A brother is a friend given by nature.
~Jean Baptiste Legouve~

𝐌𝐚𝐱

I let out a sad mirthless, ironic, chuckle when Lia hung up on me. Her directive was short, precise, commanding. I had no time to decline the offer, I don't know why I thought I could. The command was clear, I was to spend Christmas with her family.

How was I supposed to sit at the same table as the man responsible for scarring my face, or putting me on the list of suspected murderers? Hurling my life upside down. How would breaking bread with these people help me move on? Or help me find a way to deal with guilt, sadness, loneliness?

Since knowing her family, I find myself looking at her in a different light. Picking up undertones, some signs that I saw but ignored; like how confident she was, her sharp voice when a man touched her without consent when we went out clubbing during filming. In retrospect, Lia scared me. But I would rather deal with her because we were acquainted, my violation of her notwithstanding rather then deal with her family.

Pulling up a bottle of water from the fridge, I leaned against it, looking over at Dino and his friends talking about some chick they had seen yesterday night at the club. I envied them—their laughter, the usual banter something I would have been part of before my life turned upside down. Although I couldn't join their conversation, I was glad they were here.

I like hearing their voices. They kept me from complete sorrow. A sign that I was not alone even though I felt like I was.

God! I was so exhausted, I could barely eat or sleep, my body felt so weak—a burden to my brain, dragging it around felt as if the full weight of the world was on my shoulders, sitting stubbornly, unwilling to let go of me.

I took my water, slowly walking back to my seat beside the couch where Dino sat. He hasn't been the same since he met Lia's father. He mentioned once, a while back that he felt as if he might meet them again, whether he meant accidentally or intentionally, I wasn't sure. But I knew it wasn't something he wanted.

When we heard the vroom of the car, we all stood in unison, running our eyes at each other in surprise wondering whether anyone of us knew of whoever had pulled up on us. No one in my circle knew of this house, other than Chris, and he was dead. This was my hideout, I bought it a long time ago. I brought Dino and his friends because I did not want to be alone.

The media found me, I thought. They finally did after days of hunting me and camping outside my house. But that lasted for less than a minute when I saw Luca Bianchi step out of one of the range rovers parked beside each other.

"Oh, God!" Dino swore getting off the window to return to his seat. My heart started to beat frantically.

"How did they find me?" I asked in a whisper, putting my forehead against a window pane, watching them. I didn't need an answer, it was a rhetorical question, but Dino answered anyway laughing nervously.

"You really need an answer to that?"

I shook my head, the loud thudding of my heart getting through my ears as I watched a lanky boy with curly hair step beside Luc. I remembered him with Lia in Abu Dhabi. He looked exactly like his father, but his youthful look made him appear gentler, the smile on his lips changed his whole face. I saw him pull another guy's hand, this one was taller, older, his dark hair covered the top of his ears.

"That is Nicolo Bellucci, his father is Romano" one of Dino's friends mentioned.

"I know. I can see the resemblance. Whose hand is he holding?"

"Zion Boselli," he stated, turning to follow Dino.

"Lia's brother?"

"Yeah."

"Was Dino right when he said they are like their fathers?" I asked in a small voice sitting on my spot waiting for my fate.

"We are about to find out."

It took a lifetime before we heard the small knock on the door. Dino looked at me, I stared back at him, none of us stood to answer it, even his friends.

I couldn't move. And even if I could, I wouldn't have opened the door. I did not want to be the first face they saw.

One of Dino's friends volunteered, and my eyes walked with him until he stood by the door, he glanced at us, his gaze nervous or perhaps frightened, and then opened it.

"Eli," I heard a voice say. "What are you doing here?"

In the few years I had known Dino,  I had never cared to learn his friends' names.

What a shame. I never learn. My arrogance and superiority hung around me like a bad habit.

"I came with Dino," Eli stammered, moving aside as Luc entered.

"Dino? Who is Dino?" as soon as he'd asked that, the man with curiosity stepped inside taking surveillance of the room. It was Zion, he looked around until his gaze landed on me, it turned cold so fast I felt as if he was about to walk to me and kill me on the spot.

"I'm Dino." Zion took his gaze from me to look at Dino. He stared at him, blatantly like he wanted to intimidate him for some reason.

"You look familiar," he finally said, bending his face to the side as if trying to recall him.

"He looks like Carrie,"  Nicola mumbled. He had a voice that was so different from how he looked. He sounded like a grown man, and a teenager at the same time.

"Oh, yeah. Carrie Verratti. You know her?"

"She was is my cousin." Dino said. " How do you know her?"

Zion shrugged.

"She is our business partner," Nicolo volunteered, and then his eyes landed on my face.

"I heard you got your face marked, but you don't look bad," he told me, walking toward me. "Not bad at all," he added, touching the scar his fingertips cold, his breath on my face.

I flinched when he pressed hard at the starting point of it, and then pulled his finger down until where it ended. I wanted to close my eyes but I kept them open. Afraid that if I did, he might hurt me.

