A Madness Most Discreet (Brothers Maledetti Book 4)

by Nichole Van

  “Despite the obvious flood of feeling going on?” Dante asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s not much.”

  I stretched my senses.

  Just the vaguest sense of emotion filtered in. Chiara’s stunned happiness. Dante’s confusion. Branwell’s relief.

  Dad and Mom were too far away to get anything.

  That was it.

  I felt . . . free.

  No more obsessive thoughts. No sense of fracturing.

  Nothing.

  Emotion choked me, the sensation all my own.

  “I’m free,” I whispered.

  “You’ll live.” Olivia pressed her nose to my cheek.

  I blinked. “Yeah.”

  My mind short circuited at the thought.

  I had denied myself hope for so damn long . . .

  But now . . .

  I lifted my eyes, meeting Chiara’s across the table.

  She smiled, tears hitting her cheeks.

  “You’re gonna have it all, big brother,” she said. “Beautiful family, a career, hopes, dreams, long term plans—” She stopped, something occurring to her. “Now you can’t use time or emotions as an excuse. I can get you a Chia Pet for Christmas—cause you’ll be around to see it grow. Not to mention, we can all play Risk now—”

  “No,” Dante groaned.

  “No way are we playing Risk with you again,” Branwell agreed.

  “It’s true. The GUT was just an excuse,” I agreed.

  Chiara looked between each of us, outrage stopping her tears. “Wha?! Why—”

  “You’re way too competitive, sis,” Branwell snorted.

  Dante nodded. “We love you, but we’re not masochists. Your craving for world domination needs to remain untapped.”

  “And I can still feel enough of your emotions,” I huffed.

  She glared at us.

  “Jack will play with me.” She elbowed him in the ribs.

  “What is Risk?” he asked, his high-brow accent deep.

  Chiara chuckled. It may have had a somewhat maniacal edge.

  And suddenly, we were all laughing.

  Back-slapping, tears falling, gut-hurting laughing.

  Cathartic and cleansing.

  Minutes later, I finally managed to wipe my eyes clear and talk.

  “Alright,” I said, still chuckling. “The curse is broken. Dad is alive. Will someone please explain how it all happened?”

  “It was Chiara,” Olivia said, sitting more upright. I kept a possessive hand on her waist.

  My sister pushed her hair out of her face and slid off Jack’s lap, sitting beside him.

  She blew a raspberry. “Pffft. Not even. It was a unique joint effort.”

  Chiara told me about Olivia’s help in getting the entire D’Angelo archive digitized.

  “Once all the words were searchable,” Chiara continued, “it was easy to start plugging in search terms. I hunted for any reference to chains or black slime or demons. In the end, knowing what to look for made all the difference.”

  “Cesare il Pompaso came through again,” Jack chuckled.

  Chiara rolled her eyes. “Sad but true. We were idiots to ignore his stuff for as long as we did.”

  “Eh, but the man was a windbag,” Dante said. “His writing is still tedious to read.”

  “Tell me about it! Anyway, toward the end of his life, Cesare il Pompaso started having visions of a chain. In his visions, he described the chain as a black snake, the viper that binds us. The snake was held in the hands of a woman who he named the Offering.”

  “My birth mother.” Olivia’s voice was quiet beside me.

  Chiara nodded and went on. “Cesare il Pompaso goes on and on about the sacrifice of the Offering. To anyone reading through it, without really understanding what he was saying, it seems like a random fairy tale. It’s why no one ever bothered to read it closely.”

  “Which, to be fair,” Branwell chimed in, “there is a lot of his writing that is just genuinely nonsense. So it’s no wonder this was buried in there.”

  Olivia leaned into me. “Cesare il Pompaso spoke in allegories and metaphor, which confused so many things.”

  “True that.” Chiara nodded. “Anyway, the allegory goes like this. Cesare il Pompaso tells the story of the Offering. Her people were persecuted and in desperate need of a help. A Benefactor arrived, asking for help.”

  “Giovanni D’Angelo, we suppose,” Branwell said.

