Though I was a little frustrated that Natalia stopped me from going after Lucia, I understood her reasoning. I still wasn’t in tip-top shape, but I would have traded myself for Lucia if that’s what it came down to. I held my sisters close to myself and didn’t like that in the wake of a nearly public confirmation that there was something between us, Natalia was moving further from me. Almost as much as I wanted to keep my sisters safe, I also wanted to keep Natalia safe, but she was standing near Savio who was overseeing Romeo’s body.
After missing the action for a majority of the commotion, Angelo came striding in up the aisle. Those few people who were still hanging around in the wake of the disaster were quickly ordered to leave and any Cavetti grunts who were in sight were commanded to secure the perimeter. Romeo let out a howl of pain as Savio put his weight on the spot where Romeo had been shot to try and stop the bleeding. To say I felt conflicted would be an understatement. Even now part of me despised Romeo - and maybe hearing him in agony brought me a little bit of joy - but I saw the way he looked at my sister when she came down that aisle. I could hear him groaning out her name as opposed to being worried about his own safety as he writhed around injured.
There was something new in him.
That aside, he had fallen far down the list of hated Cavettis for me, specifically to third place behind his demonic father, and now his brother Gianni, back from the dead. Not only did he force my sister to marry him and kidnap her, but if he was alive then that meant my parents died for nothing. Antonio died for nothing. My sisters and I were Cavetti captives for nothing. Perhaps watching Romeo writhe a little felt good enough for the pain he’d caused my family against his newfound softness for Lucia, but Gianni and Angelo weren’t free of my vengeance yet.
Angelo barked directions down the aisle as if he were some great leader and hadn’t mysteriously vanished during the height of Gianni’s coup. “Marcello, go after them. Savio, get Romeo back to that prayer closet. Natalia, find a large knife and heat it in their fireplace until it glows bright red. We need to do something about that wound.”
“Yes father,” Natalia responded obediently.
As she was passing Angelo he grunted, “Be useful for once,” which caused a hitch in her step, but then she continued on. She didn’t so much as look in my direction as she flew up the aisle towards the back doors and out of sight.
Somehow, even with all Gianni had done, my hatred still ran deepest for the Cavetti patriarch. ‘Be useful for once?’ All Nataliawantsis to be useful - to take care of the people she holds dear – but she’d been shut out time and again. She’d been forced to be a passive participant in a life happening around her with no sense of direction or purpose. In his own way, Angelo had been torturing Natalia her entire life too, by keeping her right within the margins of his empire. Never in, never out.
Marcello ran off to retrieve Lucia and together, Angelo and Savio carried Romeo away, leaving my sisters and I alone in the chapel. There were several doors that led out, and though there were a few of the Cavetti’s thugs lingering behind, they were barely paying any attention to us.
We could do it.
If we ran for it right then and there, we’d make it.
“We’re leaving,” I said quietly to them. “We’re going through the back door. I’ll come back once I’m healed and save Lucia and get our revenge. For now, we need to go.” I started inching towards the door but was met with resistance from both Alessandra and Chiara. “What are you doing? We need to go. This is our only chance to get away.”
They exchanged looks and then looked back at me. “We can’t leave,” Chiara said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Again, the twins looked to each other, and it was almost as if they were silently talking the matter over. “Hey.”
Alessandra looked up at me. “Lucia is pregnant.”
My whole body went rigid. “W-what?”
“We just found out before the ceremony commenced. She…” Chiara’s voice trailed off before picking back up again to say, “It’s Romeo’s.”
She didn’t need to speak her true thoughts for me to know them. ‘It’s Romeo’s’ wasn’t said because I couldn’t have discerned that on my own, but because she knew that Romeo wasn’t going to let me take Lucia away while she was carrying his child. Moreover, Lucia wasn’t going to leave Romeo with him being the father of her child. Whether she loved him or not, and I truly wasn’t sure anymore, she was stuck with the Cavettis, and because we couldn’t just leave Lucia and our future niece or nephew behind, so were we.
We sat down on one of the pews, and for the fact that all I’d dreamed of for the past few months was being reunited with my sisters, I couldn’t find much to say to them. They were faring better than I thought they might be, not just in the wake of Lucia’s kidnap, but due to our circumstances in general. I expected them to be more emaciated and afraid, but instead they were mostly at ease. Had it not been for Lucia being snatched, they might almost be happy.
“We should tell him,” Alessandra said. “He won’t be angry.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“We should wait. Wait for everything to blow over,” Chiara said. “Marcellowillbring Lucia back.”
“You sound so confident,” I said. “How can you be sure?”
“I know you saw what I saw,” Alessandra said. “We don’t know that we’ll have a chance later. We should tell him now.”
I stood up and looked down at them. “Tell me. Whatever it is, tell me now.”
For the first time, I saw Alessandra crack a small smile. She reached out and grabbed my hand as she said, “Gio. There’s something, isn’t there? Between you and Natalia?”
My heart started to pound a little faster. Natalia had been clear that revealing our relationship to anyone would put us both at risk, but Chiara and Alessandra were different. They were my sisters.
I looked all around to make sure that there was no one close enough to hear me, then I sat down on the floor in front of them. “Yes. She’s been caring for me and… she’s different. She’s not like the rest of her family. She… She caresaboutme, and I care about her.”
Alessandra and Chiara glanced at one another, but then Chiara nodded and Alessandra looked back at me. “You’re not the only one,” she said simply.
My eyes got a little wider. “You as well?”
