Massimo

My brothers spend the next few days awkwardly avoiding me, clearly unsure how to approach conversation after the things I revealed. When crossing paths with them in various parts of the house, I find myself more often than not seeking eye contact that remains unmet.

It's a new feeling. To be the one asking for something, and my brothers the ones pretending they don't notice.

It's also not an incentive for me opening my mouth ever again.

Everything else—everyone else—seems to be well on their way to normality. Certainly Vivienne and my brothers have at least reached a point where they're not constantly at each other's throats. My family is slow to trust, with good reason. If caught in the right mood, Santo is still angry with me for the time I attempted to get rid of Nina. It's all par for the course when anybody outside the family tries to enter our inner circle. But all that childish rudeness was tempting me to throw Tommaso in the basement.

Now, there's that general sense of things finally getting better. Like the last act of a play, after the villain of the story has been defeated and you finally feel resolution.

But it all leaves me with a bitter aftertaste.

I was honest. I was... vulnerable. And there was no immediate sense of relief.

It feels like I've cut open wounds that took years to scar over. I don't know what I want my brothers to say, how I want them to act, but everything they do and don't do is salt in the wound. Shame on top of shame.

And I am still the man who doesn't have whatever it is that lets him love.

The worst part of it is that I've started to understand why people love. Why they let it drive foolish thoughts and actions, and talk about it to anyone who will listen. It's like smelling food you are not allowed to taste. I understand the shape of it but I will never hold it in my hands. Never feel it on my tongue.

I think of Adamo often, to my great disdain. There's been hardly any perseverating on his betrayal—there's nothing to even dwell on if I tried. Betrayal begets blood. Always. But he was the one person who ever framed my condition in a way that didn't make me feel like a useless, empty vessel.

He always tried to make me see myself as human. But he did it in a way that wasn't pandering, that didn't feel pathetic. 

For you, Massimo, love will be different. It might be more a form of infatuation or attachment, rather than a deep emotional bond characterized by empathy and care. And that's okay.

You may understand love by a desire for control or companionship. And you may express things that resemble love, but lack the emotional depth other people will be looking for. They may even tell you that you can't love. They'll be frustrated at your lack of emotional depth, your inability to open up.

People are happy to recognize different love languages, but only if they fit with their preconceived notions of love. It's silly, isn't it? We preach tolerance until it comes time to tolerate something we don't like. None of this means you don't feel your own version of genuine connection. It's different but it's real. Remember that. There are parts of you that the world would be lucky to see. You understand?

Adamo failed to mention how painful it would be for a man like me to have a woman love him. Vivienne may not express it with her words, but she has the desire for love. Love she can recognize. I hardly think anyone would be willing to accept love that feels like a detached sort of affection.

It is not with satisfaction that I realize people truly don't fix other people. They just learn to live with them. If it were possible, if love could make the heartless men grow hearts, Vivienne would have been the only person capable of it. But I didn't wake up one morning with the realization that I had gained the capacity for deep, complex emotion.

Instead, every day, I wake with some mix of cold dread and low, thrumming panic. Not because I doubt my own ability to care about her in my own way, but because I don't know that she could accept it. And even if she did, I think she would regret it.

I could tell her the words and make her happy. I wouldn't need to mean them to say them. And it wouldn't be lying—more like reshaping my affections for her into something palatable for her. Would that not be something that someone who truly cares for her would do? I'd bend the world to get her anything else she wants; how is this any different?

I am so stuck on what to do, it hardly bothers me that Vivienne and my brothers have been strangely absent over the past few days, often all at the same time.

Hardly being the operative word. The solitude feels strangely unwelcome.

One morning, after a lonesome night spent at my computer monitoring the European markets, I discover the truth. And I immediately confront Santo.

"You've been lying to me."

My brother jumps, not hearing my stealthy approach. It's early, barely dawn, and the rest of the house sleeps. The two of us rise early; before things fell apart and I left for New York, we would usually find ourselves preparing our coffee side by side as everyone else slept.

