Alice sucked on her cigarette, her face drawn. The smoke cascaded from her mouth with a long sigh, “Guess I deserved that, but I didn't leave you alone.”
“What do you call dropping me off at Tony's?”
“I left you with family.”
My body felt rigid, my muscles tightening and straining against my skin, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I left you with your brother.”
Adrenaline pumped everywhere and drowned out everything as I tried to understand what she was saying to me, “What are you talking about Alice?”
Her brown doe eyes locked with mine, “You might’ve had a different father, but you and Salvatore share a mother.” Her mouth tipped upwards in one corner, “The one big difference between you was that his father wanted to keep him and your father didn't,” Her hands flew to her mouth and her eyes grew wide. She tried to reach for me but I filched away, “That wasn't what I meant to say.”
But it was too late. I got it, I was damaged goods. Even as a kid no one fucking wanted me. My ears pounded as my veins flooded with heat, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?”
“I thought you guys would figure it out by now, you have so many things in common.” She shrugged and dragged that fucking cigarette.
“We have nothing in common!” I roared at her.
“You do.” She sat non-pulsed and scratched the end of her cigarette butt on the sole of her shoe, extinguishing the ember. She looked at me again and there was that smile, sad and pathetic. I wanted to erase it from her face, to take it away forever, but I also wanted some fucking answers, “I've never told Salvatore because I wasn’t allowed to. That was his father’s choice, his rules. It was just part of the deal,” she shrugged, “I had to keep away from him, so I watched him from afar. But, I knew he was going to watch over you.”
“I can't believe you kept this from me!” It was a low whisper and, for the first time, she flinched.
“Kiddo, I tried.”
“Yes Alice, that's all you've ever done. You've tried and failed, again and again and again!”
“Gabriel, don't say that.”
“What else do you want me to say? I have forgiven you time and time again, but I've been alone for so long. I've been so broken, and all this time I could have—”
“You could have what?” She cut me off. “Do you think if you knew he was your brother he would've treated any differently? Would it have made that much of a difference? He was working for Tony, that wouldn’t have changed. Anyway, look at you. You run this business of yours together, you spend more time with him than anyone else does. The fact that you’re related by blood makes no difference.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, my teeth grinding. Maybe that’s why Alice was so broken, she never understood the value of family. The power of it.
“It makes all the fucking difference.” I hissed at her.
“Yeah?” She grabbed the coffee and took an excruciatingly long sip, as if we were talking about traffic or insurance policies. My body shook and my jaw screamed with tension. “I'm done apologising Gabriel, I've apologised enough times. It’s now time to make amends. I can't do this with you anymore. I know I failed, I know I've screwed up more than once. And you know what? I might screw up again, but this is my last apology.” Her eyes focused on mine and her back straightened, “I did what I did, what I could to survive. It wasn’t always good enough; hell, most of the time it wasn't good at all, but it was all that I could do,” her hand reached for me, and I flinched away again. Her lips stretched in a thin line across her face, and that stupid smiled of hers tilted downwards, “I was young and stupid and lost. I was on drugs, and that was the only escape I had. I know you think you're the only one who suffered, but I had to make sacrifices too and I did. For you. You might not have seen it, but I did what I could with what I had and you just have to accept that.”
Her face twisted as if she had sucked on a lemon, then brightened as if the sun had come up inside of her, “You may not feel like I loved you, but you were the biggest treasure in my life. You're still the one thing that always keeps me anchored, rooted. The one thing that makes me want to try harder and be better.”
“What about your other son?’’ I snapped. I shouldn't have, but anger coursed through my veins. It was all too late, too much. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook because she finally remembered to say she loved me.
“I wish things were different.” Was all she said. Alice pulled another cigarette from her pack and smoked silently. Like a puffing dragon, she sat beside me and her words dripped into me like an IV filled with poison—slowly spreading through my veins, to the insides of my body, coating every muscle, every tendon, and all the pieces of my flesh like a drug. It made me dizzy.
I had a brother.
Salvatore.
I should have been elated, and maybe for a few seconds I was—the highest of highs. My heart strummed and my world expanded. In mere minutes it had grown exponentially for another whole human that, in some ways, belonged to me and I belonged to them. For a second I might have even loved Alice for telling me, but that was the effect of the drug she fed me. See, with the highest high comes the lowest low, and just as quickly as I flew, I plummeted back to my reality.
Having family came with a price. Salvatore would become another person that could be used against me—a weapon, a crack. He was a good man, he’d always been good to me. But what would he become now? I suddenly felt like he was so much more.
“Does he know?”
“I don't know.” She shrugged, and I wanted to rattle her small body and break it.
“I have to go Alice, I'll see you around.” She grabbed my arm before I could get up.
“Gabriel,” her eyes were fierce and teary, her worn face looked old and worried like all the years had finally caught up with her, “I should've told you sooner, I'm sorry.”
I snapped my hand away and turned to walk away.
