Oh God!When Jackson learned what happened, he would go ballistic.
Chapter Twelve
Massimo
Standing there watching her ride away in the back of a squad car, I smirked. Reaching into my jacket, I removed the envelope of cash and handed it to Officer Cimorelli. “Give her a few hours before you allow her to make her phone call.”
“Anything else?” he asked, looking around the empty parking lot.
“Yes,” I sneered, grabbing the fucker by the lapels of his coat. “You ever lay another hand on her again, I will fucking gut you and smear your entrails on your mother’s front porch. Understood?”
Officer Cimorelli shrank back, his eyes wide with fear, but my grip remained firm. The silence between us was heavy, broken only by the distant hum of traffic beyond the lot. With one last glare, I released him, watching as the officer stumbled away, clutching the envelope tightly. I turned toward the shadows, my mind racing, knowing my game had just begun.
An hour later, I walked into the family home and was greeted by Dominic, our butler. Dominic Blake had been with the family for almost five years now and came highly recommended. Trained at the world-renowned International Butler Academy in Simpelveld, Netherlands, Dominic was damn good at what he did, and he ran the house like a well-oiled machine. While I thought it was pretentious to have a butler, Guilio talked Cesar into hiring the best. “Master Massimo. It’s good to see you. Can I get you anything?” Dominic asked, taking my coat and gloves.
“No, thank you. Where are Cesar and Guilio?”
Dominic looked down and whispered, “In the gym, sir, with Master Tomasso.”
I pulled at my tie, yanking it off quickly before handing it to Dominic. “How long?” I asked, running down the marble corridor, the familiar scent of polished wood and lemon cleaner doing little to ground the growing tension in my shoulders.
“An hour, sir!” Dominic shouted as I approached the gym doors. The urgency in his voice echoed through the corridor. Without hesitation, I flung the doors open and was immediately struck by the scene unfolding inside.
My youngest brother Tomasso was in the midst of a furious outburst, his anger palpable as he waved a barbell through the air. Guilio stood nearby, his demeanor calm and his arms held out defensively in an attempt to deescalate the situation. “Tommy, it’s me, your Gully,” Guilio said soothingly, his voice steady as he tried to reach Tomasso through the haze of rage.
Carefully approaching from the other side, Cesar wiped his bloody nose with the back of his hand. “Tomasso, it’s us, little brother. You are safe. No one here will hurt you.”
“GET. OUT!” Tomasso roared as he violently swung the barbell.
Tomasso’s eyes, usually sharp and intelligent, were wild, clouded with a pain I recognized all too well. That night long ago didn’t just take our parents from us; it severed Tomasso’s reality and thrust him into a deeply dark sphere where he lived today. The betrayal that night had left many scars on all of us, but on Tomasso, it had etched a raw, untamed rage that often threatened to consume him. I knew that rage, felt its cold tendrils winding around my own heart, a constant reminder of the injustices we had suffered. Guilio’s calm demeanor was a practiced art, a skill honed by years of managing our volatilefamily. Cesar, ever the leader, remained steady, his voice a low anchor in the tempest of Tomasso’s fury.
“Tomasso, we’re not going to hurt you,” Cesar said again, his voice softening as he took another cautious step forward. “We’re here for you. Just like always.”
I watched them, a silent observer, as I always had been. My role was not to calm the storm, but to understand its origins, to analyze the damage, and to ensure that no harm came to any of us. The pain in Tomasso’s eyes was a reflection of a trauma no child should suffer, a burden that bound us all together, yet also threatened to tear us apart. His outburst was a cry for help, a violent expression of the darkness that lurked beneath the surface of our carefully constructed lives.
I stepped forward, my voice a low rumble cutting through the tension. “Tomasso,” I said, my gaze meeting his wild eyes. “It’s Massimo. I’m here. You’re safe.”
The mention of my name, the steady calm in my voice, seemed to pierce through the haze of his anger. He lowered the barbell slightly, his chest heaving, his eyes flickering between Cesar, Guilio, and me. The rage was still there, a smoldering ember, but for a moment, a sliver of recognition, of trust, flickered in their depths. The path to understanding was always the most dangerous, but it was the only one that led to any semblance of peace.
“Remember our song,” I murmured, taking another tentative step forward.“Stars shining bright above you…”
Tomasso’s wild eyes, clouded with the echoes of a trauma that had fractured his reality, ping-ponged between us. The raw, untamed rage that had consumed him for years, a direct consequence of that devastating night, seemed to momentarily recede. The song—a lullaby from a time before the shadows descended—was a fragile thread connecting him to the present, to the family that had always been his anchor. The pain in hiseyes was a reflection of a wound that bound us all, a shared suffering that threatened to consume us, yet also, paradoxically, held us together.
The barbell lowered further, its weight no longer a weapon but a testament to his struggle. The storm within him hadn’t subsided, but a fragile peace had settled over the immediate chaos. It was a precarious moment, a breath held in the suffocating air of our past. As I continued to sing, I knew this was just a temporary truce, a flicker of the boy he once was, but it was enough.
It was enough for now. The path to healing was long and fraught with peril, a journey we would all undertake, not as individual warriors, but as a united front, bound by blood and a shared, unyielding loyalty.
With a final, shaky exhale, Tomasso dropped the barbell. The clang echoed in the gym, a punctuation mark to the tempest that had just passed. He stumbled forward into my arms, not with aggression, but with a profound weariness, his gaze now finding mine with a sliver of recognition, a desperate plea for solace as I slowly lowered him to the floor, holding him like I did that day, many years ago, rocking him as he closed his eyes and I sang the last verse, lulling him to sleep.“Dream a little dream of me.”
Softly closing his bedroom door, I turned to see all my brothers waiting. Walking over to Guilio, I shoved him up against the wall and growled, “What the fuck were you thinking? He could have killed you both!”
“Massimo, please.” Luca rushed over, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Not here.”
“Get the fuck off me,” Guilio sneered. “You weren’t here. He wanted to go to the gym.”
“Then you should have called me or Aurelio. You don’t understand what he went through. What he’s fighting. He’s not the brother you remember, asshole. He’s a fucking killer.”
“Massimo.” Cesar’s firm voice permeated the tension. “Enough. It’s not Guilio’s fault. Tomasso seemed well this morning. Happy even. Neither of us thought...”