It's a familiar routine we resume now—as if no time has passed. I grab the mugs while he makes enough coffee for two.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Santo frowns with all the casualness of practiced indifference. But I can read the rage clear as day in his face. It's cold and bottomless, the kind that begs to be fed but refuses to be satiated.

I give him however long the coffee takes to brew to come clean. He doesn't. Just raises his mug in a silent cheers before wandering out of the room.

I corner Tommaso next, later in the afternoon. His eyes briefly widen as he spots me in the mirrors surrounding our boxing gym. I caught him at the end of a session, and he steadies the heavy bag with bruised fists, sweaty from exertion. 

"Did you two think I wouldn't find out?"

He towels off his face, hooking the rag around his neck. "Find out what?" 

"Santo told she bled out. He said her body had been disposed of. He lied." Tommaso's face immediately hardens, which is good. I don't care to say her name. "I don't care who went down there and stitched her back up. I just want the remains out of this house before the end of the week."

I should've known they'd do something like this. They're not subtle about much.

The two of them are like a pair of feral cats after a runaway mouse. The mouse in this case being the woman in our basement. It isn't my domain—I prefer to stay away from the human organs, blood, and bodily secretions—but on a hunch, I checked the cameras early this morning. It was true. Cora's neck had been stitched and bandaged. But the rest of her was completely ravaged.

Based on what I saw, my brothers have been beating the absolute life out of her, carving off strips of skin to expose the bone (a Santo classic he got from our father), burning her, and drizzling acid down her throat and in her eyes. That last one is also a Santo classic. Tommaso is typically there to joyfully participate in whatever Santo conjures up, but if the two of them are feeling scrappy, they'll make a game of it. The kind where they see who can make their victim bleed more without dying.

From the shape Cora was in, it appears my brothers' games have become quite grisly.

I recognize in Tommaso that same look Santo had. There's no satisfaction, just hunger. Nothing they do to her is enough.

And they can have their way with her, the same she did with me. All I find myself thinking is that I foolishly hope this is the only reason for their distance lately.

"Fine," Tommaso's fists tremble as he clenches them tight. He looks like he needs another round with the punching bag, and I note that all those bruises definitely aren't from boxing. "Just saying, nobody would take that long to bleed out if they weren't supposed to be tortured more. It felt like destiny."

"Well, somebody needs to make sure destiny doesn't start stinking up my basement."

It's not an unfounded request. My brothers have been known to get carried away in the past. For all I know, their little rodent is dead and they're just playing with its carcass.

"Oh, relax," Tommaso rolls his eyes, "that only happened what, five or six times?"

"Is Vivienne involved in this?"

"Sometimes she watches," Tommaso rolls his eyes. "She's made it abundantly clear that we are to let her finish the bitch off for real this time. She was pissed when she found out. Seriously fucking betrayed," Tommaso shakes his head. "Who knew you'd be into someone so murder-happy."

And who knew it would be such a turn on?

I promptly leave, not needing Tommaso catching on.

Vivienne is out somewhere with Nina, so I return to work, having no shortage of things to address after my prolonged mental absence. For the first time I realize just how empty my life has always been. In addition to stubborn hard-ons that even the mundane nature of my work won't kill, Vivienne brings color. Vibrancy. She's gone on a brief errand but it's like everything is monochromatic again.

My phone lights up with a message from Vivienne; it's a picture Nina must have taken. My breath catches in my throat. She's in a dressing room wearing the hell out of a deep red dress, glossy black hair hitting the small of her back. Dark eyes and a sharp grin verging on sultry, but maybe that's just because I like all her sharp edges.

And her legs. Miles long, smooth as butter. The dress emphasizes the curve of her hips right at the juncture I like to nip when I get to really take my time tasting her.

Hissing out a breath, I glare down at my lap. Tempted to just take care of the ridiculous thing, especially if Vivienne's going to keep making it worse. Masturbation was never something I felt enthusiastic about. If anything, I preferred to move past the feeling as quickly as possible rather than bring attention to it.

But there can't be any harm in just...

