“I remember you pushed me,” Luca replied. “And I swallowed a fish.”
They lost it. All of them laughing too loudly and too long. But it felt good. Better than anything had in weeks.
The memories were fragments. But the feelings? Still there.
No one said, “That’s why we weren’t in the room when the explosion happened.”
No one said, “We’d been sent upstairs for getting our party clothes dirty.”
No one said, “That’s why we’re still alive.”
Antonio leaned back. “You ever think about Gi Gi’s Crossing? The whyof it?”
Marcus blinked. “Constantly. Why would she buy a whole town? Why rename it after herself? Why send us there like we’re on some emotional scavenger hunt?”
The golden rule had been made clear to them from the minute they came to live with Gi Gi. Never bring attention to yourself. Stay hidden. Stay alive.
Luca crushed his can. “Maybe she knew one of us would eventually want to break the rules.”
Lorenzo raised a brow. “And that the rest of us would need a town full of weirdos to stop him.”
Marcus didn’t respond, but his jaw clenched. He wanted to be a rebel and obliterate the fucking rules.
But the chains were tighter than ever.
“I heard the manor’s renovations wrapped up early,” Antonio said, shifting the subject. “Which means your part’s done, Marcus. One of us is next. Volunteers?”
Silence.
Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “If it weren’t for the damn letter we can’t read until everything’s finished, I’d say screw the whole thing.”
Giovanni reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. “You mean this one?”
Marcus froze. “You’ve had that the whole time?”
“I’m the executor,” Giovanni said. “I was given a copy.”
Marcus stared at it like it might detonate. “Have you read it?”
Giovanni shook his head. “Nope. Gi Gi would haunt me.”
A long pause.
“Ghosts aren’t all that vindictive,” Marcus said. “The manor has a few.”
Giovanni held it out. “Then I nominate you.”
Marcus stared at the thing like it might bite. Slowly, he cracked the seal.
The handwriting hit him like a whisper from the past. All loops and elegance. Unmistakably Gi Gi. She hadn’t birthed them, but she’d fought for them and shielded them. Loved them so fiercely it still echoed.
He swallowed once, then read aloud.
“‘My beautiful boys,
“‘If you’re reading this, it means you have either completed your to-do lists…or you cheated and opened this letter early. If it’s the latter, just know, I will haunt you for your disobedience. And not the friendly kind of haunting. Think flickering lights and mysteriously missing socks.
“‘All jokes aside, there are truths I could never risk saying out loud while I was alive, things I trusted you would piece together but that deserve to be named clearly now.
