She's silent the whole way back.

It's rare that I'm in her presence without being privy to every thought passing through her head. As such, my nervous system has no idea what to do. Not to mention the mental fortitude it took to keep from ripping her family to shreds after they upset her. A man can only resist his instincts for so long.

Feeling her brother's toe crack beneath my shoe was satisfying, but not nearly as much as the three phone calls it took to obstruct all his current cases, either causing significant delays in the judicial process or getting his clients to drop him without warning or explanation. One of those phone calls was needed to figure out what he even did for a living. Joseph Lee is so terribly irrelevant I had forgotten.

By the time we land, my nerves are officially shot and I'm convinced I can't remember the sound of Vivienne's voice. She thanks our driver as he leaves us at the gate and I trip over the curb.

I spent the rest of the flight on Google. Surely people worked through this kind of thing. Surely people changed their mind about wanting kids.

I can't.

I won't.

But at the very least we're supposed to talk about it. I am on her heels as we step inside. In the last two seconds, I've resolved to just lock her in a room with me—perhaps a bathroom; the smaller the space the better. But that plan goes straight to hell at the sight of both my brothers waiting for us.

I experience the desire to assassinate everyone in the world except for Vivienne.

They step in my path, allowing her to slip away. She wanders to the kitchen, which I can still see from the foyer if I crane my neck.

"What," I snap, watching her greet Nina. The two women begin speaking in hushed voices.

"We did something," Tommaso supplies.

I watch as Vivienne glances at me then quickly turns around. Nina does the same. They lean closer, whispers intensifying.

So she can talk to Nina but not me?

"The therapist is in the basement."

My brothers suddenly have my full attention. "The who is in the what?"

"And the wife," Tommaso adds with a slight wince.

My blood feels hot. Mindlessly, I shrug off my suit jacket. I leave for a few hours and they kidnap two people? Now another mess requires my full attention. I glance back to the kitchen and notice the women are gone.

"You're supposed to talk to me first," I hiss. "I don't have time to deal with this right now."

"Well, time is all I have when it comes to killing the people responsible for hurting you," Santo growls, crossing his arms. "There are no living records of anyone else who worked at Hope Valley except for John Solos, the head doctor. He's next. In the meantime, I've tracked down every single man you had to touch. Unfortunately, most of them are senior citizens now. They tend to die very quickly."

"Seriously, these fuckers would croak if you take away their cholesterol medicine for one day," Tommaso mutters.

I hadn't even thought of tracking down Cora's old clients. Frankly, I wouldn't have wanted to learn of their wives and children, the families they broke just to feed their deviance. Emotional appeals bore me. But knowing they're being wiped from the earth in such a thorough, dedicated manner loosens something in my chest.

"And it's clean? Many of those men are very powerful—"

"Yes," Santo says through clenched teeth.

"I hope so," I persist, "because if anybody ties all those deaths back to me or this family, I will—"

"It's fucking clean," Santo snaps.

I open my mouth, I can't help it, and he leans forward, fury bursting through his expression. "Simo, they were all fucking too many children. Those sick fucks did nothing but over-indulge. There's no pattern."

I breathe deep, realizing it really has been taken care of. And in merely days. I didn't know how much I needed this. And once again, I haven't lifted a finger.

Staring at them, it dawns on me. Tommaso's smug grin that spells trouble, Santo's death glare that tells me we're one wrong comment away from a blow-up. They're here, in front of me, just waiting for further orders. Like they'd burn down the world if I asked them.

Why did I never ask them?

"Thank you."

After my words, there's a collective exhalation of relief. It feels like it came from all three of us. Santo, after a moment, places his fist over his chest. His anger has bled away, replaced by something a lot more careful as he hesitates to move his fist to mine. I surprise all of us by catching his fist in mine and pressing it there myself.

It's an old reminder of what it felt like to be brothers before everything went wrong. Maybe the closest we ever were was when both of us were lying in our mother's blood, identical scars on our chests.

Tommaso's face is unreadable. But it's clear. Sober—at least for right now. He jumps as I place my hand on his shoulder. Now he looks like he's been electrocuted.

