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by Kirsty-Anne Still

  “It’s boring here,” I utter; nonchalance is the only tone I’ve mastered since waking up. “And I’m not much company.”

  Zane’s lips pull into a delicate smile, the corners barely tugging, but he grabs my hands. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  There’s a deliberate silence and I’ve come to find I hate them the most. They’re poison for the soul. Silences do nothing but allow demons – old and new – to clamber their way to the surface of your barely beating heart

  “You know, when I woke up in my father’s office, I could only wonder if, after everything, that was how I was going to die. But the thought didn’t last long because when my entire life flashed before my eyes, I saw you, Zane. You consume me and I didn't realize the extent of that until then. And I really wanted you to come and save me, and you did." I sniff again, reaching out for his hand as it sits beside mine. "I opened my eyes and my every wish came true. I didn’t care about anything else but seeing you one last time." I look at him, feeling my eyes stare as my nostrils flare to halt another influx of unforgiveable tears. “How selfish is that? I witnessed my brother get hurt, and I knew another was hurt, but all I could wish for was you. What type of person does that make me?”

  “A very human one,” he counters, leaning in to wipe away my tears for me. “When I was shot, I just wished for every second to bring you closer to me, and when I woke up in that hospital, there you were. Against all odds, you risked everything for me. The reason I came back was because every step of our round two, you only ever loved me, Amelia. I was blindsided, but I vow to never let that happen again. And when I could feel you dying, I vowed to myself that I would only ever love you. I would give you everything in this world to prove that you deserve to live and I deserve a chance to show you that I only ever loved you. No more chances, just this one. That’s all I need now. There is no issue with your family breaking us up, or what you have to do, or my better judgment. This life isn’t worth living if I don’t have you to live it with. I’ve tried too many times and it never gets easier. You’re everything I need to live a perfect life.”

  I hiccup on a sob, managing to cut its life short, but as the words of my doctor come back to haunt me, I don’t know how much of this I’ll be able to keep on lockdown. “Am I enough for you, though?” I ask him, my tone falls an octave, as I fear the response he could deliver. “Whatever happens, am I enough to keep you happy?”

  “Amelia,” Zane begins to say, his voice soft as confusion weaves across every inch of his face. “What’s brought this on?”

  I open my mouth, ready to form the words, but instead, a suffocating lump forms, so evident I have to swallow hard to dislodge it. He’s already been through so much because of me, how do I dare worsen that for him? I don’t want this burden to become his. This isn’t the type of sorry future I want him to promise himself to. The worst part is that I selfishly don’t want to tell him because of the fear of losing him. I don’t know how to function without Zane because, right now, he is the only constant in my life.

  “Everything,” I whisper, discreetly closing the news away and glazing over it.

  “Amelia, has something else happened?” he asks, and I shake my head. “I know when you’re lying to me, sweetheart. I know you’re keeping something from me.”

  “I’m not,” I admonish, my tone curt with him. “I don’t know when I’m going to feel okay with life and I worry that by feeling like this you’ll grow bored of waiting for me to heal.” I look away, a tear abandoning me. “I’m scared you won’t want a girl who’s as broken as I am right now.”

  “You may be broken, but I love every shard of you, Amelia. I always have and this isn’t going to make me shy away from that. I loved the broken girl you thought you were before, and right now, I’ve never loved her more.” He leans in, rubbing yet more tears away. “And I will tell you every day just how much I believe in that.” His lips curl into a small, honest grin, one that lightens his eyes. “When we’re building a life together, making our happy ending happen, I will make sure that you know that I only ever want to fix you. In years to come, when we have a happy home and a big, happy family surrounding us, I will remind you of the moment you worried over it.”

  I hiccup on a sob, and he reacts to me. The mere fact he’s thought of that sort of future with me darkens another corner of my heart. I won’t ever be able to give him what he wants and that inadequacy makes me feel not merely enough for him. Zane Maverick is destined for only greatness. Once before, I believed I was the one to not only give him that but to also live it with him. Now, I’m pretty sure there is another woman out there waiting for her world to collide with his just so she can give him the happiest of endings.