Sensing a presence, I glance up to find Tommaso hovering in the doorway. He's sweaty and bruised. Look at that, it's gone now. My brother sits without a word, glancing around with a strange light in his eyes. His eyes are red, movements jittery.

"Your ankle monitor only detects alcohol then?" I wonder, unable to keep the judgement from my voice.

While I have never tried the things he likes to put in his body, I have frequently wondered why he keeps doing it when they make him look like that. Miserable, paranoid, uncomfortable in his own skin.

"I get it," he rushes out. "I get why you stopped being able to talk to me. I get, like, the whole fucking thing," he sniffs, leaning forward. "How you never cared for me the way you did for them. I know why."

"What ar—"

"That one time we thought I got that girl from Vegas pregnant," he announces, spreading his hands like I'm supposed to understand.

I remember the incident; it's difficult not to. It was one of the first times Tommaso messed up in a way that would have reaped big consequences. The whole thing was so traumatizing for him that he remained celibate for two weeks afterwards. 

I raise a brow. "What about it?"

"I said some shit," Tommaso groans, lowering his head. "I know you remember. You, like, shut down after. I noticed but didn't think about it because to be fair, you do that a lot."

I do remember. 

With varying degrees of dismay because I didn't think he'd ever make me acknowledge it.

"You didn't use a condom? Are you fucking stupid?" Santo shouts, wearing down my carpet with his pacing. Our little brother sits like a scolded puppy in front of my desk, but his mutinously dark expression tells me he will do anything but learn from his mistakes.

"She told me she was infertile," Tommaso snaps back.

Santo halts, eyes widening in a new wave of anger. "Che idiota del cazzo. Dovrei ucciderti," he spits, gesturing wildly. "Now she's pregnant, demanding to marry you. And guess what? Her father agrees. He's a powerful Capo, and he has made his expectations known."

My little brother straightens in horror, turning to me. All his indifference has been replaced with a desperate panic. "I can't get married! What the fuck? Tell me you won't let that happen." I stare at him blankly, and he curses. He actually looks close to tears, more panicked than I have ever seen him. "Simo, this will ruin my fucking life. I can't—I can't fucking marry her! And what, be a dad? Fuck me, I think I'm going to throw up." He closes his eyes, having paled a few shades. "This is going to ruin me."

"If the girl is pregnant, you will marry her," I say. "As for the child, perhaps she could be convinced to get rid of it. After that, I could blackmail her father to allow the two of you separate." Unfortunately, despite how convincing I can be, our honor code does not allow for women and children to be out from under the control of the men who own them. Otherwise, I would just blackmail her father to avoid the marriage in the first place. "It would be a terrible ordeal—for her. You could move on virtually unaffected. But she will be shamed and ruined for every other man."

Tommaso blinks at me. "Wouldn't that be... really fucking shitty?"

I stare at him, confused by his question. Her life is already ruined now that it's public knowledge she, an unmarried girl, has slept with him. The involvement of a child seals the deal. That's the way it is for women—a fact Tommaso has yet to realize. He already ruined her by taking her to his bed.

"I am responding to your statement that this will ruin you. That is the only way I can get you out of this."

"His life won't be ruined if he's forced to take a little fucking responsibility," Santo growls, glaring down at our brother. "This is what happens. You fucked her raw, and now she's fucking you in every other way."

Tommaso puts his face in his hands. "It's not my fault! She manipulated me. She's a disgusting, lying—"

"Even if she lied, it doesn't make her manipulative. It makes you stupid," I interject. "But there may be some other way out of this. Did she drug you?"

Tommaso's face screws up. "No."

"Did she artificially inseminate herself with your se—"

"No, what the fuck?" Tommaso splutters. 

Santo scratches his head, suddenly intent on looking at the wall. It almost happened to him one time. Some women will do anything to marry a powerful man.

Come to think of it, both my brothers are helpless idiots.

"Did she rape you?"

A beat passes before Tommaso breaks out in a wide grin, humor breaking through the panic. "Afraid that's not possible, big bro, but I appreciate the concern." Crudely, he gestures to his crotch. "I don't have the necessary equipment."