The moment is over in seconds. It had lasted seconds too long. Next thing I know, I'm striding for the basement with them on my heels. But something occurs to me; they both run into me like a couple dominos as I stop.

"You kidnapped an old woman."

"Kidnapped her husband, she tagged along," Santo corrects.

"Since when do you even care?" Tommaso wonders.

I ignore them and head downstairs. It's true, I typically wouldn't, but this is different.

I hate it, but it's different.

I just keep picturing the look on Sasha's face whenever I'd sit down at her dinner table. To my utter bafflement, she'd be happy enough to cry. Oftentimes, she would—just a little bit—and Adamo would awkwardly chatter about something for about five minutes while she discreetly dried her eyes.

Downstairs, she's holding onto the bars of the cell containing her husband. Adamo is mostly unharmed save for a few bruises, in the middle of clutching her fingers through the bars in reassurance.

They both stop and stare at the three of us. Sasha promptly bursts into tears.

"Get her a chair and some water," I snap, hearing my brothers move to obey me.

"Thank you," Adamo rasps.

"It wasn't for you," I say coldly. She had no idea what he was doing. "She opened her home to me for years. It was her dream to see my brothers again. And now because of you, this is how that's going."

I wait until Sasha is sitting and clutching a glass of water like a lifeline. She's shaky and pale. The sight of her in this basement feels strangely wrong. I think she once held everything I looked for in Cora as a young boy, and she was willing to give it to me at no cost.

Eventually, she realizes my staring at her is permission to speak. I'll allow it, even if all she can do is beg for her husband's life.

"I'm so sorry," she cries softly. "I'm sorry for what he did to you."

Adamo leans his forehead on the bars. I approach him slowly, and the closer I get the more he tenses, every one of his muscles screaming to back away from the bars, away from me. Sasha's sobs increase from behind me and he exhales shakily, tears running freely down his face. They both know me enough to know this offense is punishable by death.

I unlock the cell, reaching in and wrapping my hand around his throat. He opens his mouth, a world of words swimming in his puffy eyes, but I cut him off.

"I don't want to hear anything from you. The pain you caused speaks for itself." I tighten my fingers, and he wheezes. "I want to kill you. But your wife doesn't deserve to be punished. She's a victim of you, not this family. So I want you both out of my city. You have three hours to pack up and leave. I don't care where you go."

I hear Sasha's cup clatter to the floor as she buries her head in her hands, now weeping in relief.

"I know Cora was terrorizing you, that you spent years trapped in her web. I understand that feeling even more than you do. Yet, thanks to my family, you and your wife are now free. It's a mercy you do not deserve." I bring my face closer to his, letting myself cut off his air for a blessed moment. Quickly, his skin becomes mottled and purple. "You hurt me, my brothers, and my woman. If I ever see you again, I will kill you."

I throw him back against the bars and leave without sparing him or Sasha another look. I don't want to hear her apologies or his regret.

My throat is thick—mercy does not feel good. Adamo's offense cuts deeper than all of Cora's, twists me up with all kinds of dark sensations. For most of my life, he was the only person in the world who really knew me. He had the cold, ugly facts of my case; his ear was tuned to my every thought. He was the one who planted the seed Vivienne watered, because her strange persistence over my humanity was only ever echoed by him. Over the course of nearly two decades, Adamo became someone to me. Someone who didn't manipulate my mind and body to do what he wanted—until he did. The funny thing is, his stupid little plan worked. But there was too much collateral.

If I had been thinking clearly, if I hadn't been on the drugs, who knows if I would've let Nico join the mission that got him killed. Back then my mind was crumbling and I had no idea.

My brothers are looking at me like I'm a ghost, having just witnessed my very first act of mercy. Something in me feels terribly wobbly and broken because of it; I'm not sure what. Or why. The justice I want would hurt Sasha. The logic is simple—and wrong, because it's not logic. Justice has never been so complicated before, never hurt like this. The hurt must come from absorbing pain into yourself so that someone else won't feel it.

It's exactly what I did for my brothers.

