My chest hurt as I walked in, admiring the warmth, just as Ezio took a few steps back at my intrusion. Without wasting another moment, he turned and hurried to the back door through the living room. I felt compelled to follow, to chase after him, and as I did, I noticed how much lighter his hair had always been than the rest of ours.
It reminded me of when I had found him sitting on the front step of Stefano Fera’s manor singing happily in the sunshine while his brothers brutally committed murder behind him. Hestill looked as innocent to me as he had that day. I suspected he always would.
I was glad Brenno had taken the boys out of that house.
“Ezio, what is wrong?” I gritted through the sudden sting of cold air as we entered a collection of long, dark fields with the moon as the only light.
Ezio’s head turned over his shoulder, ensuring I was still behind him, and he waved his hand, beckoning me to come deeper. “I think there’s a cat or something stuck in there!”
I had rushed for acat.
We quickly approached an outbuilding with decaying stone brick and no windows. I felt poorly for the animal being trapped in there of all places.
Ezio pointed to the thick metal door and whispered, “I think it’s in there.”
“Have you looked?” I asked, raising a brow.
He shook his head. “It’s terrifying. Please?”
Ezio Fera was another small being I could not deny.
I heaved the metal door open, the frame groaning as it scraped against the floor, and I knew immediately what I was seeing inside. This was where they had chained my wife to the walls. This was where they had covered her in red paint and convinced me she had been brutalized, and my two other brothers were standing there, pacing, staring at me as though I had five heads.
“What is?—”
The door slammed shut behind me, and the loud rattle told me Ezio had locked the door.
“Ezio, you fuck!” Brenno shouted, rushing to the door and bashing his fist against it so hard it seemed to make the unstable brick walls shudder.
“Sorry, Bren,” the kid said from the other side of the door. “She asked me to get you all in there together!”
I frowned. “Who?”
“Fiorella,” Brenno grumbled. “He does anything she asks.”
I shivered as a drip of something wet dribbled down the wall and onto my sleeve. It was pitch-black, all for the cracks of light escaping the brick, and the thought of my wife being chained in here made my stomach sick.
Our youngest brother made a noise of disagreement from beyond the walls. “You gotta talk and then they’ll tell me when to let you out!”
It remained silent for a moment and then his footsteps trudged away until they were distant and gone.
“Ezio!” Brenno howled, smashing his palm into the door until he realized how useless it was and slid down the door.
I was trapped in a torture chamber with my brothers, my brothers whom I would very much like to torture, and our women had put us here. They had outsmarted us, forced us to confront what the contract had never allowed us close enough to discuss.
I was no longer of the opinion that women did not rule the world, but I did not feel like talking.
Being here made me feel small and weak.
Defective.
I lunged for Cesare, pinning him against the wall, and struck my fist into his nose.
“Stand up, Milan!” Daddy shouted as I curled into a ball in the corner of his room, my body rocking as I held my hand to my nose. It was bleeding. It hurt. “Get up. Do you think all the other four-year-olds in the Cosa Nostra are crying? No. Get up.”
“M-my nose h-hurts, Dad,” I cried, standing up anyway.
He crouched to my level. “I hit you because you’re defective and we need to fix you, okay?”