  “Yeah. The Benefactor promised safety and security in return for a gift of power. The Offering volunteered to be the sacrifice. Cesare il Pompaso is very clear on the fact that the Offering had to be willing.”

  “That’s the scene that I saw in my vision, when we visited the gypsies,” I said.

  Chiara continued on, “Exactly. That first night with Giovanni, the gypsies agreed to help by making a dark pact. They were facing annihilation; the Italians wanted the zingari gone. Giovanni would protect them and give them sanctuary. In return, they would grant him power. In order to do this, they would sacrifice one of their own—a young woman, probably the old woman’s granddaughter—to an ancient demon.”

  “Which to give up one of their own for the protection of everyone else . . . what a horrific sacrifice,” Dante agreed.

  “I saw her,” I chimed in. Every head turned toward me. “When I had the vision of Giovanni, I was seeing the scene through a woman’s eyes. It had to have been her.”

  “Poor woman,” Chiara said. “Cesare il Pompaso says over and over that the Offering was bound in chains and sacrificed. More significantly, in one particular vision, he describes the Offering as having a terrible secret, an unknown seed buried deep within that would only sprout when the world fractured.”

  “We think that means she was pregnant with me,” Olivia said.

  I ran my thumb over Olivia’s hip before kissing our joined hands. She shot me a small, melancholy smile.

  “Exactly,” Chiara continued. “The Offering knew that she must protect the seed at all costs. So she waited patiently for the world to fracture, but she had to wait so long. She worried that the seed would die.”

  “So she was pregnant with me for several hundred years,” I added.

  “Which seems odd initially,” Jack jumped in, “but time works differently in the shadow world.”

  “Yeah,” Chiara said. “The archive continues, saying that just as the Offering was about to lose hope, a crack appeared, three lines stretching out—”

  “Us,” Branwell said.

  “Yes. That is our interpretation. The Offering then waited for the right moment, the point where the cracks reached the light. She cast the seed out of the grayness at the same time, pushing it into the light. Basically, she used the moment of the triplet’s birth to give birth to Olivia and push her out of the shadow world and into ours.”

  “What an amazing woman.” Branwell shook his head. “She sacrificed everything for her people. She willingly allowed herself to be bound to the daemon in chains and then gave up her newborn child.”

  “So . . . how did our GUT function?” I asked.

  “We assumed the chain acted as a conduit,” Chiara said. “The demon would feed you additional power that souped up your natural genetic gifts of Second Sight. In return, you would feed the daemon your life force. But after the events of the past hour, I’m not so sure it was that simple.”

  “Because Babbo was attached to the other end of the chain?”

  “Yeah. I’m wondering if the daemon didn’t keep two D’Angelos tethered—one on each end of the chain, the living and the dead—sucking the life force of both. The daemon would feed off the connection, drawing power from each end. Once the power of the dead soul became low, the daemon would work on the living D’Angelo, encouraging them to commit suicide and die, starting the cycle all over again.”

  “That would explain the fractured voice we hear,” I nodded.

  “So basically every time we used our GUTs, we were destroying Babbo.” Branwell cro
ssed his arms.

  “Precisely. In a very real sense, Giovanni sold his soul. As well as the souls of every future generation,” Olivia added.

  “So the connection with the Etruscans and the cult of Tages is still very much real, too,” Jack said. “Giovanni was likely a descendant of Tages and had the genetic gift of prophecy and Second Sight already. The chain to the shadow world just amped it more.”

  “Exactly.” Chiara grinned at her boyfriend.

  “My mother acted as the bridge between the two, the carrier of the chain,” Olivia continued. “And just as she had willingly allowed herself to be sacrificed, I had to choose to step through the scar and retrieve the chain, instead of being dragged in by the daemon. The daemon could only be confronted by choice.”

  “Just like the gypsy woman said that day—we had to choose the path instead of being compelled,” I said.

  “What happened at the end there?” Dante asked Olivia. “We could only see the chain, not what was going on in the shadow world. What did you see?”