  The thought alone devastates me furthermore, and as I unravel once more, he’s the one who catches me. It’s that which makes me cling to him more. Every time I enter into freefall, he is there to catch me gracefully in his arms. He may be the one most able to hurt me, but he is the one to love me most. No matter what storm weathers our relationship, I will always love him. Heartbreak, deceit, near deaths, and my commitment to the wrong people hasn’t broken us.. If anything, it’s made us a stronger couple. I feel like Zane’s plight into the Dio Lavoro was always made with the ulterior motive to make me love him more. He showed his dedication to me when it should’ve been with my father, and he survived my cold-hearted moves to be here today.

  I know the truth will crush him, but I can’t bear to have that deliverance when I need him far too much.

  ***

  I lie staring directly up at the ceiling above me. My thoughts drift across a vast spectrum of thoughts – Manuel, Giovanni, my father, Enzo, Zane, Bruno, Carlo, my mother, and then it goes back on a loop. I hate how the majority of my life events are defined by death or devious deeds. That’s no life to look back on. Without Zane, the darkness would be all I’d know, but with him, he penetrates it and forces me to live everything with my heart protected and believe in hope.

  “Bambina.” My father’s voice cracks the almost golden silence of the room. He waits until I look at him before he speaks again. “Amelia,” he breathes with a broken spirit.

  The Salvatore Abbiati - boss, mogul, devil incarnate - looks worn down and distraught at the life he now lives. His empire is splintering to pieces, descending into rubble, and I cannot find any form of pity. This is what he’s brought upon us. The fate he cast upon us the very moment we were born is one he prided himself with, one he vowed would see him reach the top of any criminal hierarchy.

  All I see is a bunch of lost children who struggled to seek the right path in the wrong world. That’s all we are, all we were really destined to be – misguided souls.

  “I can’t believe it came to this,” he whispers, taking a graceful step into the room.

  I remain unmoved. I allow him to take the sight of me in – the disheveled, red-eyed victim left behind. If I’m honest, the fear that strikes to life in the thought of Giovanni also resonates with my father. They are cut from the same cloth, and I cannot help but see my brother as a product of my father’s doing. He enabled Giovanni to murder our own with intent to kill two more; I cannot just let that escape my mind.

  “I’m so sorry, bambina. I never knew he was capable of doing such a thing,” he comments and I scoff at the thought, mocking it. “What Giovanni has done has destroyed me more than you’ll ever know.” He takes a calculated step forward. “I love you, Amelia. I wish it hadn’t taken this to show me how much I do. When I saw you on my desk, my life stopped. Even more so than when we found Manuel and Enzo.” I hear a quiver in his tone; clearly my silence cuts deep and opens him to his real emotions. “I tried to see you while you were in a coma, but Bruno and Carlo kept me out. I got one glimpse of you and you looked so weak and were dependent on so many machines to keep you alive. I should never have needed that type of wake-up call. My strong baby girl was barely holding on and that was my fault for never seeing the man that Giovanni was becoming. I will forever relive
that day.”

  He starts to cry. That nearly breaks my resolve, but I remain strong by keeping my empathy at bay. He needs to struggle and hurt and endure every shard of pain he ever ignored us suffering from. He has to suffer for every misdeed he allowed us to struggle with. I cannot allow him a free pass because I cannot forgive him for the life he wanted for us; the life that is now slowly killing us one by one.

  “Please talk to me, Amelia,” he begs, my father spiraling into the form of a desperate man. I have seen many faces to my father, but this one is new. He has adorned many masks, shred many emotions, but never have I seen this amount of turmoil.

  I narrow my gaze, but I say nothing he’ll enjoy hearing.

  “When is Manuel’s funeral?” I ask, not instigating the father-daughter chitchat. “I don’t want to miss it.”

  He splutters for a moment, stunned momentarily for my true lack of heart toward him. “I would never allow you or Enzo to miss something like that. Manuel needs you two there most,” he says, pausing afterwards.

