“Pity,” I whispered. “Is it a sin to feel sorrow for a terrible thing that should have never happened?”
We could’ve been discussing what happened earlier, but we weren’t.
We both knew it.
Out of everything that had happened to me, the most shocking of all had been Luca’s admission on the ride back—that he’d killed a man in front of his young son. My husband.
“I don’t need your pity.” He flung his pants into the hamper. “Or your sorrow. How often have you told me the same?”
He turned to me in nothing but his briefs. His chest rose and fell as though he’d been in a battle and was in the process of catching his breath after he was sure all the enemies were gone. His muscles were taut, a tremble running through him as sharp as lightning. The veins streaking underneath his skin were swollen; the one on his forehead bulged.
“No,” I said, feeling a rush of fire surge through my own voice. “You’re right. You don’t need my pity or my sorrow, but it’s mine to give. And I might be looking at you, but that’s not who I’m giving all those feelings too.”
“Oh?” He used the same tone on me that he’d used on Luca in the car. “Who then?”
“That little boy who didn’t have a chance to be a boy.”
At the admission, hot tears I couldn’t control slid down my cheeks in a fast-moving flood. The feeling pushing them out was almost reckless.
“All of you,” I said, my voice trembling. “You. Rocco. Dario. Romeo. Even Luca!”
“I don’t want to hear this psychobabble bullshit, Scarlett. I don’t need it and I don’t fucking want it. None of us need to be pitied. We’re men.” He punched himself in the chest.
“I don’t pity you!” I almost screamed out in desperation. My hands came to my chest, to my heart, like I could reach inside and hand it over, a flimsy bandage offered in sacrifice for an act that could never be taken back. What had been done was irrevocable. Still… “It’s not pity. It’s love. I love you! Dammit!”
“You want to love the past from me. You want to save me. I don’t need to be saved.”
“You can’t be saved,” I almost sobbed. “But your son. Your son!” I pleaded.
He was about to walk away from me, about to head into the bathroom, but he stopped at my words. His back tensed, the muscles flexing, and the pulse in his wrist seemed to make the names tattooed there pulsate with a heartbeat.
“He needs to be saved. He can be saved. The sons to come, they can be saved too! This life—”
A scream rent the air, coming from Matteo’s nursery. I hurried from our room, wiping my eyes as I made it into his room. He seemed to sense me, because he quieted as soon I walked in.
Kissing his cheeks, holding him close, I brought him with me back to our room. It was like he sensed the tension was somehow connected to him, or that he was needed.
He was.
Brando stood in the same position, as still as cold water. Ice cold—he was close to freezing. I yearned to touch him, to go to him and offer him the love he deserved. Something made me hold back though.
The silence between us spoke to me.
After years, I knew him as well as he knew me. He needed time. Time to free himself of the constraints. He never felt like he deserved my love, but no one else did either. Therefore, he’d told me, he would strive to be a better man because I belonged to him.
He couldn’t see himself clearly. He couldn’t understand it. How I could love him more than my own life—after all he’d done in his.
What had he done? Nothing that mattered to me. He loved me completely, and that was all I’d ever wanted from him.
Just.
Him.
When I’d flood him with the recklessness of my love, his instincts made him clam up, forced him to hide in the shadows from the brightness he feared would show all he hid deep down.
“This,mio angelo,” I whispered, nodding toward Matteo, keeping my eyes on him. “This can be saved. His innocence. Let him be a boy before he has no choice but to become a man. There’s no shame in that. None. He deserves a chance to play with toy soldiers, to laugh with his father at some lame joke, to ride his bike in the streets with his friends, howling at the moon, not a care in the world. He deserves that—a childhood. Even I deserved that, Brando.”
Another urge to sob became stuck in my throat when I held it down. I wouldn’t lose it. Not then. I’d be stronger than the urge, than the pressure to succumb to the traumas of this life.