  Olivia shot me a glance, eyes pensive, before turning around and describing everything as it had happened.

  The vast landscape. The looming daemon. The woman in blood-soaked robes fighting it, dying impaled on a phantom blade.

  The horror of my vision, only I had clearly mistaken Olivia’s mother for Olivia herself.

  Olivia’s voice broke near the end as she described her mother’s death.

  I wiped a tear from her cheek before kissing her knuckles.

  “I am so sorry you lost your birth mother before you knew her,” I said.

  Olivia sniffled. “Yeah. That part sucks. But I did get to meet her and I know my own story now, which is more than I ever anticipated. She wanted me. She loved me. And that knowledge . . . matters.”

  “Anima mia, you are always wanted,” I murmured in her ear.

  Olivia shot me a sideways glance before turning back to everyone.

  “But I still don’t understand why the chain was suddenly apparent?” Dante asked.

  “As the Offering’s daughter, I carried the same bloodline, so I could also see and touch the chain,” Olivia explained. “But as I wasn’t part of the original curse, the daemon couldn’t reach me emotionally. This put me in a unique position. No one else could have pulled out the chain. Just me. I’m thinking that’s why the daemon had been trying to kill me all those years. It knew that I was the link, the key thing that could disrupt the sweet gig it had going on. But I also couldn’t have done it alone. I’m not strong enough. It required all of us—” She motioned to us brothers. “The unique situation of the fractured GUT and my birth is what allowed the curse to be broken.”

  “But how is Dad still alive?” Dante asked. “Our ancestors clearly died, so how is Dad still with us.”

  “I never died.” Every head turned to see Dad walk into the room. Mom had his arm around her shoulders, supporting him. He had changed into some of my loose track pants and a t-shirt, hair wet from a shower.

  He was thin and emaciated—hair pepper gray and wild, beard scraggly and unkempt—but his eyes were clear and sharp. A man in possession of all his faculties.

  I hadn’t seen this emotionally-stable version of my father since my early childhood.

  We all instantly launched into action.

  Branwell and Dante each wrapped an arm around Dad, bringing him forward. I set Olivia off my lap and hopped up to help, pulling out a plush chair, assisting them to ease him down.

  It was crazy to see us next to Dad as grown men.

  Dad had always been so big in my eyes. But here he was . . . looking more like Branwell and Dante but with my smaller body. My brothers towered over him.

  “What do you mean you never died, Babbo?” Chiara slipped away from Jack with an apologetic smile. She claimed the seat next to Babbo. Mom on the other side.

  Chiara wrapped both of her hands around Dad’s. She had always been Daddy’s little girl.

  “Exactly that, mia passerotta.” He smiled at her. “I had been having obsessive thoughts about breaking the chain, thinking that lightning was the way to do it. I realize now that those obsessive thoughts were the way the dark demon kept the process going. Once the life force of the previous generation got low, the next generation needed to step in to fill the void. So the demon would break our minds, causing insanity.”

  Mom leaned into Dad, resting her forehead on his shoulder. He kissed her hair before continuing.

  “I was reaching that point when I climbed the tower during the thunderstorm that night. My mental fracturing had become severe. But Fate had other plans. The power of the storm combined with the supernatural that night. The lightning arched down and a scar opened, sucking me through before the tower exploded. I came to in the shadow world, wrapped in the chains.”

  I frowned. “So did the other D’Angelo heirs not die either?”

  “They most definitely did die.” Dad nodded emphatically. “Again, it had something to do with how the GUT weakened with your birth. That’s what set all this in motion.”

  “But we know from my experience that we age differently in the shadow world,” Jack chimed in. “I was inside the shadow world for two hundred years and hardly aged a day, but—”

  “I’ve obviously aged,” Dad said with a wry grin.

  Jack smirked and shrugged.

  “Yes,” Dad continued. “I’m assuming I aged because my life force was tied to the triplets who slowly drained it away. I eventually realized that my physicality allowed me to reach along the chain and communicate with you here. You boys were more difficult to reach as your GUTs are loud. But Chiara was receptive. Her bond with me was always strong.” He smiled at her, and she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I was limited to talking to her with scenes from the past. But I think it was enough.”