  I scoff – Manuel needs us there? Does he even hear himself right now? I shake my head, putting a hand to my head. Once before, I would have lashed out with a fierce tongue, attacked my father, but I have no fight left in me. He stands before me, throwing apologies around and confessing his love for the family, professing how Manuel needs us, but my feisty attitude has abandoned me and left me with a hollow gap he’s only making excessively worse.

  “You never knew what Manuel needed before. Why would you now?” I ask, my tone ice-cold and cutting. “You never knew what any of us needed, so why do you think you do now? Manuel doesn’t need anything else anymore. He’s gone, Sal. My baby brother is dead and if anything, he got the peace he wanted every single day he was alive.”

  “I understand that,” he utters, closing his eyes with emotional grief.

  “Do you?” I snap, asking him harshly.

  My father will never know the strangled memories that reside within me. He will never know how poisoned my thoughts have been, or how lost I allowed myself to become. My father will never revel in the battle I cast upon myself for family, for love, for happiness, for absolution. He will never understand how much I fought with myself to decide the right path in life and how much I turned my back on.

  “You never chose to understand anything but the game you played with every one of our lives. You never saw past the money and the power and the absolute hell you reaped on Earth. Now, now you decide to come back to us with some sort of modest grief as if you deserve to feel anything in the aftermath of Manuel’s death.” I can feel the tears beginning to fight their way to the surface of my eyes, ready to glaze over my vision with a blurry film, but I keep them locked down for a little while longer. “You don’t, Sal. You don’t deserve to mourn for a son you cared less about and you do not get to stand there and resent ever making me feel unloved because it’s been too long. You’re too late.”

  “Amelia,” he struggles to interrupt me.

  “No!” I bellow, my body seizing up. “I have laid here for two days wondering what I was going to do with my life.” I take a deep breath and use every ounce of my grief to fuel my final statement to my father. “So, I made the first steps. I don’t want to be your daughter anymore,” I remark honestly, laying my gaze firmly on him, waiting to see how my words affect him. “You can fight and try and sway me, but right now, you are just the man who destroyed me.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he replies, fearsome terror igniting in him. “Amelia, please, don’t be rash.”

  “Oh, this isn’t me being rash. This is me being the sanest I have been since Mama died. For years, I stuck by you, hoping and praying I would see some sort of reminder that my father is the man who brought up six children in a loving home, but you aren’t. You are past the point of saving, but I’m not past the point of saving myself from you, Sal.” I watch him barely react as my words ring true to his conscience – the one that’s laid dormant for years. “There’s a child of yours out there who will love to hear from you,” I comment dryly, hearing the bitterness in my own voice, and it makes me recoil. “But they are not in this building.” I take a deep breath. “I’m sure Giovanni is just waiting for you to bail him out and make this all okay with the family again. Go and dote on the child who only ever did right in your eyes.”

  “This isn’t the right thing,” he tells me, taking a staggered step forward.

  “You let him run!” I shout and hiss as I erupt the pain in me. I grit my teeth, hoping my father doesn’t see my fleeting vulnerability as something he can abuse to get close to me and pander to my needs. “When I heard he got out of the house that told me all it needed to. You could’ve stopped him. You used enough force on me in the past, but sweet, golden boy, Giovanni gets a free pass to murder his own and run free! You allowed him that, Sal! That is all on you and it always will be. You made us into the people we are today. You had a hand in making us who we all are, but believe me now, Giovanni is your biggest mistake, and I cannot see how this will end well for either of you.”

  “I will hunt him down, Amelia, I will do that. I will make sure he pays for what he has done,” he counters, trying to ease my mind with empty promises. “I don’t know how, but I will make sure he pays. He has to pay for this. I am losing my entire family, and it’s Giovanni’s fault. He was always going to bring us down and it took me until now to realize that. It’s time to make the Dio Lavoro be what it always was meant to be. It stood for family once upon a time; it needs to return to that state. Giovanni is an altercation that can be changed, and we can resume making amends and fixing relationships.”