It's in the basement, a place I vow I'll never come again, facing my brothers in the dark that I realize I'd do everything all over again if it would save them. I always wondered what the point was if it just turned me into the brother I became. But the thing is, they would keep going on manhunts for that brother, destroy everyone who hurt that brother. I thought I had lost too much to see it.

"Escort them out." My voice feels and sounds raw. "And from now on, you don't need to involve me in anything related to any of this. I'm finished. With all of it."

I have other things I'm more interested in focusing on now. My past has run its course.

♛

"Dolcezza."

Nina sends me a look as she slips past, leaving me alone with the lump on the bed. Curled under the covers with only her mop of hair visible, Vivienne faces away from me. She's been virtually unresponsive to everyone except Nina. Santo is similarly clueless—and slightly miffed that my issues with Vivienne are affecting him and his wife. Nina doesn't keep him in the dark about much.

I call her again, with no response.

Tightening my hold on the creature in my arms, I cross the room. Her eyes are glazed over, mindlessly following the raindrops trickling down the window pane in front of her. It's a delayed reaction, lethargic and empty, when her gaze slides over to me.

She doesn't look like she's been crying—that makes me relax, but not fully. I caused this, and I have no idea how to fix it.

"Oh my God, really?" She sits up, slowly—like the energy has been sucked from her bones—but her eyes shine with the first sign of life as I hand him over. "How'd you get him here? I missed him so much."

Nik arches his back and extends his claws, uncomfortable with the transfer. He starts rumbling as she presses his little mangy face under her chin and hugs him close.

For some reason, I hesitate to tell her I sent my pilot thousands of miles out of his way (he was running an errand for me related to actual business) just to pick up a demented cat.

"You've been away from him for a while." To clean up my mess, coincidentally. "I also got a few things from your place." Namely a blanket she always uses, a potted plant she's shown signs of being emotionally attached to, and a stack of books with Kraken-reminiscent figures on the cover.

I wasn't sure why, and I know my men were not expecting a bullet-point list of meaningless trinkets they had to tromp through her cluttered apartment to find. But I wanted her to have as much of the things that mattered to her. At the moment it made sense, but now I'm regretting it. It almost seems like I'm asking her to move in with me—here, in my family home. Except without the asking part.

I should have moved the rest of her stuff too.

She stares at me, soft lips parted in awe, before glancing down at Nik. And I realize how depressingly fruitless it is. What am I trying to say here?

Here's your cat, we'll never have children.

"Anyway," I clear my throat, "I think we should talk. Surely my stance on children cannot be a surprise; but yours needs to be addressed."

She blinks at me in what looks like... horror. "Yeah, no. Sorry, fuck no."

"Vivienne." My voice comes out stern, like an order.

"Massimo," she parrots. "If you wanted a business meeting, go hit up your associates. This is not that. I don't want to talk."

Her annoyance puts me at a loss. I just wanted to understand. If Vivienne wants something, she never holds back on making it known. If she disagrees with anything I do or say, she'll make that clear. It's how we work. She tethers me to humanity, translates the world into a language I can understand.

This shutting down isn't her. Has never been her.

I remember soon after I'd moved in, hearing the lilt of her voice as she waited outside my door with cupcakes after I filed a noise complaint. All she had were desserts, a sweetly veiled demand, and an agenda. She was laying down the law before I had even properly seen her face.

"You don't want to ever talk about this," I check, wondering if one can get a migraine simply from extreme confusion. "Even if I were better at talking?"

It's a simple, honest question, but for some reason it makes her sad. 

"Correct," she says loftily, pushing past the emotion so thoroughly I must have misread it. "I'm really tired, actually. You can leave if you're not going to let me sleep."

Sufficiently shut out, I'm left with... well, nothing.

There actually seems to be an excruciating knot somewhere deep in my chest. 

"Relax, boss man." A small smile tilts her regal features, but it's plastic. "Everything is fine. Thank you for thinking of Nik."

I lower to a crouch, bringing us both to eye level. She's briefly disarmed as I lean into her space.

"I'd rather you shut me out than give me whatever that was," I murmur. "Next time, just give me nothing, Vivienne."

I stand and leave. The two of us have done everything to each other, down to subconsciously attempted murder. We don't lie.

