31. Milan
MILAN
“Milan, get off him!”
Cesare slumped down the wall until he reached the unhygienic stone floor as I let him go, blood dribbling into his mouth and causing him to choke. I backed off as my father’s voice began to lessen, as I proved that I was not defective and I could protect my wife.
“Why?” I shouted, panting. “Why did you do that to her?” Cesare whispered something, his head rolling on the wall behind him. I crouched before him, squeezing his cheeks between my fingers. “Wake up and explain to me what my wife did that hurt you so badly that you had to slit her throat!”
“S-sorry,” he whispered. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I-I’m sorry.”
Sicily had been right; Cesare was sick. I’d never seen my brother this way before, crying but out of his mind, right here but lost. He was a lawyer, he was exceptionally smart, but whatever was going on inside of his brain was poisoning him.
I looked over my shoulder at Brenno, my eyes narrowing until they adjusted to the darkness and I saw the devastation on his face—soft eyes but a harsh stare, a heaving chest with little exertion required.
Some of it was simply a feeling of knowing, of having seen this boy at his best and worst and knowing that his heart was breaking.
“What happened to him?” I whispered as Cesare continued to mumble how sorry he was.
Brenno shook his head. “He has psychotic episodes and PTSD. He had them a lot when we left New York, then they got really bad when Bella left him and moved to Chicago when we were fifteen. They got better when he started this lawyer stuff, but then he got married, Bella got pregnant, and they started to come back, just not—not like this. I’ll get him help. He needs help… He’s sick.”
My body ached for him, for the boy he had once been, and my eyes stung as I stared at him. I was angry, perhaps I even hated him, but right now, he looked just like a scared little boy, and I could never hate that boy.
I moved my hand to his cheek, and he sobbed into my palm, clutching my wrist gently, holding me there with shaky fingers. “Cesare, can you understand me?”
He nodded slowly, blinking up at me.
“Can you explain to me why you are afraid?”
“They got her,” he whispered, his nails digging into my skin.
Brenno crouched beside me. “He always says this when he’s like this. Cesare, Bella’s fine.”
“They got her because I told her about the contract.” He leaned closer like these people he was scared of were listening. “Th-they got her, they took her from me, and now they’re going to come back and get Bella and the new baby. We need to get Milano to void it, Bren, we need to—”
I frowned, not understanding his rambling. “Cesare, who did they get?”
“The baby!”
Brenno and I shared a glance before he said clearly, “Your baby’s fine, so is Bella, they—”
Cesare shook his head, slumping back against the wall. “No, no, my baby died, I saw the blood, I heard Bella crying, she was crying, she was crying so much, and—and she was screaming. They got her, my daughter.”
It was dark, but I felt Brenno’s hand find my leg. I did not remove him. I did not think he even realized he had touched me. His voice was strained as he said, “When was this, Cesare?”
“Long,” my brother answered, sounding distant, his head still shaking against the stone.
“Long ago. I-I was beaten, he beat me, he beat me so bad, and I crawled home. Bella was in my bed, she was there, she was losing our daughter… Eighteen, she was, then Brenno came home and we killed him because he beat me—”
“What is he talking about?” I whispered to Brenno, looking over and noticing the tears trailing down his cheeks.
Brenno didn’t answer. He remained silent for too long, trying to listen to our brother, but then he finally broke the quiet and said, “Cesare, we weren’t eighteen when we killed Stefano, remember?
We were—” He choked on nothing, on his own words perhaps, looking away before returning.
“We were fifteen, Bella was fourteen then, Ezio was two, don’t you remember? ”
Cesare simply shook his head. “Weeks.”
It dawned on me what he was saying. “She was eighteen weeks pregnant.”
“What?” Brenno snapped, his eyes widening.
I slammed my eyes shut as Cesare burst into tears, ones that wracked his body so hard that his chest lurched and Brenno had to place his hand on his heart to keep him still.
He looked weak like this, but I wondered if he was reverting back to the very day he spoke of, and if what he was saying was correct, I had forced him to sign that contract when he had just lost his child.
He had been just a child himself.
“You didn’t know?” I asked Brenno.
He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I wasn’t fucking there, remember? I was too busy cutting Mom to pieces.” He charged upright, letting Cesare slip down the wall further as he paced across the room, his hands wringing together, just like mine did.
I watched him for a moment, watched how his nails scratched at his hands, how he swirled his fingers around themselves.
He was a mirror image of me, an exact copy of my most defective parts.
I stood, frowning deeply as I walked toward him and took his hands, halting the wringing as Sicily did for me. “Why do you do this?”
He shrugged, tugging his hands out of my grip. “It’s habit.”
“No, it is not. You do it when you are overwhelmed, correct?”
He released a breath. “Yes.”
“And when you are thinking of the past?”
Brenno’s gulp was audible. “Yes.”
There had always been a part of me that wanted to protect my brothers like they were my sons, and I had done a good job of this until the night that they had been sent to Stefano’s house and shunned from the family.
I should have fought for them, but I had been terrified and had not understood the emotion at the time, and now Brenno had developed the same traits.
I nodded slowly, tears gathering in my eyelashes. “You said you hurt Mom. Is that what causes you to harm yourself this way?”
He turned, facing away from me, his hands clasped together but not wringing any longer. “Anything to do with Mom causes me to harm myself. Not so much now Fiorella’s here, but…it used to. My hands look like shit, but they’re healing.”
My own hands also looked this way, but they had begun to smooth out now that Sicily had stopped me from scratching them.
