Page 48 of Beni

Bene turned his entire body in Beni’s direction, his finger pointed at his twin like a gun ready to blow as he took one step forward, closing a bit of distance between the two of them. There was pain in his features, and rage, too.

God, he was so mad.

Beni felt that.

Like an echo in his chest.

He felt it.

“I was looking for you,” Bene snarled. “I called for fucking you, Beni. I was on my feet, hearing the shots, looking for you because that’s what we do. And where the fuck were you, huh? What were you doing, yeah? Because you sure as fuck weren’t trying to help me like I was doing for you.”

No.

Because he’d been on the floor.

Protecting August.

“Didn’t give a fuck about me, right,” Bene said, his voice rising as he came close enough to shove his brother back a step, “because you were too busy fucking with someone else.”

He shoved him again.

Beni came right back for more.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Gian was quick to yell, crossing the space to step in between the boys. One hand to Beni’s chest, and the other on Bene’s. Their father, and even their mother, had never been afraid to step in when something physical went down with their sons. Maybe it came with the territory—boys fighting, that was—but they weren’t scared of it. “Stop it, this is shameful, you two. Look at yourselves, huh?”

Marcus was up out of his seat, too, that concern still as clear as day in his stare. “Come on, Bene, we’ll go—”

“Fuck off,” Bene muttered Marcus’s way, and then to Beni, he pointed a finger and uttered, “Fuck you, too. You know what you did, Beni.”

Just like that, his brother backed away from the altercation, and his father’s hand on his chest.

“Two days,” Gian told Bene, “be packed and ready to leave with Marcus, all right?”

Bene nodded. “Fine.”

Just like that, he was done with it all. Spinning on his heel, he left the room, slamming the door behind him, and leaving Beni with his father and oldest brother. He said nothing, instead absorbing what had just happened, and what it meant.

All at once, this past week of hell with his twin made a hell of a lot more sense. The silence in the room, and in Beni’s mind, was deafening. It might seem petty or silly—Bene’s problem, that was—but he knew better.

Jealousy was a monster.

And they weren’t good with it.

Neither of them.

Jealousy had followed him and his twin for their entire lives. A friend that just got too friendly. Someone they spent more time with than their twin. A girl that took up too much of one of their attention.

It wasn’t just Bene.

Beni had been that way, too.

The difference was, he had grown out of it as they got older, or it seemed like it. Jealousy wasn’t something that reared its ugly head with his brother, not as often as it used to, anyway. Apparently, Bene had not gotten past that like he had.

“Figlio,” Gian murmured.

He glanced at his father, saying, “Sorry, I know better than to behave like—”

“It’s not about that right now.”