“Gabriel?” She called me again, “Can you come back next month? Maybe the last Friday? I'll be here, if you say you’ll come. We can talk and catch up, you can tell me how you are and I'll try harder.”
“I don’t think so Alice.” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“Please?”
I didn't know if I wanted to see Alice again, I didn't know how I felt just then. All I knew was that I had a brother, and I wanted to find out what he knew. I didn’t turn around as I made my way back to my bike and tore down the road, back to Hill Street—my heart hammering.
I barged into the office, slamming the door against the back wall and rushing in like a blistering wind. “Did you know?” Salvatore looked up at me from a pile of papers, his face twisted in surprise as I rounded the table and yanked him out of the chair, pinning him against the wall, “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?” He grabbed my wrist looking into my eyes, his burning with fury.
“Do you know who your mother is?”
“I don't know a fucking thing about my mother or who she is. My dad never talked about her. Said she was a piece of trash that left me, and didn't want anything to do with us.” I let him go, his body sliding against the wall. He straightened his shirt and shoved me, the force knocking me over the table. I stumbled backwards and corrected, staring into his vicious stare. “Why the fuck are you asking me about my mother?”
I rubbed my hands over my face, not knowing how to start. But I had already opened the can of squirming, rotting worms and there was no putting them back in. I exhaled then started, “I know who your mother is.”
Salvatore took a step closer, his expression darkening, “How the fuck could you possibly know who my mother is?”
“Because I met her today.”
“You? Met her?” He took another step, his fists clenched at his sides, “Then why the fuck did you attack me, and who the fuck is this mysterious woman?”
“Alice.”
Salvatore froze at the mention of the name.
“As in our Alice, it seems.” I cleared my throat as if trying to dislodge the ugly truth from it.
Salvatore’s brow crinkled like an old newspaper and his mouth opened and closed a number of times before he finally found his voice again, “Are you saying that we are…”
“That's how it seems.”
“You must be fucking joking, I can't be related to your ugly face”
“You know what? That’s exactly the first thing I thought too.”
He landed back into the chair, the fight leaching away from his body. His brow dug in and he raked his hands through his hair, “You sure?”
I shrugged, “I’m not sure of much that Alice says or does. Your guess is as good as mine. I guess we can do a DNA test if you want to “
“Does it make a difference to you?” He looked at me and I saw something there, or at least I hoped I did—those same hidden feeling I shut behind my eyes. The feeling of wanting to belong. To be part of something bigger than myself. Mia was a start, a beginning of expanding my heart, my legacy, and my family. Salvatore could be another limb; a strong branch that will be attached to my roots forever. He would be dependent on my survival in the same way that I would be dependent on his.
The truth was yes, I wanted that fucking DNA test more than anything. But anything that can be snapped off makes you weak. I can be a solitary tree, withstand the winds and blizzards and weather. I’d be worn and beat up but I’d be alive. But start snapping off my branches, and I’d experience pain and loss so deep I may never recover. Thing was, Salvatore was already so much like a brother that making it official would only give him a new title. Brother. I shrugged again, “Would it really change anything?”
His lips pressed together in a slight grimace, holding back the truth, “I guess not.”
“Well then, let's find that fucker, Emilio Rocco, and finish this. We need to protect our family’s business.”
At my words Salvatore’s eyes flinched to mine, and we remained locked in a stare that, like hundreds of times before, shared all the words neither of us ever spoke. I looked away first, my heart stuttering.
Salvatore let out a long breath, that seemed to fill the room with a heavy uncertain silence.
“So,” he spoke at last, a slow smile creeping across his features, “What now? Do I call you bro instead of boss?”
“Please don't call me either, you know I hate it when you do that.”
“Yes, I do boss,” he said it with the slight curl of his lips, breaking into a full smirk, “Now that I've got a little brother, I guess I can torment him.”
“How's that any different to what you've been doing to me for the last ten years?”
Salvatore chuckled, “Call me sentimental.”
“More like senile.”
“You might be my little brother, but remember I can still kick your ass.”
“Used too.”
He squared his shoulders and straightened his spine, “Is that a challenge little bro.”
I rolled my eyes, already getting tired of this new little taunt he has found, “To be tabled until we finish off our real business.”
“To be continued then.”
He ran his hands over his face and the mirth fell away as he pulled his chair in and bent over the desk.
“I'm going upstairs to break the news to Mia.”
Salvatore gave me one of his blank looks and shifted his attention to his work as I left the room.
I burst through the elevator doors and called for Mia. I was greeted with silence. “Mia?” I called out to her and searched the penthouse, tearing from room to room like a hurricane.
The penthouse was empty. I could feel the anger as it flowed through my veins like hot lava, pushing its way to the surface and waiting for just the right moment to explode.
Where the fuck was Mia.
I had no patience for the elevator and leapt like an escaped mad man down the emergency staircase. Heat pulsed in my head and my fingers shook as I searched for Mia. For Romeo.
