“You didn’t know?” I asked Brenno.
He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I wasn’t fucking there, remember? I was too busy cutting Mom to pieces.” He charged upright, letting Cesare slip down the wall further as he paced across the room, his hands wringing together, just like mine did.
I watched him for a moment, watched how his nails scratched at his hands, how he swirled his fingers around themselves. He was a mirror image of me, an exact copy of my most defective parts. I stood, frowning deeply as I walked toward him and took his hands, halting the wringing as Sicily did for me. “Why do you do this?”
He shrugged, tugging his hands out of my grip. “It’s habit.”
“No, it is not. You do it when you are overwhelmed, correct?”
He released a breath. “Yes.”
“And when you are thinking of the past?”
Brenno’s gulp was audible. “Yes.”
There had always been a part of me that wanted to protect my brothers like they were my sons, and I had done a good job of this until the night that they had been sent to Stefano’s house and shunned from the family. I should have fought for them, but I had been terrified and had not understood the emotion at the time, and now Brenno had developed the same traits.
I nodded slowly, tears gathering in my eyelashes. “You said you hurt Mom. Is that what causes you to harm yourself this way?”
He turned, facing away from me, his hands clasped together but not wringing any longer. “Anything to do with Mom causes me to harm myself. Not so much now Fiorella’s here, but…it used to. My hands look like shit, but they’re healing.”
My own hands also looked this way, but they had begun to smooth out now that Sicily had stopped me from scratching them. It was possible that Fiorella had the same effect on Brenno as my wife did on me, and if that was the case, then perhapsFiorella Bianchi was supposed to be with my brother like I was meant to be with Sicily.
“Brenno,” I said clearly, thinking on what he had said, but he did not turn. “You did not hurt Mom that day. I killed her, not you.”
“Why do you guys keep saying that?” he snapped. “She fucking raped me; obviously I killed her! Why wouldyouhave killed her?”
The silence that followed did not sound silent inside of my head. His words played there over and over again, refusing to be absorbed and understood because it could not be true, but the reality was that Mom had been incredibly unwell; she had mistaken us for our fathers for our entire childhoods, so this was not impossible.
Our mother, our poor, sick, twisted mother. She had only been fourteen when I was born, only nineteen when she had birthed both Brenno and Cesare. Mattea Lucca had been the epitome of pain, and all she could do was hurt her own child.
My body felt confused, angry, and devastated, relieved that my mother was dead but sad that this was how Brenno had to remember her, sick to my stomach but also unsurprised that she had committed something so despicable.
It was suffocating and thick, the air between us, and no matter what I did to lessen it, Brenno’s truth clung to every crevice of my body, latching there until I could feel the gravity of it.
This poor boy had lived with that truth all the way into adulthood, and it had harmed him.
“S-she raped you?”
He finally turned. “When I was fifteen. I came home to visit her and went to lie beside her on her bed. She thought I was Dad. I must have fallen asleep, and by the time I’d woken up again, my clothes were off and—” He swallowed sharply. “So were hers.I ran out, only gathering the clothes I needed, and felt sick as fuck, so I lay in my own bed and went back to sleep. When I woke up, I heard this noise, so I looked out and saw all the blood and you trying to save her, and you threw my knife at me, so I must have blacked out, and?—"
“I was not attempting to save her, Brenno,” I said quickly, my chest rising and falling too rapidly. “What you could not see was Siena’s dying body in Adriano’s arms. She stabbed her to death, so I killed her with the knife… Your knife that she must have taken from your clothes.”
His eyes were wide, and they matched the eyes of the boy who had stared at me and begged me not to send him away with Stefano Fera. Brenno’s eyes had always been expressive; they had always been an indicator of what he was feeling, except I had never understood that, not until now, and what I saw there now wasgrief.
He was angry with me, I knew that, but I still pulled him close to my chest, still held him against my heartbeat where he had once fit but now did not. Brenno did not pull away, but instead wrapped his arms around me, allowing himself a moment with me to be what we once had.
“I am sorry,” I said, attempting to keep my voice from wavering. “That was not your fault, and I am so sorry that she hurt you. I am sorry that I did not know.”
Brenno pulled away, nodding slowly. “Fiorella helped me. She helped me forgive myself and buried that knife with me in the yard, just behind here.” He sighed as he looked down at our brother who was now listening, staring at Brenno with red eyes and an awareness that told me he was lucid again, even if only for a moment. “I told Fiore that I’d never tell you what happened, that it wouldn’t make any difference, but…I’m glad I did.”
I was glad he did too.
“You must know that I did not give you away,” I said unexpectedly. I had not wanted to speak on this, had not wanted to try and force them to forgive me, but it felt necessary. “Siena had just been born, and Stefano threatened her.”
My brother nodded, listening.
I pressed my fingers into my eyes. “I had hoped that Hugo would send you there and I would immediately return you after I had kept Siena and Mom safe from Stefano, but that was not the case. Hugo’s men found me each time I tried to come for you, and I barely survived the final time. If I died, he would not have allowed Siena to live either. The only thing I could do was offer you to return with Adriano to visit when Hugo was not there and you did, but we did not speak, and I am sorry for that.”
