Page 80 of Corrado

Because their brothers had done this. People who were supposed to be family had taken away the one person they loved more than the world and life itself.

Ginevra needed to be better for them, too. For Greta, and Giulia. No one else would be here to take care of them, and make sure they weren’t pawns for Kev and Darren’s fucking games. For now, they were too young … they couldn’t be used in a way to further the brothers’ agenda, but eventually they would be older.

Eventually, they too would be on Kev or Darren’s radar. Ginevra needed to make sure that never happened. And she didn’t want them to be used against her, either. Not like her mother had.

Marie thought to help her.

Kev made sure she couldn’t.

That couldn’t be her sisters, too.

“Ginny,” came a soft voice to her left.

There, she found Siena standing a few feet away. For the most part, her half-sister, yet another sibling she didn’t know existed until Matteo died, was nothing like her brothers. Siena was sweet, kind, gentle, and all the things Kev and Darren didn’t know how to be. She showed true empathy and sympathy for the situation Ginevra had been put in, and she constantly stepped in between her brothers and sister when she thought she might be able to help Ginevra in some way. Even if it meant Siena got in trouble for it, too.

At the very least, Ginevra thought she could trust Siena. That was saying a hell of a lot more than she felt regarding most other people in her life. She didn’t feel anything at all for them, now, except her sisters.

Everyone else just fell in line.

Except Siena.

“Yeah?” she asked.

Siena offered her a small smile. “You okay?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

“Yeah, I … get that.”

Ginevra put her attention back on the casket, knowing she only had a few more minutes to spend alone with her mother before the funeral would start. Once the church filled with guests, she would be expected to put on her mask, and keep up the charade. Kev and Darren would expect nothing less from her, now.

She would do it.

She had to do it.

For her sisters.

But it killed her inside. It was taking a piece of her every single day. The closer she came to the date her brothers chose for the wedding, the worse she felt. In her heart, and in her soul. This was wrong, and all kinds of bad.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

“Hey, hey,” she heard Siena whisper. “It’s all right.”

Ginevra didn’t realize it until she had been thrust right into the middle of a panic attack, but she bent over at the knees beside her mother’s casket. One hand stayed on the smooth, shined wood, while her other pressed overtop her racing heart to slow it down. She swore that if it didn’t calm, it was going to race right out of her chest. Or explode altogether.

God.

“It’s all right, Ginny, it is,” Siena said softly.

She felt her half-sister’s hands on her shoulders, and then one rubbing across her back like she thought that might help, too. She bet her younger sisters were watching from the pew, seeing yet another horrifying thing to remind them that nothing about their life was normal anymore.

Everything had changed.

Again.

Now, with their mother’s death.

It was all wrong.