About an hour later, I decide to go back in. I could pretend it's for a host of random reasons, but I won't, because I don't lie. I want to check on her. 

Vivienne is curled up facing the window, and Nik is a shapeless ball of fur crouched on my dresser. I glare at the inconsiderate demon of a creature. He was supposed to keep his attitude-filled, scrawny ass curled up on her chest. She wanted to hold him; he should have appreciated it. What is even the point of having him if he hardly likes her?

Since she's sleeping, I decide to close the blinds. But once I'm in front of her I realize she's awake, and she's crying.

It seems I did that.

The ensuing feeling in my body is probably akin to absolute organ failure, but instead of getting that checked out, I almost crumble to the side of the bed. 

Since both words and actions have proved useless, I hesitate to touch her. 

I want to tell her if I could, I'd reach inside my chest and make room for all the children she could ever want. I want to tell her I'm sorry that I spent everything I had on my family, that I never thought I'd have more to give and she proved that wrong—but I can't do this. I want to beg for that to be okay, even though I've already asked for far too much. And I'm thinking about stupid things, like those cupcakes I denied months and months ago, wishing I could go back in time and try them right there in front of her to see her eyes light up. Unsure why I feel like it matters so much, but I'm drunk off the same fear I felt when I heard Tommaso's raw, vulnerable words in my office and knew I needed to respond in kind. I don't have the words. I never did and probably never will. But I'd buy her every single ingredient under the sun and enough ovens to short circuit the city, I'd sit and try everything she ever baked. I'd make every word she breathed my gospel.

All for her to just look at me again like she knows me.

"It's not okay but I don't want to talk about it," she says in a small voice. Even in the midst of emotion, her jaw is set and her eyes blaze stubbornly against the weakness. 

I stand and she curls in on herself, closing her eyes. 

When I slip into the other side of the bed, I notice her jolt a little in surprise but she maintains the distance. 

She's in my room, my bed, and that will have to be good enough until I wrangle the rest into place. In the meantime, it seems I'll have to practice another first: letting a problem remain unsolved.

I engage in a mental battle with the cat, willing him to have a purpose for once in his life and come curl up with Vivienne.

He ignores me.

I'm so lost in tempestuous thoughts of getting rid of him that her touch comes as a surprise. But gently, with her eyes closed, she's nestled close and pressed her face to the side of my arm. I watch, not breathing in case it will disturb her, as she wraps her arms around my bicep, snuggling into it like a pillow.

"I think you were right. He definitely hates me," she murmurs, not opening her eyes.

I remember suggesting that to her what feels like a lifetime ago.

"I didn't know what I was talking about. He loves you in his own way, I'm sure."

A few moments later, her breaths have slowed.

I stay awake for a very long time, thinking about how to make this right.

♛

I stare at the cat.

The cat stares at me.

She's a Russian Blue—much to my annoyance, but I knew she was the one after I had personally examined every cat at the shelter. It just so happens her breed fits in with Vivienne's apparent desire to assign Russian names to her pets. Her coat is a light shimmering silver—closer to white around the muzzle, with huge green sea glass eyes.

Her name is Pillow Princess.

The woman at the shelter blushed profusely when she told me, for some reason.

Pillow Princess's three siblings, all with equally cumbersome names I've forgotten, gaze at me from over the armrest of one of our designer leather couches. Three sets of green eyes floating in the middle of three tiny grey heads. The woman at the shelter said that the siblings refuse to behave unless they're all together and nobody wants to adopt four cats, so they had remained homeless for years. 

The kicker, however, is that although they're a somewhat rare and expensive breed, their breeder made a mistake. Nobody wants a litter with deformities and health issues, so they were abandoned.

Bratty, codependent, and deformed.

Somehow, I just knew they would be perfect for Vivienne.

I also knew this because I had checked three times that Pillow Princess likes cuddles.

Raskolnikov—true to his name—was a psychotic terror to the new additions from nearly the second they got here. He tried to fight all four of them at once, only quieting when I scooped him up. He then settled in my arms, hissing lowly at the intruders. I carefully lowered myself to the floor of our living room, figuring that maybe they all had to get used to each other's presence.

