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Gradually, I start to notice the horrible likenesses. The way our noses are the same. Our mouths, too. The same sharp glint of blue in our eyes, so different from the hazel gray-green eyes of my siblings.
Slowly, Massimo’s grin widens.
“You know it, deep down,” he murmurs quietly. “Through the memories you’ve forgotten or blacked out, through the parts of childhood we erase.” He grins. “It’s still there, Alistair. Or”…his grin spreads even more…“should I say, Bruno.”
Something wrenches inside my brain. Something snaps into place and into memory.
…Bruno, baby, it’s time for dinner…
…Come hug your mother goodnight, Bruno…
I physically flinch as vague hints of memories maraud through my head and coalesce. Broken, shattered events I’ve long forgotten or shoved aside laugh cruelly as they claw their way back to the surface.
A mother’s kiss.
The screeching whine and sickening crunch of metal on metal. Of tires popping and shredding. Of a little boy’s terrified screams as his world shatters, and of the scent of gasoline and blood.
My screams.
“Alistair!”
Eloise catches me as I start to keel over in a numb haze. I cling to her, gritting my teeth as my vision swims.
Massimo laughs coldly.
“The thing is, dear brother Bruno,” he growls, “is that I found out early on in life that I enjoyed taking things from you.” He lifts a shoulder. “I suppose it started with your mother.”
I flinch. I know Massimo’s birth story. It’s no secret that his…our…mother, Allegra, died giving him life. It’s even been whispered that that, atrocious as it sounds, is what started Luca’s disdain for Massimo.
He chuckles. “Yes, I took her from you merely by being born, didn’t I? And then, when her sniveling pussy of a brother, Angelo, and one of my father’s more soft-hearted whores removed you from our home that night, only to drive off the fucking West Side Highway…”
Eloise holds me even tighter, her breath catching sharply as I stare right through Massimo in a daze.
“Well, so many doors were suddenly open to me, weren’t they? I took your position as first-born son. I ascended the throne after our father’s death.” He grins darkly. “I took the woman you love, too, didn’t I?”
“You…” I grimace. “You forged your father’s will.”
He laughs. “Our father, dear brother,” he grins. “And obviously. I got a deal when I had the forger do her father’s, too.” He nods his chin toward Eloise. “I had to take what was owed me, Bruno. You were always his favorite.” His eyes narrow. “Always,” he snarls. “I knew that at fucking five. Even after he thought you were dead and gone, he never did look at me the way he used to look at you.”
“When did you find out,” I hiss, glaring at him.
Massimo smiles. “That you survived the crash? The same time our father did. When you opened your law firm, and your picture was up everywhere as this hotshot young lawyer, the adopted son of Vaughn Black,” he sneers. “That’s when he figured it out. I mean for Christ’s sake, our father even went to you to have the very will that cheated me out of my inheritance drafted. The fucking gall, Bruno!”
Eloise’s hand tightens in mine, and she gasps as Massimo reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a heavy looking six-shot revolver.
“And today, dear brother,” he says icily, “I get to take one more thing from you.”
He opens the gun and tips the bullets out of the wheel and into his palm. He looks up and grins as he pockets all but one, which he holds up for me to see.
“Don’t worry. You get to choose what it is I take.”
He loads the single bullet into the gun with a metallic click.
“You get to pick, Bruno.”
My eyes narrow. “Pick what.”
He smiles. “Who lives: your love…”