When I found him, he was tits deep in Emery—the German stunner leaning against the wall, allowing him to suck one of her dark nipples while her long black hair covered the other. Her piercing green eyes were shut and she let out a soft moan as Romeo bit lightly then sucked her back into his mouth.
Romeo would never finish his exploits of Emery’s tits because I yanked him by the collar and smashed him against the wall. Emery shrieked, her eyes flying open and her hands flying to her breasts covering herself.
I smashed Romeo’s head into the wall twice more before I turned to Emery.
“Go back to work.”
She didn’t say a word as she scurried away, leaving a moaning Romeo pinned against the wall, a small trail of blood above his right eye where the broken plaster had cut him.
“Boss—”
“Where the fuck is Mia?”
“She went out boss.”
“Out?” I growled through clenched teeth, and Romeo flinched as our noses almost touched, “And why are you not out with her?”
“I was for a while, but then she said something about wanting to surprise you and…”
I didn’t hear the rest of his words, they sounded too familiar already. A surprise. Didn’t she say something about a surprise the day Simone died? Didn’t she vanish that day too?
I bit my lip and tuned back in, “…Sorry boss.” He was whimpering.
“I guess you thought you might find her all over Emery’s tits, did you?”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then choose wisely and said nothing at all.
“Find Mia. Let me know as soon as you do.” I hissed at him through a haze of fury, my knuckles shaking at his chest.
“Yes boss.”
“Fix this shit.” I smashed him against the dent in the wall once more and let him drop from my grasp. He wobbled and brought his hand to his sliced eyebrow. “And clean yourself up too.”
“Yes boss.”
He stared at me for another few seconds.
“Go!” I roared at him, and he took off towards the exit.
I could barely breathe, the air seemed to compress around me. Spots bounded by my feet as I stared out of the window, wondering where she could be and why she would disobey me again. Fire burned inside of me, a fury so hot I didn’t know I could feel it so deeply, so strongly, so intensely. The fire burned me up from the inside out, my sanity dripping away like sweat.
I paced the apartment, Spots running circles around the couch, his tongue hanging from his mouth. He seemed as restless as I felt, “Sorry buddy, I’ll take you out as soon as I know where Mia is.”
As the sound of her name, he bounded up excited, “I know buddy, I feel that way too. But she’s not here…”
I scratched the bald spot behind his ear, the hard skin moving like rubber beneath my fingers. His tail smacked the ground as I patted him. His face swivelled to my office a nanosecond before the phone rang, and he bounded to the door as if the call was for him.
I grabbed the receiver and put it to my ear, “It’s me.” Disappointment washed over me at the sound of Salvatore’s voice and my heart, which has been beating in a frenzy, squeezed in my chest.
“What is it?”
“Lupe has agreed to a sit down.”
“When?”
“He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”
I looked at my watch and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Fine. Conference room three.” I hung up.
I showered. I don’t know why. Maybe the mention of his name made me feel dirty, or maybe any association to him felt like it dug out the past that I wanted to keep buried. His name alone took me for a stroll through my murky soul.
I dressed, a tailored suit the fitted me perfectly. I don’t know why I felt like I had to put on this show. Maybe I wanted to shove in his face how far we’d come. The brave twenty-one-year-old that that had nothing had built an empire that even his
bosses couldn’t touch. Wouldn’t touch.
I sat at the head of the table, my fingers laced in front of me., my shoulders square, my face vacant. Tension coursed through my veins thicker than blood and I was doing all I could not to choke on it. Mia’s disappearance gnawed at me, and meeting up with Lupe reeked of desperation. He knew it just as much as I did, but I wasn’t going to give him an inch.
Lupe’s eyes locked on mine the second he rounded the corner. Salvatore flanked him, leading him down the corridor. The floor to ceiling glass was the only thing separating us. The door swung open and let out a breath of stale air, then closed behind us sealing us inside—like a secret.
His feline eyes narrowed as he sat down, his face pulled in a smirk.
I tried not to breath, not to flinch, schooling my features—holding everything at bay, ordering every muscle to relax and every tendon to loosen up. I waited for him to settle into the chair. His blonde hair had thinned out. Still meticulously combed, the once thick locks now pathetic strands.
“Well, well, well, as I live and breath. The great Gabriel D’Angelo asked to see me.” He started with his smarmy voice, mocking me in my home.
I didn’t bite. “Lupe.”
He looked around the conference room and whistled as he took in the leather chairs, polished wooden floors, and long glass table that stretched across the room.
“To what do I owe this displeasure?”
To his credit, he hadn’t changed a bit.
“Thank you for coming.”
“Well, when someone in your position asks to see someone like me, I can’t really refuse can I?” He stretched his hands and splayed his palms across the cold glass table. He was missing both pinkies and two other fingers from his left hand.
I pretended not to notice, although we both knew that we had. But I wasn’t there to play his games, or take his bait. The only reason he was there was to give me information, nothing more.
“I need information.”
“You need help.” A slimy smile slid across his face.
“Not yours.”
Broken Parts (A Dark Romance) (Parts of Me Book 3) Page 9