It was possible that Fiorella had the same effect on Brenno as my wife did on me, and if that was the case, then perhaps Fiorella Bianchi was supposed to be with my brother like I was meant to be with Sicily.
“Brenno,” I said clearly, thinking on what he had said, but he did not turn. “You did not hurt Mom that day. I killed her, not you.”
“Why do you guys keep saying that?” he snapped. “She fucking raped me; obviously I killed her! Why would you have killed her?”
The silence that followed did not sound silent inside of my head.
His words played there over and over again, refusing to be absorbed and understood because it could not be true, but the reality was that Mom had been incredibly unwell; she had mistaken us for our fathers for our entire childhoods, so this was not impossible.
Our mother, our poor, sick, twisted mother. She had only been fourteen when I was born, only nineteen when she had birthed both Brenno and Cesare. Mattea Lucca had been the epitome of pain, and all she could do was hurt her own child.
My body felt confused, angry, and devastated, relieved that my mother was dead but sad that this was how Brenno had to remember her, sick to my stomach but also unsurprised that she had committed something so despicable.
It was suffocating and thick, the air between us, and no matter what I did to lessen it, Brenno’s truth clung to every crevice of my body, latching there until I could feel the gravity of it.
This poor boy had lived with that truth all the way into adulthood, and it had harmed him.
“S-she raped you?”
He finally turned. “When I was fifteen. I came home to visit her and went to lie beside her on her bed. She thought I was Dad. I must have fallen asleep, and by the time I’d woken up again, my clothes were off and—” He swallowed sharply.
“So were hers. I ran out, only gathering the clothes I needed, and felt sick as fuck, so I lay in my own bed and went back to sleep.
When I woke up, I heard this noise, so I looked out and saw all the blood and you trying to save her, and you threw my knife at me, so I must have blacked out, and—"
“I was not attempting to save her, Brenno,” I said quickly, my chest rising and falling too rapidly. “What you could not see was Siena’s dying body in Adriano’s arms. She stabbed her to death, so I killed her with the knife… Your knife that she must have taken from your clothes.”
His eyes were wide, and they matched the eyes of the boy who had stared at me and begged me not to send him away with Stefano Fera.
Brenno’s eyes had always been expressive; they had always been an indicator of what he was feeling, except I had never understood that, not until now, and what I saw there now was grief.
He was angry with me, I knew that, but I still pulled him close to my chest, still held him against my heartbeat where he had once fit but now did not. Brenno did not pull away, but instead wrapped his arms around me, allowing himself a moment with me to be what we once had.
“I am sorry,” I said, attempting to keep my voice from wavering. “That was not your fault, and I am so sorry that she hurt you. I am sorry that I did not know.”
Brenno pulled away, nodding slowly. “Fiorella helped me. She helped me forgive myself and buried that knife with me in the yard, just behind here.” He sighed as he looked down at our brother who was now listening, staring at Brenno with red eyes and an awareness that told me he was lucid again, even if only for a moment.
“I told Fiore that I’d never tell you what happened, that it wouldn’t make any difference, but… I’m glad I did.”
I was glad he did too.
“You must know that I did not give you away,” I said unexpectedly. I had not wanted to speak on this, had not wanted to try and force them to forgive me, but it felt necessary. “Siena had just been born, and Stefano threatened her.”
My brother nodded, listening.
I pressed my fingers into my eyes. “I had hoped that Hugo would send you there and I would immediately return you after I had kept Siena and Mom safe from Stefano, but that was not the case. Hugo’s men found me each time I tried to come for you, and I barely survived the final time.
If I died, he would not have allowed Siena to live either.
The only thing I could do was offer you to return with Adriano to visit when Hugo was not there and you did, but we did not speak, and I am sorry for that. ”
They had spent ten years hating me and I had spent it wishing it was all different, that I had behaved differently, that I had fought Hugo and not allowed him to control me with fear, that I had simply refused to force them into signing the contract.
Brenno looked surprised, as though he had not realized that my life without them had been fraught with pain, but he inched closer as if he trusted me more, even subconsciously.
I exhaled, releasing the breath I had been holding since their departure ten years prior and managed to say, “I am sorry I caused pain by forcing you to sign the contract. I am sorry you were traumatized and killed Stefano. I am sorry I threatened you. I am sorry I forced Fiorella to become engaged to Oratio and that my men kidnapped Bella. I am simply sorry that it ended up this way.”
“I can forgive you. I don’t want to hold onto this anymore.
It’s fucking exhausting,” he said suddenly and quickly through a pained voice.
“If I can forgive everything else, I can forgive you for being as abused and fucked as us.” He sighed long and hard, gesturing to his brother on the floor.
“It doesn’t mean much, but I know he’s fucking sorry too. ”
It did mean a lot, it meant a lot because I knew it was the truth. The man who had harmed my wife was not my brother, and though I would never forgive Cesare for what he did, that did not mean I could not move on and reacquaint myself one day with the man inside.
I lowered myself beside Cesare, allowing him to reach for me, to hold my arm.
“You are going to get help, Cesare, and then we will discuss this once you are better, but I do not think this is you. When you return to who you truly are, I know that you will hate yourself for this, but I do not want you to, and neither will my wife. I do not forgive you; I will never forgive you, but I would like to meet again the man whom I never needed to forgive in the first place. Will you do that for me and for your family?”
He nodded slowly, closing his eyes like even that exhausted him.
Brenno released a shaky breath. “How the fuck do we void any of the contracts we currently have and be done with this crap? I’d quite like to move on and plan my wedding.”