Cristiano turns me to face him and I get one good scratch down his face before he can stop me. He mutters a curse as he twists my arms behind my back, gripping both wrists in one hand. With the other, he fists a handful of hair half in-half out of the twist the woman had just painstakingly pinned my mother’s veil into. He forces my head backward making me look up at him.
“Please. Not him,” I plead, tears finally coming. “Please.”
He studies me, eyes narrowing.
“He’s a boy. Just a boy,” I try.
“Like I said, boys grow up to become men.”
He releases me and gestures to my uncle with a nod. My uncle moves. Noah’s up on his feet, back pressed to the wall.
I drop to my knees at Cristiano’s feet, hugging his legs as he’s half-turned away. “Please. God. Please don’t kill him. Please!”
The gun is cocked. The echo is deafening. It’s surreal what’s happening and all I can think is, we’re all going to die. He’s going to kill us all.
But when I look up, I find Cristiano staring down at me with a look I can’t quite name. Disbelief? Curiosity? Confusion?
I open my mouth to beg again. “I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Just please—” my voice breaks.
My uncle mutters something, some sound of annoyance as he steps forward.
“Stop,” Cristiano says.
I stare up at Cristiano.
He lays his hand on my head and I feel a glimmer of hope.
“Cristiano,” my uncle starts after a moment of silence. I can hear irritation in his voice. “You need to kill them both. Like you said, boys grow to be men and she’s a liability. Bear in mind, they didn’t spare your mother.”
I see from here how Cristiano’s jaw clenches. How the hand at his side fists. He turns his head slowly toward my uncle.
“Maybe I should kill you too, then. Just to be sure.” His words are a whisper. A hiss. The threat is unmistakable.
Someone chuckles. It’s the casually dressed man. The sound is so out of place. When I look at him, he meets my eyes. Inside, I see hate. He hates me. Probably hates all of us.
I turn back to the two before me and see my uncle’s throat work as he swallows. It dawns on me. He’s afraid of Cristiano.
But hell, who wouldn’t be?
Cristiano shifts his attention back to me and he does something strange. Unexpected. He rubs the bump on the back of my head like he’s just noticing it.
When I stagger to my feet, he lets me. I go to my brother and take his hand.
My little brother is crying. My gentle brother. He was born into the wrong family. How Diego would have taunted him for his tears.
I look at Diego’s body. See how that dark stain on his pants is bigger. He pissed himself in fear. And he got better than he deserved.
When I look back at Cristiano, he’s watching me.
“Clean this up, Jacob,” he tells my uncle then moves toward the exit. “Get them off my island.”
Island? Where the fuck are we?
“I don’t want their bodies on my land,” Cristiano finishes.
He stops before exiting and turns to glance at me once more. Then, directs his attention to a soldier. “Put the boy under guard in another cell and bring the girl.”
My uncle follows him to the door, grabs his arm to stop him. “This isn’t what we said. What we agreed.”
Cristiano stops, looks down at where my uncle is touching him. Looks back at his face.
My uncle lowers his gaze, drops his hand and moves back.
Cristiano steps toward him, his body, his whole being a threat. “You do as I say. Period.”
My uncle nods.
Cristiano turns his back on him.
“Bring the girl,” he barks at the soldier and walks away.
2
Cristiano
Fucking Jacob De La Cruz is a piece of shit. A petty, opportunistic piece of shit.
The girl is arguing something, but I don’t stop to listen. I don’t care. They’ll figure it out. She’s safe, for now. So is the kid.
“Are you going soft, Brother?” Dante asks me.
I don’t dignify the question with a response. He knows better. Or he should, at least.
I strip off my jacket, toss it aside when I walk into the main part of the house. I’ve only been back a few times since my return from the dead. Couldn’t take a chance on being seen. Not before I interrupted that wedding.
Dust cloths are still strewn over most of the furniture and I stop to glance at the pieces that have been uncovered. At the paintings of my family. Another of my ancestors. The ancestors are easier to look at. I didn’t know them. They don’t mean much to me. But I move to the one of my mother. My father commissioned it when they got engaged. Or so I’m told.
I look up at her blue eyes. I inherited them but that’s where the physical similarity ends.
Her blonde hair only one of my brothers and my sister inherited. They’re all dead now apart from Dante.
The blood of the De La Cruz brothers crusts on my skin as I stare at the painting, undoing my tie, willing myself to remember.
Bear in mind, they didn’t spare your mother.
And therein lies the problem. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a fucking thing. My own mother and looking at this painting she’s a stranger to me.
“Is it done?” Charlie asks. He’s talking to Dante. Dante is the reasonable one. I’m a fucking walking disaster.
“The girl and the kid are still alive,” Dante mutters, obviously annoyed by the fact.
I force the anger I feel at not remembering down into my gut, to a place I can manage it. Barely. I move past the painting, through the living room toward the dining room. I stop between the pillars that hold up the vaulted ceiling.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asks when I don’t speak.
Charlie Lombardi, an attorney with a penchant for uncovering details most want to keep hidden, was a friend to both of my parents and a man my father trusted.
I nod, take in the large windows, some still devoid of glass that let in the sun.
“Diego and Angel De La Cruz are dead,” I say.
He studies me. I’m sure he wants to know why they’re not all dead.
“Good,” he says.
“You should have killed them all. Finished it,” Dante says.
I turn to my younger brother. Just one year between us. Every time I look at him, I think how grateful I am that he’s not dead. That he wasn’t here when it happened.
“I’ll finish it my way. In my time. This is up to me. Not you.”
Dante snorts. “I’m going to get something to eat.” He disappears into the kitchen.
Charlie gestures to the men working at the windows. “This project will be finished today, I’m told. You sure you want to be here?”
“It’s where I belong.”
The house has been in my family for generations. The bigger windows are an addition my father made at my mother’s request. It was too dark for her otherwise. Even here, in southern Italy on her own island, she needed more sunlight.
My uncle told me that. Said she always hated the dark. Got depressed in winter and on the rare rainy summer days.
And so, my father had the windows made bigger, but he fucked up. Sealed our fate. Gave his enemies an easy target because the bullet proof glass that was to be put in wasn’t. Another betrayal.