The comment itself had been breezed over. After that, we eventually found out the truth. The girl had gotten pregnant from another, much older man, and decided she'd rather marry someone her age. The drama had been forgotten in less than a week.

"I've just been thinking," Tommaso taps his fingers erratically on the armrest, unable to meet my eyes, "like, trying to figure out what exactly I did to make everything different between us. Because it was never that way between you and Santo."

"Tommaso, if you think one comment is the reason—"

"I was actually hopeful it was," he laughs emptily, beginning to pick at the leather of the seat. "Because if it was just one comment, I could fix that. I could tell you what I said was stupid and I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. I could, I don't know," he waves his hands violently, "just fix it! Why is it so different with us? Did you know that every time I call, you always ask for Santo? The other night when you called me... asked for me... that was a first."

"I..." my mouth hinges on indecision, confusion, or actually—I'm now realizing—fear. 

"That's cool," Tommaso mutters after some time, and his low tone gives me pause. I had been expecting anger. And it could be the drugs, but he looks more tired than I've ever seen him as he leaves my office.

And I know I have just missed a rare window, an opportunity to make things right—but I am still the same man who doesn't know how to be what his family needs.

Real life isn't like a three-act play. 

Real relationships aren't like those silly romantic books Vivienne reads. In those books, conflict reaches a breaking point and resolution follows. But in my experience, when things reach a breaking point, they just tend to break further. And at the end of it all they just lie there broken, while you wonder if you could've ever stopped it.

♛

"You know, you didn't actually have to come with me," Vivienne says as we walk up the steps to her parents' house. "You have so much to do, it hasn't even been long enough for your head to return back to normal after the drugs, and—"

"You're not going alone. It makes no sense."

She eyes me suspiciously but I set my jaw, placing my hand on her lower back as we ring the doorbell. She thinks this is my attempt to avoid whatever tense situation I've created with my brothers. Frankly, if I could go back and un-tell them everything, I would. It just opened the door for other conversations I proceeded to mess up thoroughly, which now places more distance between me and my brothers. 

I absolutely cannot have the same distance between me and Vivienne—or any distance at all.

All this mess has tempted me even closer to telling her those three words just to keep her. Suddenly, my inability to love feels like a bomb waiting to detonate and destroy us. The resolution I was beginning to sense feels more like a noose tightening around my neck. Like Vivienne will randomly realize she is utterly exhausted of pretending what I can give is enough.

So I can get ahead of that, I'm going wherever she goes.

Even if that means facing her father after him finding out. And the rest of Vivienne's family, who probably know about everything too.

She sighs in acceptance, squeezing my hand—which I have refused her attempts to let go of since we stepped off the jet. 

The door is thrown open, so suddenly that Vivienne jumps a little closer to me. I catch a glimpse of an unfamiliar man—brown skin, black hair—before there's a fist flying straight at my face.

Vivienne

My brother has never been the protective type.

In fact, if he had ever done one of those older brother stereotypes like grill my boyfriends, I would have laughed in his face. Growing up, he had no idea who the hell I was with or what I was doing—and I was similarly uninvolved in his life.

We've just never been those kinds of siblings.

But apparently he's turning over a new leaf because the second he slams open the door, he slams his fist into Massimo's face.

In a display of quick reflexes that is frankly hot as fuck, Massimo shifts to the side at the last second. But Joseph's fist still glances off the side of his jaw.

That's when I punch my brother in the face. 

While we may not talk to each other a lot, we have been known to sometimes hit.

And by we, I mean me.

I killed Cora this morning. Officially. I even stuck around to make sure the brothers wouldn't try any of their sneaky bullshit again. Tommaso made fun of me for that seeing as I shot her between the eyes, but I was taking no fucking changes.

She's dead. Her remains were burned in a giant furnace that Santo (go figure) uses frequently. Tommaso has personally requested her ashes so he can scatter them over a cliff and piss on them.

Point is, I'm in a good mood. Joseph has just ruined that.

