Cassian sinks back to the floor. The family doctor rushes in, pushing past us and moves to the floor as well.
“Why would Lukas let him take over?” I turn around and shove away from Alessio. “Cassian can’t handle this shit. He’s not made for this!”
“Get out of here, get some air,” Alessio tells me, shoving me further away.
I shove him back and look toward the doctor. “He’s dead, you can’t do anything,” I tell her, irritated that she’s even here. Or perhaps that she wasn’t here earlier. I know the truth though; there’s nothing she could have done.
The doctor, Beatrice, looked up at us with a forlorn but unsurprised look on her face. “He’s right. There’s nothing I can do,” she replied. “Even if I had gotten here earlier, his injuries were too serious.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and turn toward the door. The next thing I know, I smash my fist against the doorframe, causing the old dark wood to crack and splinter.
“Get the hell out of here, Carmine, we’ll take care of it,” Alessio insists.
“It’s not your job to take care of it, it’s mine,” I tell him, back toward the room. “It’s all on me now.”
I don’t listen to whatever his reply is, nor Cassian’s frustrated crying. The only thing I can do to keep myself from turning around and hauling Cassian’s scrawny body out of the same window the shooter escape from is to storm down the hallway.
“What’s going on? Is he alive?” Tommaso asks me as he’s coming in from the wide-open front door. The cold wind rushes through the entry way. I step over and slam the door closed. The paintings on the wall rattle.
“No, and you’re in here without the head of his killer,” I snap at him.
He looks back at me angrily, but shoves past me to where I had come from.
“You’ll only find the same thing everyone else is!” I yell, putting my arms out wide. “His dead fucking body!” I grab the vase on the small table beside the door, and hold it in my hand, staring at my reflection in the pale blue crystal.
“Goddamnit!” I squeeze it so hard that it starts to crack against my palm and then throw it across the room, hitting the banister of the spiral staircase to the second floor with it. It shatters in a million pieces that go flying through the air like ice crystals.
The family room is so warm and glows with the light of the fireplace. A Christmas tree sits in the corner of the room, decorated in vintage blubs whose glitter and shine has dulled in the last two decades since they were purchased. Small bobbles made of wood and yarn hang between branches, each crafted by small hands that worked so diligently only to end up with something only a mother could love.
The string lights glare in my burning eyes.
A mother.
The only mother I ever had, the only mother Alessio and I ever knew. Not that we got to know her for very long. In a life where we could live until tomorrow or eighty years old… thirteen years with a mother will never be enough.
She would have loved the way this room looks. Inviting and comfortable. My mother always loved Christmas. She said it was the time of year when Italy was the most beautiful…second only to the summer solstice. Tessari, the city she’d grown in, met my father in, and birthed her two sons in…it lit up like no other.
My eyes go blurry with heavy tears as I continue to stare at the tree. A growl escapes from deep in my chest and in just a few long strides I’m standing in front of that decorated pine. I grab it with my bloody hands and feel the needles stab at my already aching skin.
“Carmine, what are y—” a voice from behind me. I don’t know who, and I don’t care. Before they can get their words out, I yank the nine-foot tree from its bronze pedestal and hoist it over my head.
“None of this matters anymore!” I yell. The tree goes crashing to the ground in front of me in a cloud of clattering ornaments and dusty tinsel. Sparks fly from the wall along the hidden cords of the string lights as the plug is ripped from the wall.
“Fuck you, fuck, you!” I stomp down limbs of the tree and feel the cracking of bulbs and glass underneath my wingtips. Pieces of the tree and its decorators fly into the fireplace popping and crackling.
“Carmine, what the fuck is wrong with you?!” Tommaso yells at me from across the room. “You think this is what he’d want?”
Tears stream down my face. I pull one of the branches off the tree haphazardly. Leaving the end a messy, jagged but dull point. “I don’t care what he’d want! None of it matters anymore!” I throw the branch at my brother who narrowly escapes it. Before he can say anything else, I’m stomping my way over the tree and out of the room. He grabs at my back but I shake him off.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I shove him into the wall so hard that I hear his head crack against the wall.
Alessio comes barreling down the hallway at me. “You need to get outta here before you do something you can’t take back,” he hisses at me.
“I’ll do it now,” I insist. “Where’s Cassian!?” I try to get past him to go down the hallway toward my father’s—now-dead father’s—office.
“Back up, Carmine,” Alessio warns me. “You’re not in the right mind right now. Go to your room.”
I snort in aggravation. “Go to my room? What am I, twelve? I’m older than you, dickhead. Whatever… none of this…none…nothing matters. It’s over.” I throw my hands in the air.