  Silence for a moment.

  Olivia swallowed next to me. “What about my birth mother?”

  “I don’t know.” Cesare shook his head. “I vaguely knew she was there, but she never communicated with me.”

  The front door cracked open below.

  I had no idea who had arrived. I had no forewarning of their coming.

  I suddenly realized exactly how much my life had just changed.

  I hadn’t expected the loss of my GUT to be anything but wonderful. But, turns out, learning to live like a relatively normal human being would take some time.

  “Hello?” Lucy’s voice called down the hall.

  Branwell jumped to his feet, rushing to meet his wife and Claire, each carrying a car seat over an arm.

  Nonna was right behind them.

  “Is it true?” Nonna said in Italian, grabbing Branwell’s arm. “Tell me this isn’t someone’s idea of a sick joke.”

  “No, Nonna. It’s very much true.” He kissed her cheek. “See for yourself.” He swept an arm toward Dad.

  Nonna swiveled her head and would have collapsed if Branwell hadn’t wrapped an arm around her.

  Dad tried to rise but was clearly too weak and tired.

  “Mamma,” he said, voice choked.

  “Cesare. My beautiful boy,” she whispered, hobbling to him, clutching his face between her hands. “You’ve come back to me.”

  I think we all lost it at that point, crying, holding each other. I could feel enough to know that we were each overwhelmed with joy and love.

  Dad had been miraculously returned to us.

  Mom had shed years of worry and grief. She already looked ten years younger, her blue eyes having lost their sadness.

  My brothers and I were free.

  Alessio and Bronte and every other D’Angelo from now on would live a normal life.

  The curse was broken.

  It was a lot to absorb. Just getting my head around it would take time.

  Babbo was clearly exhausted, but he still had to hold his two grandchildren and delight in their cooing smiles.

  He had to hug Claire and Lucy, welcoming them into the family.

  W
e talked and laughed and reminisced.

  I helped Jack and Chiara get beds made for the household of people we suddenly had. It was like family reunions as a kid when the house would overflow with relatives and the rooms would spark with life.

  Villa Maledetti had become a home once more.

  It was only after Mom had insisted Dad and Nonna needed to rest and everyone had gone to bed that I realized—

  Olivia was no longer by my side.

  THIRTY ONE

  Olivia

  The autumn air had turned chilly. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and snuggled deeper into the lounger on the back terrace.

  Night had long fallen and a huge moon hung low on the horizon.

  The house seemed to be quieting down behind me.

  I didn’t know what would happen now.

  Had the events of the evening changed how Tennyson felt about me? Sure, he had been decidedly affectionate and cuddly—which, yeah, was uh-mazing—but once the shock of everything wore off, would he still choose . . . me?

  Tennyson was no longer on the verge of self-destruction. His life had just altered dramatically.

  But then . . . so had mine, I supposed.

  All the scars were gone, healed. The daemon banished for good.

  I was safe.

  But . . .

  I would never know her name. Never learn her voice. Never know her entire story.

  My birth mother.

  I wiped a tear away. Then another.

  The third one was caught on Tennyson’s finger.

  I startled, turning to him. He stood beside me, balanced on one leg. I had been so wrapped up in my own head, I hadn’t heard the clink of his crutches.

  “Hey. There you are, anima mia.” Tennyson sat on the lounger beside me, resting his crutches on the chair next to mine. “Been looking for you. Scooch over.” He nudged my shoulder.

  Obligingly, I moved over and made room for him next to me on the lounger. He also appropriated half of my blanket, pulling it around us both.

  So . . . basically in under the space of one minute, I found myself wrapped in his arms and tucked against his chest, my head nestled into his shoulder with my arms around his waist.

  Gah! Such a Hot Person thing, to have me lose my head so quickly and end up completely pressed up against him. Seriously. The man had impressive superpowers.