  “This is bullshit,” I grumble, unable to continuing hearing him out.

  HIs inability to admit fault is sickening, and he has taken full advantage of my wounded state to get his word in and I cannot tolerate this any longer. I want to be home where I can recuperate and make leeway on a real plan for my future. I want to be in the solace of my room where the rest of that murderous house can fall away and be left forgotten. I don’t want to be cooped up in this room, listening to the beeping of my heart, waiting for nurses to come in and mollycoddle me. I cannot stand to see Zane’s distress at trying to make my world right when it’s all going to pieces. I want to be home and able to make plans for Manuel’s funeral, so I can start some of this healing process.

  Being stuck here with my father trying to make amends is doing nothing but slowly killing me more.

  I push up, ignoring my aggravated stomach as it protests for too much movement and I start to tear away at the pads on my chest, the ones that register my broken heart, and struggle with my body to get up a little more. The heart monitor flat lines with no beating heart to disclose and as I go for my IV, my father flies into action.

  “Bambina, stop!” he shouts, grabbing a hold of me. “You cannot do this! Stop before you hurt yourself more.”

  “Get off me!” I shout, fighting against him. “I don’t want you to touch me.” It’s as that final sentence falls from my lips that I break, crack, and collide with the misery that lies in wait for me. I sink and I collapse and I give up the little fight that resonated from a deep part of me. “I want to go home,” I sob, held up only by my father’s hands. “I want this hell to go away. Please,” I cry, my head sinking forward. “I just want to go home.” I look up to see Zane standing in the doorway, flanked by my brothers, Carlo and Enzo. I ignore my paternal father and look straight to the one man who has fathered me and raised me to become the woman I am – the one I always wanted to be. “I want to go home, Enzo.”

  “I’ll make it happen.” My father’s vow is ended as I finally find his presence replaced by one I want – Enzo. “I will pay for whatever you need, Amelia. You and Enzo will be home within the next twenty-four hours, I promise you that now.”

  “That’s the least you can do,” Enzo growls to our father as his arms envelop me and he slowly lays me down again. I can feel his tense posture around me, but it’s the words
that ring out that worry me most – the detachment is still there ringing louder with every syllable. “Get a nurse on your way out, Salvatore.” Enzo’s grasp on me offers much more protection to anything transcending in the room and I just cling to him, waiting to calm down. “C’mon, Amelia.” His pushes me away, preparing to leave me. The act in itself lashes out as I realize he’s still the cold, aloof man I’ve woken up to. “You need to calm down. He’s gone now.”

  However, as he leaves me, I don’t calm down, not even as Zane comes forth to take the spot that Enzo’s quickly vacated. Zane obviously picked up that Enzo is more isolated as the days go by because the emotional support and stability I used to survive with is slowly dispersing and leaving empty air for me to grapple with. Maybe that’s what I need – the ability to stand on my own two feet. But in the same sense, I need my family just as much. Like Zane said before, we get through this as a family, but with Enzo’s constant disconnect, we’re never going to bounce back.

  Zane holds me as a nurse ushers everyone out of the room, and as she begins to shoo Zane away, I cling on more, scared to be left alone with her. I need a constant in my life, and Zane is that. Apparently, my disrespect for my own health has me awarded with a sedative as I feel the piercing of a needle in the top of my arm.

  As I fight the drug invading my system, all I remember is whispering for my brother to come back.

  Then everything swirls into a glorious calm.

  ***

  When I open my eyes again, the sun has fallen slightly in the sky, shadowing dawn across the view out of my hospital window. My head lulls back on the pillow, and I now notice that I am free of the heart monitor and am no longer tied down.

  I feel groggy again, but I can assume that was the sedative used to calm me. I try to shake the fog from my mind, but inwardly I’m thanking the nurse’s initiative to put me out of my misery for a little while because I feel calmer now. That aching my father brought on is now diminished back to the refines of my heart, but I still cannot quieten that ebb that resonates through my entire body.