God! I was afraid of a teenager. How the mighty have fallen, I thought as I turned to fix my gaze on his.

His did not waver, he stared down at me as if he could see and read my soul.

"You look ruggedly handsome in my opinion. If you get back in front of the camera, women will still go crazy for you, some men too." he said the last few words suggestively.

He smirked when I flinched, his eyes icy cold, making my stomach twist, and I felt as if  there was a lump in my throat because I couldn't swallow.

"No. Don't worry. I don't swing that way. But if I did, aren't you too old for me?"

"You had a thing for Carrie, and she's older than you."

I hear Luc's voice. It's the first he has spoken since they entered the room.

"Had?" Nicolo gets off my face, and I slowly breathe out in relief.

"I still do." There is humour in his tone. I steal a glance at him to find he now has his hands dipped into his grey multiple-pocket cargo pants.

"They said we can't hurt you." Luc's voice to me is calm, but sharp, commanding yet deceptively composed.

I try to clear my voice, but the voice that comes out is scratchy and it hurts my throat.

"They say you have been punished enough. Have you?"

I didn't know how to answer that. I wanted to treat the question like it was rhetorical, but if he was anything like Lia's father, then he expected an answer.

"They should have chipped off part of your nose."  this is from Nicolo. His nonchalant voice reminds me that these guys came from men who turned my life upside down a few weeks ago.

They took away more than half my face.

"Or his lip," Zion offered, jumping on his feet. "Do you have a beer?" Even in this uncertain terrified moment of my life, I remembered Lia saying one of her brothers only drank beer.

"I mean, you drugged our sister, kidnapped her, the least you can do is have a beer for me."

Luc swiftly turns his head to Zion who chuckles and then looks at me, his face lighting up in a teasing grin.

"Fine! Our sister, " he points between Nicolo and himself, " his girlfriend," he added, disappearing into the kitchen at the same time my heart fell out of my chest with fear.

No wonder Lia never looked at me. How could she? Luc leans forward, his expression earnest.

At that moment, he looked exactly like Lia's father to me.

His inscrutable face, the angry set of his mouth, the icy cold blue eyes, except Lia's father were black.

I guess the devil didn't have the same set of eyes. Perhaps he changed their colour as easily as he shifts his body.

"I lost my bodyguard." I managed to say.

"We heard. " Nicolo says. "Apparently you can't sleep out of guilt."

Lia has been talking about me. I felt lonely and betrayed even though I had no right to feel that way.

She had no allegiance to me.

Have you ever felt as if nobody cared whether you lived or died? I felt that. Alone, lonely.

"How do you acquire a habit like that? Drugging women, raping them, taking away their livelihood just because you can and expect to go through life untouched by pain?" Zion asked.

"It's disgusting" Nicolo mumbled. I agreed though I didn't say it loud.

It's like a veil has been lifted off my face. I saw life as everyone else did—how unforgiving it was, the misery it carried, the tears it brought with it when you least expected it. But I could sit there and blame life all I wanted, but what was happening to me was the consequences of my choices.

Nobody held a gun to me when I kidnapped Lia, or when I drugged her. Both of those were my decisions. Living with the consequences was the hardest part for me.

"I have met my share of men outside a bar or a club who refused to take a no from a woman. And they all have the same thing in common; they think women were created for them. It's crazy that a man who is a poster male preference for women drugs women who are not attracted to him. "

What exactly was I supposed to say to that? I shook my head.

"What have you lost other than your bodyguard?" Luc asks me again. He is like a dog with a bone.

I close my eyes for a moment thinking of Chris as I do often these days.

"My sanity," I respond.

Nobody said anything for a while, the room is quiet until Zion deliberately slurps his beer.

"Do you think you've lost more or less than what you've stolen from countless women over the years?"

"Less," I mumble under my breath. But he heard. I'm honest. I destroyed many women, and young girls when I was younger. One in particular closes my mind and I had to tightly close my eyes to fight the memories especially the look in her eyes when I last saw her.

"Lia says you need help, and since your invitation for Christmas has been declined, we need to take you to Italy."

Fear floods my whole body. I can't leave the country, but who is to stop them from dragging me to the airport and throwing me at the mercies of the immigration officers who will raise an alarm to the authorities and finally to the media who will also have a field day speculation I might have been the one that murdered Chris. Why else would I try to escape the country?

"Please, I can't leave the country. " I beg Luca, my eyes pleading with him. I must have looked pitiful.

"You can, but only for 72 hours."

"How did you manage ...?" I didn't get to finish that sentence."

"I did not." he answered anyway.

"A committee of three men got it for you." Nicolo told me.

"Do you have a passport with you? "

"Yes...Why Italy?"

"There is a loving old man there who will make you feel better about your pathetic life." With that, I stood, slowly walking to the bedroom to get my passport and a few clothes items for a 72 hours visit.