"What in the fucking shit is wrong with you?" I scream as he groans and cups his nose with both palms. When he pulls away, there's blood coating his lips.

"Jesus, Viv," he snaps. "Why the fuck did you do that?"

"Oh my God." Chloe appears in the doorway, staring between my clenched fist and our brother's bloody face. Then she looks at Massimo and her jaw hits the floor. "Oh my God."

As my sister ogles my man, I push past my siblings and scan the hallway, anger hot in my veins. My dad is hurrying towards me, something heavy in his face. I realize what it is when he barrels into me with a hug. It's so unexpected that I stand there like a statue for a little before my hands curl around his back. His relief is suffocating as he pulls back to examine my face.

"It's done?"

I nod, then point to the doorway. "Get a handle on your son, please. He is completely out of control."

"There's no way you're saying that," Joseph interjects loudly. "Look at your life choices over the past few months!"

My dad sighs as he takes in the blood. When he looks back at me, it's with fatherly disappointment. He always let my mother break up our fights. If it's up to him, he just does a lot of staring and sighing.

I go back to Massimo, interrupting a conversation he's having with my sister. Which means that he hasn't said a word and Chloe hasn't stopped talking. I think I heard her ask if he'd ever consider modeling for her social media.

His hand finds mine, subtly pulling my body in front of him like he needs a barrier between all these people. 

Admittedly, this is off to a far worse start than I expected—and I wasn't expecting great things. My dad didn't tell them everything, he's maintained Massimo's more delicate secrets, but he refused to completely lie to the family after being gone and virtually unreachable for two weeks.

My dad looks at Massimo. "Do you need ice?" 

"Joseph does," I snicker at my brother's swollen face. He violent flips me off.

Massimo just stares. Probably overwhelmed. Definitely regretting coming with me. Then, slowly, he nods. 

Sitting at the dinner table, I stretch my sore knuckles in my lap. My siblings stare between Massimo and I with varying degrees of anger and awe as my mother explains what she made for everyone as if this is a normal family dinner. At some point, my dad joins us, handing Massimo an ice pack.

Wordlessly, Massimo grabs my hand and gently places the ice over my knuckles. 

I look up when I realize my mother has stopped in the middle of a sentence, and my whole family is ogling us. 

The dinner is as awkward and uncomfortable as you'd expect. Chloe literally cannot stop staring at Massimo. Which is totally fair when he looks like that, but it's not making things any more comfortable for him. Joseph will not stop with the judgmental comments. I cannot—and will not—stop responding to every single one with my own hateful rebuttal. The sight of his swollen face is the only thing that stops me from throwing my steak knife at him. My dad eventually stops trying to eat. My mother, never one to not try, maintains conversation purely by her own chattering, and the sparse monosyllabic noises she draws from Massimo.

Eventually, Joseph has had enough.

"Viv, I don't like him," he snaps. "I don't like him as a person, and I don't like him for you." He turns to my dad, eyes wide in outrage. "Do the words mafia and murderer mean nothing to anyone?"

"Would anyone like any dessert?" My mother chirps.

"And you think you can just drag my sister into this?" Joseph snarls at the stoic man next to me. "Then sit there, quiet and smug? It's so clear to me, so clear, that you do not give a shit about her or anyone besides yourself. I should've hit you so much fucking harder—"

"You won't fucking touch him," I snap, jostling all the dishes on the table as I shoot to my feet.

"Vivienne Savannah, please," my mother snaps. "You have inflicted enough on this family as it is. I have looked past the career, the lack of serious partner, the disregard for your future..." her voice wavers, and she clears her throat. "I do not know how you expect me to deal with this one. Please. Quiet, for once. Let everyone just... process this."

"Zahra, that's enough."

My siblings' heads whip towards my father in shock. He's never spoken against our mother, much less interfered in the many argumentative dinners we've had.

But it means nothing to me.

Every muscle goes lax, slowly, like a balloon losing air. I stare down at my plate, hating her words.

The disregard for your future...

It's not her words I hate, it's her.

"How could you say something like that?" I explode, interrupting my dad. "Do you think I chose that? Tell me, do you really think that's my fucking fault?"