After several minutes, Pillow Princess was the first to venture out from the safety of the couch. So here we sit, locked in a stalemate.

The cats' ears perk toward something behind me but I don't turn around. I swear one of the other ones just looked like it was going to venture closer.

"Jesus," I hear Tommaso. "It's worse than I thought."

Nik begins snoring in my arms, suddenly quite content. I hear footsteps, then Santo slowly crouching next to me. He speaks in a low, careful voice.

"How long have you been like this?" 

I glance up. "On the floor? Just ten minutes."

"Oh, good," he mutters, relaxing.

"Do you two need anything?" I focus back on the task at hand. Now that Nik is asleep, the next cat has initiated its approach. Hopefully by the time Vivienne wakes up, they'll all be good friends. "I'm busy."

"What the fuck are you doing?"

I give Tommaso a look. "I'm introducing them to each other."

He glances at the cats, grimacing. "What's wrong with them?"

"They were inbred," I defend, and my brother makes a strange sound in his throat. "It leads to congenital defects and inherited health problems. Nobody else would take them."

"This is because of whatever you fucked up... with that?" Tommaso genuinely wonders, gesturing to the upstairs. I nod and he exhales in fascination, sitting on the couch with his chin in his hands. "Wow. I've got to see how this plays out." 

"Vivienne wants children," I announce. "I... can't."

As if it's a perfectly normal thing to say out of the blue, Santo crosses his arms. "Why?"

"Did it already." Unwilling to explain further, I raise a brow at Santo. "Do you want children?" 

In a moment, his dark eyes have gone soft. I'm not even sure he's aware it's happened.

"I never thought I would, but if they're anything like her, fuck yeah I want them," he says. Then his eyes dim a little as he no doubt remembers my long-standing opinion of any of us having children. I'd never forbid it—but I'd never be excited either.

Frankly, it sounds like an utter nightmare.

The only positive thing I could see coming out of the experience would maybe be the fact that Santo wants to consider having children. That means, in some way, I did my job and protected him from the bad things.

"I see," Tommaso says. "Yes. I do think if you give her enough cats, she'll forget about kids. But may I suggest ones that haven't been incestuously fucked into existence?"

I shake my head. It's not meant to be a replacement for anything. I am sick and tired of watching Vivienne love Nik and receive nothing in return. This is quite literally the only problem-solving I've been reduced to. I want her to have a cat that is capable of love.

Although... glancing down as Nik snuggles deep into my arms with a happy rumble, he seems just fine with me.

"When Nico was born," I begin, and immediately the energy in the room turns frigid. But I continue. "When he was born, I had this strange idea that he was going to save all of us. Simply because Romano blood didn't flow through his veins. Antonio taught me how to hate our blood." Practically forced me to feel overpowering disgust for my body and what was inside it. "It's ironic that he's the one who killed Nico, too. It's almost like we killed him. At least it feels like that. Like we are one big, dark destructive force. And we killed him."

The words seem to have their own free will, floating from my lips as my brothers listen with stunned faces. They're unfiltered and raw. For once.

"But whatever the case, I was right about something. He was different. He was... the heart, I think."

And even I know that the three of us have always lacked one on a good day.

"It had nothing to do with the blood that ran through his veins," Santo says after a while. "I think it was because of us. Somehow. The kid did nothing except try to be like us. All that fucked up Romano blood was good for something, huh?"

"How did I fail so monumentally?" My voice is low, as if it will make the words less devastating. "He was the most vulnerable. The most innocent and trusting. I used to think there was nothing, absolutely nothing the three of us couldn't do." I look between my brothers, Tommaso frozen, Santo's jaw slowly clenching as he hangs onto my every word. "After all those years, everything we survived, it felt like we almost weren't..."

"Human?" Santo grits out.

The three of us sit with that for a while, as the last cat on the couch slinks over to sit by its siblings. All four grey cats blink at me inquisitively. It doesn't feel like there are any more words to be said. I can't make anything better. We were riding on top of the world after growing up in the gutter.

I didn't want to acknowledge that we were brought low again.

