24. Milan
MILAN
Bella was a pleasant house guest despite the fact that she was not a guest and my unexpected hostage. I ran a hand down my face at that, but soon returned to staring at the blank computer screen in my office.
The Feras had not contacted me while Adriano, Francesco, and I strategized with the Gioffres on how to save Sicily.
The silence was jarring. It was almost preferable at this point that they burst into my home to rescue Bella.
After all, Adriano had shut down her phone all for the location tracking I had told him to keep active, and they had still remained distant.
It had only been days without my wife, but those days had created a divide between me and my feelings.
I did not notice the darkness until I was gasping in it in the middle of the night.
I did not appreciate the brightness of the skies until the sun was blinding me.
All I saw was the lack of her in everything I did.
A quiet knock startled me from the plaguing thoughts of how the Feras were destroying me, and I looked up to find Bella.
She had rosy cheeks and damp hair, evidently from another bath which she had informed us she enjoyed.
The doctor had told us that she was fine, the fetus too, and that she simply required nothing but rest and care.
I did not inform him that I would attempt this, but that Bella was my captive, and she may find relaxation a difficult task given this unfortunate fact.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, frowning at her presence here.
“Fine.” She smiled sadly, stepping in and closing the door behind her. “I just wondered if—”
I shook my head, anticipating her question because she asked me multiple times a day whether Brenno or Cesare had said anything.
She was desperate to return to her home, to her crazy husband and her family, and though I did not understand how she could wish to be around Cesare, I could not blame her.
I, too, craved the comfort of my other half; these walls did not make up my home without Sicily, and everything was cold.
Bella had stopped crying at night, and I wondered if she had stopped hoping they would come for her, but then she would speak of the boys, and it became clear again that, despite all of their flaws, this woman was incredibly loved.
It was not hope she had, but knowing—knowing that they would not simply leave her here.
She slumped into the chair opposite my desk, drawing her knees to her chest to make herself small again. She did this often, and I wondered if she still feared me to some extent. “Are you sad?”
I frowned. I had not been asked this question before because the answer had not been clear, but I found myself filling my lungs with air so that my heart did not sink as I replied, “Incredibly.”
She nodded, looking away as though this answer saddened her too.
Human emotions were exceptionally disruptive.
“Brenno said that you can’t feel, but it seems like you can.”
I shook my head. “I should not be able to feel, he is correct, but I can, and it is problematic.”
“Why?”
“Because sadness is a weakness and happiness is a larger one.” I sighed, clicking nothing on my computer so that I did not have to look at her sad face and be sadder.
Bella lowered her knees and leaned forward as she said quietly, “I think if you all just admitted you were sad, this whole thing could’ve been fixed already.”
Her words stirred that sadness within me, creating a whirlpool that seemed to swallow every other emotion too. Sadness had the power to take everything away, to make the happy things feel like burdens, to make even anxiety feel like drowning.
I cleared my throat, releasing the clog there. “Why would my brothers be sad?”
Bella leaned back into her chair, placing a hand on the small swell of her stomach. “They’re stubborn, a lot like you. It’s not about ruining you. It’s not even really about the contract; it’s about taking back everything they lost, getting their voices back, feeling safe again.”
There were no words to adequately explain how wrong she was because she did not seem wrong at all.
The Feras had lost everything: their mother, their father, their home, Adriano, and even me.
I had lost a lot, but I had been allowed to keep what was most familiar: Adriano, my home, the legacy, even my name.
It struck me like a bullet wound that they had not even been able to keep their name, what linked them to their childhood and their safety.
Their identities had been stolen, yet I was still wondering why they were not the boys they had left me as.
“Brenno believes I killed our mother for nothing,” I explained. “They both believe I did not fight for them to stay within New York.” I trembled, the unexpected blur of tears lining my eyes, except I did not brush them away, not this time. “I did not do that.”
Bella’s brows pulled together. “Wait… What happened?”
I took a deep breath, one that stung my chest, and I told her everything I had trusted Sicily with, no longer fearing the contract that lacked the very thing it should have been founded on.
Emotion.
If enough of us knew our truths, if enough of us felt what we wanted one another to understand, maybe the contract would void itself. Perhaps we could all get what we wanted if we felt it for one another.
“What do you recommend I do, Bella? How can I amend this?”
She reached her hand across the table, squeezing mine as she smiled through her tears. “Talk to them. Tell them what happened, because they don’t know.”
I snatched my phone from the desk and clicked Cesare’s contact despite how my fingers shook and my stomach lurched. Each ring was silenced beneath the erratic thump of my heartbeat, and when the rings stopped, I was certain my heart flatlined too.
“Milano!” I frowned at his ecstatic tone. It did not suit this scenario. “Good timing. I’ve just sent you an email. Why don’t you give it a look while we’re on the phone together?”
Knowing was a strange concept, almost stranger than feeling.
How could my body know that what was in that email would change everything without my brain wanting to accept that?
I pressed the phone to my ear against my shoulder, racing to my laptop to open the only unread email I had. One beat passed with Cesare’s breathing in my ear, and for that moment, I did not want to click on the file, to know what was there, but I owed it to my wife, even to him.
The file loaded and the phone slipped out of my hand.
Sicily was there, in a basement with wet stone walls and a yellowing mattress in the corner.
Her wrists were bound above her by metal chains, her mouth biting down on a bundle of cloth.
She wore only a short, silk white dress that revealed purple splotches of bruising, and as the camera panned out, the blood decorating her pale skin became evident and only increased until the whole room was in view, and her blood was painted across every surface surrounding her.
Cesare appeared in the camera, watching with rapt attention as Sicily dropped her head to her chest in defeat. He showed the camera some kind of weapon, an axe with metal shears sticking out of it, before he gripped my wife by the throat causing tears to leak from her eyes.
Sick.
It was sick and twisted, but so was my brother. No sane person could do this to somebody smaller and weaker than them, somebody who was entirely innocent.
“Sicily,” I whispered as though she could hear me, but this was not a window. If it was, I would have smashed it through with my bare knuckles and used the shards to rip out Cesare’s throat.
He laughed as he pointed one of the shears’ sharp rusted points over her body before charging forward, taunting her, causing her to sob harder.
She was terrified, utterly frozen against the chains, and as I watched my brother find this amusing, I knew that I would have to kill the boy who had once been the light of our lives.
I dropped to my knees, scurrying for the trash can. I barely made it before the nothing I had eaten in the previous days violently heaved from my stomach.
My hand fumbled for my smashed phone as my chest panted, and I brought it to my ear once more and whispered in hoarse pants, “Anything you ask, I will do it, I will do whatever you want. I will find a way to void the contract. I will threaten Diego Sansone’s life.
Take all that I have, Cesare, but do not take her.
I will give you anything, my territories, my title, my money, my home, just not her. ”
A moment of silence passed before I heard a deep sigh. “Bring Bella alive and meet me at the location I sent you.”
The phone line clicked closed, and the video continued to play until Sicily screamed. She screamed so loudly and so violently that it hummed in my eardrums even when it was over and the screen went black.