33. Sicily
SICILY
ONE MONTH LATER
The following month after Fiore, Bella, and I locked our husbands in the Feras’ dungeon brought nothing but peace.
The days began and ended with family, we ate dinner together more weekends than not, Fiorella and I had talked through more than we’d had time to that night, and though Cesare was away getting the help he needed, Bella had found solace in spending time with Milan and Francesco.
Sometimes I looked at us, at me and Milan, at Adriano and Francesco, and I wondered how we’d got here from the wedding of a nightmare. Luck wasn’t the right word because we had worked for this, but luck was what I thought of when I became surrounded by the love that we’d never thought we deserved.
Even when the house became quiet and still, I always knew there was someone around, so when I couldn’t find anyone that afternoon, I walked slowly down the corridor I hadn’t been in since mine and Milan’s argument.
Padding toward the gentle glow of light emanating from the double glass doors, a small lump formed in my throat as I remembered what happened the last time I found him in the library, and that lump turned into a full ball of nerves when I saw my husband sitting on the long couch, frowning down at the book he’d raised his siblings with.
This time though, he had a pink highlighter twiddling between his fingers.
“Hey,” I said, swallowing it all down.
His head shot up immediately, and my shoulders released as he smiled. “Hello, angel.”
“What are you reading?”
He opened his arms, and I flopped into his chest with a small sigh, burrowing deep into the warmth pressed into the crevices and creases of his shirt.
He was so soft, so safe, so very mine.
He held the old book between us, propping it up to show me where the colors of his brothers’ and his sister’s favorite parts of the story were highlighted.
Milan let out a hum as he said, “I was reading my favorite part. I was unsure if I should highlight it like I had for my siblings.”
“You should, Milan,” I replied instantly, knowing that this would close off a part of the past that had never quite let him go. “What color do you have?”
“Pink.” He kissed me softly, quickly. “It reminds me of you.”
I nuzzled into his neck, holding the book for him as he unclicked the cap of the pink pen and began to neatly underline a section about magical cats.
He had told me fifteen times he hated cats, but apparently not these ones.
He scrawled his name on the edge of the margin, even adding a small smiley face beside his name.
I wondered if he’d wanted to do that since he himself had read this book.
He held it away from him, then close to him, with a frown and a smile, and he read it over again, his eyes scanning the same lines and words. Milan wasn’t Milan in that moment; he was his inner child who had never been able to be a child.
Gently, I pried the book from his fingers and tapped my knee.
He frowned, assessing the situation like a puzzle, his pupils flickering over me, the couch, and the book as though everything was a clue. Milan didn’t know how to be just loved, and that small boy inside didn’t know how to be small.
I pulled his head into my lap, letting him lay against me and the couch, and began to read.
Instantly, his eyes closed, and his muscles sank into my body as I read his favorite part. He laughed, he smiled, he cried too, but he kept his eyes closed as though finally, finally, someone was doing something to let that boy rest.
“I never had the words to ask for it to be read again,” he said when it was over, pulling my fingers from the creased book cover to his lips to kiss. “I did not understand that it meant I liked it. There is a lot of emotion involved with liking something, and my father took away anything I liked.”
My fingers ran through his hair as he spoke, gently caressing the truths from him.
Milan tipped his chin up to find me. “Would you read it again, Sicily?”
I read it four times, and each time he breathed in the words like he was cherishing them, until he sat upright and kissed me silent. It was appreciative, and I knew he wanted me, to have all of me, because I wasn’t going anywhere.
But when the book thudded to the ground, I pulled away.
Milan’s brows furrowed deeply, but he settled on my smile and let the tension release from his body. “Are you all right?”
“I have something to show you.”
“Show me?”
I nodded, pulling him off the couch. I chose to ignore how he adjusted himself because I needed to show him his gift before we did anything with that, and led him through the corridor toward his office. His footsteps were hesitant as though what was waiting there would spook him.
Our hallways were now lined with photographs after Milan had been inspired by the Feras’ full ones. He had spent weeks choosing all of the memories, and then even longer measuring the gap between each frame, but when he’d finished, our entire lives lived within the walls.
“Should I be worried?” he asked.
I laughed. “It’s just a gift, Milan.”
“A gift? It is not my birthday or Christmas.”
I silenced his thinking with a kiss, my fingers holding the doorknob of his office. “You deserve a gift every day.” I pushed in, my heart hammering against my chest.
Milan paused, looked around obliviously, and then found the wide wall above his chair and froze. He didn’t smile; he didn’t even move from the doorway, just stared until a grin wider than the Cheshire cat’s spread across his lips.
“Sicily.” He sighed, but it was dreamy and soft.
