overpowering, but his emotional pain was worse and somehow, I could feel it too. That did not make sense, but since Sicily had come into my life, little had.
“I cannot, Brenno. I will not jeopardize my wife’s safety even if that results in my demise.”
“Her over us, then?” His voice sounded like the boy he had once been.
I nodded once. “Her over everyone else.”
His face contracted into the clear indicators of surprise, and I should have used his distraction to end his existence for stepping into my territory, into my wife’s territory, but I could not.
Brenno Fera should have died a long time before now, but I could not do it and that was illogical and confusing, but it was a limitation that I could not overcome.
Adriano’s familiar hands snatched me into his grip and away from my brother, one holding the blood into my body, the other firing shots at them.
The lights were too bright, the sounds were too loud, the touch too harsh against my body. He dragged me backward, and I clenched my hands together, trying to steady myself with the chaos already caused.
“Don’t kill them, Adrian,” I said breathlessly, but he could not hear me over Brenno’s shouts. “Adriano!”
“I will haunt you, Milano!” Brenno roared, fighting against Cesare’s arms. “I’ll come for her. I will. I’ll be her worst fucking nightmare!”
I was aware that there was a sound emanating from my body, though I could not feel anything over the blinding need to kill my brother for threatening my wife.
My body was numb, unfeeling, unrestrained—not from his knife but his words.
I could have killed a thousand men, and it would not have satiated the blankness inside of me.
Sicily would remain unharmed.
Sicily had to remain unharmed.
My lips were moving, chanting my mother’s words, trying to fill the hole inside of me with something. My focus was distracted and hazy and it was all overwhelming. I felt too little but too much, like I was losing blood, but I was not.
I was simply experiencing emotion for the first time in years, and it was flooding into me as if it wanted to tear me apart.
“Shhh, Milan.” That voice was soft and calm and certainly not Adriano.