“Well, what?” I wait for his reply with bated breath.
“I’m worried about how my cock is going to fit into your ass.”
I burst out laughing in surprise. “What?”
His eyes flick over and he raises an eyebrow. “True story.”
“No need to worry about that, you fool, because it’s not happening.” I giggle, this man kills me.
“We’ll see.” He smiles as he watches the road. “Give me time.”
I know that’s not what he was worried about but it was his way of deflecting a serious subject.
Giuliano pulls into the driveway of his mother’s house and we both fall silent.
I can feel the weight of his grief as it falls over him.
“When were you last here?” I ask.
“The funeral.”
I frown. “You haven’t been back?”
“Only in my nightmares.”
Oh….
Suddenly I feel every bit of his anxiety, it overwhelms me as I take on his pain.
He turns the car off and we sit in silence and stare at the darkened house, the headlights from the cars behind us turn in off the road too.
“You know what we should do?” I say.
“Go home?”
I smile. “No, we should go straight in and do the photo thing tonight, that way we can get it over with and enjoy the rest of the weekend without a sense of dread.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He sighs.
“Come on.” I open my car door. “If you be good, I’ll let you fuck me in your old bed.”
He chuckles. “It’s so cute how you say you’ll let me…like you have a choice.”
We walk up to the front door and he fusses around with the keys and the door finally opens. He flicks the lights on and a huge, larger than life painting of my father and the young boy that he loved so much, hits me square in the face.
My heart constricts as I stare at it.
Giuliano is right, he has so much to lose.
It’s just gone midnight.
The house is eerily silent, we are in the attic going through boxes and boxes of photographs. The lights are dim, along with my love’s mood.
The photographs are bringing up a lot of memories for both him and me, the good, the bad and the ugly.
I made us dinner, we drank a bottle of wine and although Giuliano would have preferred to have sex in his childhood bed and gone to sleep, I wanted to do it now.
I hate the looming anxiety, better to get it over with. But, now we are in the here and now, I’m not sure I want to be doing this either.
All these photos of his mother and my father, so in love…makes me so sad for my mother and the life she has lived.
I imagine the embarrassment she must have felt in front of the guards every time he returned to her from this house. They were with him every step of the way, they knew everything. When he left Angelina’s bed and returned to hers…they all knew.
How did she cope with the shame?
If he were my husband, I’m quite sure I would have cut off his dick in his sleep with a pair of scissors.
Bastard.
I dig through the box I’m unpacking, we are putting the photographs into piles to be put in separate albums one day. A family pile, a friend pile and a random pile.
I pick up a photograph and stare at it for a moment, it’s of a man lying on the couch. The couch is different but I can tell that it’s downstairs here.
He’s good looking, his dark hair is tousled and he’s muscular, wearing only a pair of boardshorts.
Hmm….
I pick up another photo and it’s of the same man, this time in a suit. I smile, he’s so handsome, this must be her brother. I keep looking and find another image of the same man again, this time, he’s lying on a bed in boxer shorts.
I stare at it and smile, he looks naughty…and familiar. I must have seen a previous photograph of him or something.
“What are you smiling at?” Giuliano asks.
“Is this your mom’s brother?”
“Who?” He takes the photo from me and then his face falls as he stares at it.
“What?”
“This isn’t my uncle.” His haunted eyes rise to meet mine. “This is Luciano Lombardi.”
My eyes widen.
Fuck.
22
Francesca
Giuliano sits back onto his knees as he stares at the image in his hand.
Why would a photo of a young Luciano Lombardi be in his mother’s attic?
Unless….
He stays silent and so do I, because holy crap, we both know that this means that the Lombardi story could actually be true.
Shit.
He throws the stack of photos onto the pile, stands and rushes from the attic, I hear the panic in his footsteps as he takes the stairs two at a time.
With my heart racing, I pick up the photographs and flick through them again. I get to another photo, it’s of Luciano and Giuliano senior, they are both dressed in suits and are standing with another two men that I haven’t seen before.
“Angelina…what did you do?” I whisper angrily. “What did you fucking do?”
“Francesca,” Giuliano calls in a rush. “We’re leaving.”
I screw up my face, huh?
I want him to face this fear head on, running home isn’t going to change it.
“What do you mean?” I call back.
“I said. We’re leaving,” he demands.
I walk to the top of the stairs and look down at him as he stands at the bottom. “I thought we were staying here tonight.”
“No.” He puts his hands on his hips, annoyed by me questioning him. “Change of plans, I want to go home. Now.”
“I want to sort the photos out.” I gesture upstairs. “We can’t leave them like this.”
“I’ll tell you how to sort those photos,” he yells. “Pour petrol over the top and burn the motherfuckers. Get in the car,” he barks before marching out the front door, it slams shut behind him with a loud bang.
What the hell?
Is he even getting our overnight bags from the bedroom?
This is all such a mess.
I look over to the photos strewn all over the floor, I can’t leave them like this and I’m not just throwing everything back into the boxes and wasting the two hours of sorting that we’ve just done. I kneel down onto the floor and begin to put the piles of photos into large manila envelopes.
As I scramble to restore some sort of order I hear the front door bang open downstairs and Giuliano come barreling up the stairs. “I said now!” he growls.
I look up, shocked by his venom and to be honest, a little pissed. “Have some patience Giuliano,” I snap. “Like I already told you, I’m putting these photographs away before I go anywhere. You do not snap your fingers and expect me to jump.”
His eyes bulge from their sockets. “Now!” he yells, he marches over and grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. “We need to get out of here, right fucking now.” He pulls me out of the room and down the stairs and out the front door, he slams it shut behind us and hurries me to his car and he opens the door in a rush. “Get in.”
I raise my eyebrow, unimpressed with his dramatics.
“Now!” The veins are sticking out of his forehead and he looks like he’s about to explode.