I know everyone has their own notion of grief, and that it's not easy pretty much across the board. I even know that it's not linear, never conforming to a pattern, unexpected and raw. I know what everyone says about what it is to lose someone.

But I didn't know grief is so much like fear. 

Fear was something I could never afford to feel, so I didn't. But I notice it now, tearing at the edges of my heart like a sick dog driven to insanity. It's reasonless and rabid. "You have to be happy enough to cry," Adamo once told me. I almost wrote him off as insane for that one, but it's starting to make sense. We must somehow let ourselves grieve without being afraid that it will never stop.

I'm not there. I don't know when or if  I will be.

"You never had to bleed for our father's sins or our mother's weaknesses," Santo tells me gruffly. "But you did. I won't let you bleed for this too. If you let yourself miss him," he breaks off, looking like he'd rather be executed than finish the sentence, "well, I have to believe eventually the missing won't be so fucking miserable."

To do that always just felt like bathing in my own failure. I suspect it will take time to begin to let myself engage with that idea. The idea still sounds highly unappealing and pointless. How am I even supposed to—

A warning rumble comes from my lap. Nik is glaring up at me, which makes me realize I've woken him up by holding him too tightly.

"There was something else I never told you." My chest suddenly feels like it's actively closing up, but I force the words out. "Everyone always assumed I never allowed my city to control or profit from sex work because of what happened with our mother. Of course, everyone knew how she got married to our father, even if it was never spoken about," I take a deep breath but realize I can't. The words keep coming, like fire and smoke up my throat. It's not necessarily about what I'm saying, but needing to say something to distract from the soul-shattering feeling of everything inside me burning to a crisp. "But it wasn't about her. I hated her. It was about me. You know that I—"

"Hey." There's a presence in front of me, close but not touching. "It's alright."

I stare at Santo, at Tommaso hovering behind him. I can't read the look on their faces, aside from the fact that they look kind of broken, because of what feels like a spear dragging through my insides. The world has narrowed down to something sharp and visceral that goes past my senses, touching on something so deep within me there's no way to touch it. No way to control it.

It's the worst minute of my life.

And I make sure it's no longer than a minute. Maybe other people can deal with this for longer, but I'm half convinced I won't be able to get up from the floor.

My brothers stay there with me. Just us, the cats, and that monstrous, ghastly feeling. It's the greatest pain I have ever felt, worse than everything that was done to me, but it's the first pain that I don't have to feel alone.

I have to swallow it down before it drives me to a point I can't come back from. Maybe I'll never have to crack the vault open again—maybe I'll never be able to let myself.

After some time, I notice Tommaso running his hands through his hair repeatedly. He gets up with a few unintelligibly mumbled words and leaves.

I look to Santo, confused but glad to focus on something else. "I thought he's been wanting to talk about it."

"He's been wanting to hear you talk about it," Santo says. "He needs to process it."

We both sigh, looking around awkwardly as we suddenly notice we're still on the floor. But we don't move to get up.

"This is a lot," Santo gestures at all the cats. "You definitely did too much here, and I mean that. It's a really fucking excessive amount."

I avert my gaze, not wanting to tell him what else I bought for Vivienne.

Speaking of her... I have something very important to tell her. Well, two very important things.

"Uh, hey guys?"

Tommaso wanders into the room, looking almost fearful. His eyes are scrubbed raw but there's alarm dawning slowly on his features. I immediately know that something terrible has happened.

He doesn't make me wait.

"Vivienne is gone."

I don't want to believe it's true. I have her cat—who she was just reunited with. She wouldn't leave him. But after spending twenty heart-pounding minutes searching every room of the house, calling her phone repeatedly, and roping Nina into the search, I'm forced to believe it.

She left?

"The front door is unlocked," Tommaso announces, entering the room where we're all standing—and I'm pacing. "And I know none of us did that."

I stop. "I never taught her how to re-engage the lock."

"So she got up and walked out," Santo reasons. "She probably just went on a walk." 

I shake my head. I don't know how, but I know. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

♛ 

All your love for last chapter quite literally ignited a fire under my ass and I managed to word vomit this out. We have less than 5 chapters left y'all!

- G