He launched into a brisk step forward, his fingers brushing the edge of the gold canvas that held a painting of his new car and me sprawled across it.
I had taken some creative liberties; his hand hadn’t been around my throat, and my back surely hadn’t been that arched, but Milan had certainly seen it like that so, in some respect, it was accurate.
The canvas was shining, almost glowing with the bright colors in this dark room.
It was the brightest thing there, other than Milan’s smile.
“You are so beautiful, and now I can look at you and my car on a difficult day.” He bundled me into his arms, squeezing me until I spluttered. “Thank you, angel.”
“I have another surprise,” I managed to say, my words coming out strained as my feet lifted from the floor with how hard he held me.
Milan didn’t let go as he stopped swinging me from side to side and let me explain as I dangled in his arms. I pointed to the corner of the room where a rectangle of pink wrapping paper and a matching ribbon sat, and he dropped me suddenly to my toes and approached it like it was a wild animal.
The sun caught his face from the open window, and I tilted my head to see more of him, to watch as the sun held him as he opened it.
“For me?”
“Go on,” I urged as he crouched before it, looking at it as though he wasn’t allowed.
He gently tore off the paper, unraveling it until what stared back at him was something, or someone, he hadn’t been able to see in a long time.
My hands bundled together, and I waited for him to say something, but it was the silence that told me he was feeling everything. I crouched beside him, placing a hand on his spine as he stared at every inch of Siena Lucca’s tiny grin and matching Milan dimples.
We’d found his family again, brought them back together, but nobody had included her, and the revelation had haunted me until I’d painted her delicate face from a photograph Fiorella had found in a box of Brenno’s things.
She’d sent it over hoping Milan might want it, but it was old and creased, damaged with time, and I hadn’t wanted him to see her as someone fading.
Siena looked happy and adored there, her black hair a little tangled by the wind, her deep honey eyes screaming the happiness that meant I didn’t have to have known her to hear her laughter through the silver frame.
She would’ve been fifteen, only three years older than Ezio, but she was still five.
Still just a baby.
Milan ran his knuckle down her cheek, tilting his head at her like she was really there. “I had started to forget her like this.”
“She looks like you.”
He smiled gently. “She does. She looks like a little of all the boys, though perhaps not Ezio. I do not know who he looks like.” The sound of his chuckle was deep, like it held a million layers.
He wrapped me under one arm, pressing a kiss to my head that pried the tears from his eyes as he whispered, “This is more than I deserve.”
“You deserve the world, Milan Lucca. One with her and all your brothers in.”
He sat back against the floor, pulling me into his lap and the painting closer, tucking his salty, wet face into my neck. “You have brought them all back to me. You brought yourself back to me. Everyone is here and I am complete.”
This was the man with issues. This was the man who was labeled crazy and terrifying.
“Adriano!” Milan suddenly yelled as if my ears were nonexistent, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Come and see what Sicily has done!”
There was a brief moment of pause before Adriano’s gigantic footsteps ran down the stairs, and he appeared in the doorway, panting. “What’s she—” His eyes fell on the painting and one of his palms came over his mouth as his eyes grew glassy.
My lip wobbled watching him find Siena again too. He had lost her just as much as Milan had. He had suffered that day, had held her body in his hands.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, coming to crouch before the painting too. “Look how happy she is. No wonder we called her a little angel, hm?”
Milan grinned. “Indeed.”
Adriano kissed my temple. “Thank you, Sicily.”
“Where shall we put it?” Milan asked.
I hummed. “Hallway?”
“Not next to the portrait of him jerking.” Adriano tutted.
“For the last time”—Milan rolled his eyes—“I am not jerking.”
Adriano had hung the naked portrait of Milan in the hallway beside the kitchen, and nobody had complained yet, so we’d left it.
“Take it upstairs, Milano.” Adriano chuckled.
A satisfied, calm sigh left me as I stood and began to follow Milan out of the room, but Adriano gripped my wrist to stop me. “I never thanked you for all of this.”
“Me?”
“You.” He smiled softly. “Milan wouldn’t be here, a part of his siblings, a part of us, without you. I wouldn’t be here with Francesco if it wasn’t for you either. None of us would be us without you, Sicily.”
The life of feeling unwanted and inadequate vanished and gave way to something more, something better, and its entire purpose was these people.
I didn’t have to fit into my past world because Milan, Adriano, and Francesco were holding it steady so that I could shape it into somewhere that I made fit me.
“Come on.” Adriano chuckled. “Let’s go help before Milan tries to use a nail gun.”
My laughter carried us up the stairs and straight into the arms of my husband. Right there, I was his wife, the wife of the most feeling man in the Famiglia, but I was also me, and he loved me for simply who I was.