“Brothers.” Brenno huffed a laugh.
Cesare exhaled through his nose, his eyes finding mine as he said, “We’re aware of why you’ve invited us here, Milan, and it has nothing to do with being your relatives.”
Milan’s jaw tensed. “I was unaware that being Philly’s lawyer qualified you to read minds.”
A laugh bubbled out of me before I could stop it. Thatwasfunny, really funny, but nobody else thought so, not even Milan.
I was beginning to believe that these issues people spoke of were actually true.
I’d married a sociopath, and his crazy-ass brothers were psychopaths.
What the hell had I done to deserve this?
“Not minds,” Cesare continued with a smirk. “Behavior. Just like you. I think we’d find that if we studied your actions over the last few weeks, we’d see that you desire to be some kind ofleaderand are attempting to seduce everyone under your rule.” He stepped closer— just one foot, and though Milan didn’t move or cower, the arm that held me shifted me behind him, just slightly. “We are not so easily bought. Not anymore. Philadelphia will not be yours.”
“Philadelphia would be a counterintuitive desire. It is nonessential, chaotic, and lacks focus. I doubt many would want to touch it,” Milan answered, raising a brow.
I wanted to give my husband a high five, but I didn’t think it was really his thing, so I stayed silent until Brenno shrugged. “You did touch it, though. Do you remember? Ten years ago. I remember, Cesare remembers, Ezio probably remembers too.”
Milan’s body froze, his limbs tensing as if he’d been struck.
I didn’t know what had happened or what Milan had done in his lifetime, but I knew sociopaths didn’t react like that. I waited for him to say something,anything,to defend himself against whatever they were claiming had happened, but he was utterly frozen, not cardboard but pure ice.
He was the man who had taken me away from my life, and I certainly did not want to be around him, but the small quivers in his blank mask made him seemvulnerable,and it stirred something in me, perhaps the same girl who had spent her life defending her little sister.
“Fuck you,” I spat at my new brother-in-law, surprising even myself. It just came out, the fiery, hot need to defend him when he probably didn’t want or need it, but I couldn’t help it. “Go back to Philly and enjoy your nonessential chaos!”
Milan’s body became unstuck at that, and he growled my name, but I didn’t hear him, or rather, I didn’t hear it as the warning to stop that I should’ve.
“Did you fucking enjoy that?” I shouted next. “Beingassholes,because?—”
I didn’t get to finish my tirade. Milan snatched my wrist and dragged me through the cathedral, up the carpeted red staircase, and into the cold, open air of the upstairs balcony.
6
MILAN
Sicily was volatile.Her behavior required her to be involuntarily evacuated from certain situations, especially those involving my brothers.
I had not spoken to the Feras since I was twenty and Brenno was fifteen. He had just killed his father to become the Capo of the Philadelphia mob, and I had been required to take precautions to ensure he did not ruin New York in his emotional outbursts.
Hatred was an emotion I could not feel, but my past actions invited the question of whether or not I was capable of despising myself, because it certainly appeared that way.
One day had ruined everything.
Ihad ruined everything.
I was defective.
The Feras meeting Sicily had not been a part of the wedding agenda; I had planned to invite them to avoid conflict, then avoid them all day and keep my new wife away from them, but Sicily did not appear to believe in quiet conflict or staying out of business that was not hers.
She had said the word ‘fuck’twice in the same sentence as the word ‘asshole.’
She had defended me when I did not require defending.
I could not breathe as I pulled her onto the church’s outer balcony, not even when the air became cold and free.
The space was a small, unkept brick landing with rusting black iron fencing and green algae-like structures spewing from between the bricks. Somehow, I still found space to pace around it, aware of Sicily staring.