Her eyes widen briefly, because I'm talking about something nobody else knows about. Something her and I have been battling out for years. To her, it's probably improper to speak of it in front of others, especially the men. But she doesn't back down—no, she throws fire on the whole fucking thing.

"Massimo, do you want children?" 

The whole table quiets at her question. Tears of fucking fury blur my vision, so I can hardly see Massimo's face as he turns to me. We've never talked about kids. And it's something I certainly didn't imagine us talking about for the first time in front of my family.

"Are you trying to hurt me?" My voice is small. I hate it. "I don't understand why you—" I suck in a breath that sounds like a sob.

"If you'll excuse us."

I hardly hear his words, frigid and sharp, or feel his hand slipping into mine, warm and soft. Massimo pulls me out and down the hallway into another room. The door closes softly behind us and he carefully cups my face, tucking my hair out of the way.

"Vivienne? What can I do?" His eyes search mine, brows pulled together. He huffs out a frustrated breath, pulling me to his chest. "I do not even know who to punish."

"You don't need to kill my family," I sniffle with my face plastered up against his heart. It's pounding. "It's okay."

"It is not," he tenses, pulling away. But he keeps his hands on me, spreading one around the back of my neck in a gentle hold, the other trailing up and down my arm. "Why did she ask that?"

I stare at him, the words stuck. His jaw clenches but he brings me close and kisses my forehead, then my lips. My eyes flutter shut as he gently wipes my tears, kissing those spots too. After several deep breaths, absorbing his comfort in silence, I look at him again. He's angry. Face promising blood, even as he holds me so tenderly.

"Do you want children?"

"Of course I do," I say softly.

Something in his expression drops. "I see."

"Look, you have enough family drama, you don't need mine—"

"I had a vasectomy."

My blood runs cold. Eventually, it's time to draw in a breath. Open my mouth.

"Oh."

"I got it when I was eighteen. I always knew I never wanted children." His fingers are gentle as they caress my neck, but his voice is firm and sure. "I do not want to bring new life into my world. Especially life that shares my blood. I always felt more like my brothers' father. I still do. And..." he swallows, his eyes dimming, "it would be unkind. My children would grow up confused and hurt by my inability to truly care for them."

"Oh."

Neither of us know what to say. Everything I should tell him is waiting at the tip of my tongue, but my lips won't move. There's a deep, sharp sadness; but also a cool numbness.

My silence makes his fingers press into my skin harder. I know he's panicking—his version of it. But when he pulls me close, pressing a helpless kiss to my hairline and murmuring a sharp "please," burying his face in my neck, I realize it's worse than either of us had expected.

I just grab onto his forearms and hold on, as if I can brace myself against how shitty everything suddenly feels.

I keep holding on, wherever I can, as he takes me outside. My family waits by the front door, clearly anticipating our quick exit. It feels like another blow but clearly I have a reputation for leaving when things get really bad. It's strangely painful to let go of Massimo's hand to hug my father goodbye. I feel like if I look at any of them, especially my mother, they'll see how badly I wanted them to accept me. Then what feels like seconds later, I'm back in Massimo's chest as he shakes my father's hand.

Neither of us acknowledge the rest of my family.

Until, when I'm halfway out the door, I hear a sharp curse and glance back to see Joseph's face pinched in pain. Massimo stepped on his toe—without a backwards glance or a break in that hard expression.

But I can't bring myself to smile.

♛

Me 🤝 last minute drama

Y'all. I have a story. The other day, my ex emailed me. He said, "we need to talk." He was referring to the last email I sent him a few days before we broke up. We'd had a random fight so I (pettily) sent him a 750 pg PDF of one of my favorite dark romances. He always talked about wanting to read my writing, so I was like fine. I'll let him redeem himself. I told him if he read this WHOLE book I'd let him read a chapter of mine (tbh I lied but it's fine).

Then we broke up and I forgot about it. That was 3 months ago. He's now read it and is telling me it's only fair he reads this book.

This sent me, I had to share. 

- G