Page 4 of Fractured Empire

“Are you sure?” I croak, barely keeping it together.

“Of course I’m sure,” she replies in a snap. “I wouldn’t take chances with him. He’s my baby boy, and he doesn’t have the gene. I had the tests triple checked.”

Feeling sick to my stomach, I hang my head. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Of course I was.” She sighs. “I tried to, about a thousand times. Especially when I was pregnant. You have no idea how fucking scared I was that Bastian would inherit—” Cleo sniffs, choking back swelling emotion in her throat. “Do you think it was easy to bring Leo into our lives knowing that he’d eventually lose another mother?”

My stomach feels heavy and achy, thinking about our boy’s sunshine being dimmed by yet another tragedy. He adjusted well to us, to becoming our family. But he’s young and children are resilient—especially when they know they’re safe. There’s no telling how he’ll handle losing Cleo though. She’s his mama, and I don’t know if he even remembers the woman before her.

“This is so fucked up,” I say on an exhale, scrubbing a hand down my face. “If I didn’t come to you about a divorce today, how long would I be waiting to hear this news, Cleo?”

“It wouldn’t be long.” She shakes her head. “My symptoms are becoming harder and harder to hide. It’s why I’ve stayed home more and more. Soon my clumsiness is going to turn into difficulty walking, speaking, and swallowing. My irritability and memory lapses are going to advance further into cognitive decline. I could get aggressive, more depressed, or worse. I’ve been shaking more and more, and it’s impossible to hide when you’re in my space for more than a few minutes. I would have told you as soon as I wasn’t confident in my ability to be around the boys. I would never put them at risk.”

“Jesus, Cleo. I⁠—”

I can’t get any words out before she continues, “I’m not an evil person. I don’t know why I am the way I am, but I wouldn’t put them at risk. I just couldn’t…It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s good that you know now, so we can make a plan together. For the kids, preparing them…”

She continues to talk, rambling off all the things that will need to be done before she’s gone, but I can’t hear a word of it. All I can think about is the fact that my sons are going to grow up without a mother. A mother who hid a fatal disease from her whole family. Just like my own mother did.

Fate is a bitch.

Chapter One

Leon

“Cleo is dead.”

Three bitter words I just delivered to my father, informing him not only as the patriarch of my family but as my Capo. Months ago, after my conversation with Cleo, I confided in Apollo about what was going on. I couldn’t keep something so big bottled up, even if my wife wanted privacy. I don’t know many people who would be able to lock up news so detrimental for more than a few weeks. I didn’t last long, and I’m glad I didn’t.

If I didn’t tell Apollo, then I probably wouldn’t have told my father either. It was my brother’s idea to talk to our dad, after all. And if I kept this secret from Dante Moretti, I would have regretted it. He deserves better than finding out at the same time as everyone else. He’s more than earned the right to be informed about something so substantial. He’s a good father—a great one, even—and an even better Capo.

Not only did he deserve to know, I deserved to have him in my corner. A man like him…he knows how to be there for you, no matter what you’re going through. He’s seen death, up close and personally more than once. He lost his wife, and though she loved him as much as Cleo loved me, he cared for her in his own way. He lost his brother too—held him while he was dying from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

Dante Moretti has lived over fifty years in this dark and twisted world we operate in, and he was exactly the right person to inform when shit went sideways. Since he found out, he’s been helping me prepare. Cassio is our most logistical brother, and it’s never been more evident that he adopted that from our dad. While I’ve been stressing for months on end, and going through confusing emotions of dread, betrayal, and sadness, he’s been a rock.

So much changed while Cleo’s health slowly declined. Apollo and Rayna did get together. They got together and they married each other. I knew he loved her, probably before he even truly realized, but I didn’t expect Rayna to soften toward him. Though, it wasn’t exactly a swift process for her. But now, not only are they husband and wife, they’re parents. Vaughn Dante Moretti, our future Capo, is tiny and still very much in his infant age, but growing every single day.

Leo, Bastian, and I have spent a fair amount of time with the couple and their baby since his birth. Cleo wanted to spend as much time with the boys as she could before she passed, but she also feared being around them. She didn’t want them to see her suffering, or worse, see her lash out. Her condition slowly ate away at her mind, and made her angry. When she wasn’t crying from her pain, her depression, or her frustration, she was yelling.

But the extreme symptoms weren’t a problem for very long. She went from bad to worse quickly, and soon, it was time for her to say her goodbyes. She wrote the boys letters for the next twenty years. One for each of them that I was meant to deliver to them on their birthday. She had long talks with them when her mood was stable, and she explained death in a way that was easiest for kids to understand. She would be going to heaven with Uncle Cesar, and she wouldn’t be coming home. The boys didn’t scream or cry in protest. They frowned and asked questions, but her soft words and smiles of reassurance seemed to keep them calm.

We didn’t know if that calmness would last, but it was enough to make her feel better about leaving them too early. Her conversations with them weren’t the only ones she had either. She grilled me for weeks on end, making me promise to give the boys the best life possible, and she wasn’t shy about informing me that the best life possible included one with a mother in their lives. Cleo refused to die before I agreed to remarry someone worthy of being a mother to our boys. Since Apollo knew about her circumstances, she made him agree too. If I dragged my feet in finding a suitable replacement for her, he would step in.

Watching her talk to him like that was so fucking odd. We were married for years and she never really conversed with any of my siblings. But when it came to making him vow to give my sons another opportunity for a mother, she spoke to him as if he were truly her brother. She demanded, and not by yelling or snapping at him, but by pleading earnestly. It’s baffling to even think about it still, and that was more than two weeks ago.

“Did you tell Apollo yet?” Dad asks, his voice laced with the grogginess of early morning rasp.

“No, you’re my first call,” I reply, my hand clenching around my cell phone as I hold it close to my face. “She asked for more, knowing it would…” I trail off, letting him fill in the blanks.

End of life care meant morphine and very little restrictions on it. When you’re already dying, you don’t get to be told your pain doesn’t matter. In fact, your comfort is the only thing that matters. If the pain medicine kills you, then it kills you. You were already dying, and the extra medication just allowed you to do it while lying comfortably in bed. She asked me to give her the dose that would kill her, and I had no reason to deny her. I could see the exhaustion on her pale face, and the way each breath fatigued her further.

“Okay, Son,” Dad says slowly, softly. “It’s okay, it was her time. You helped her feel better. I’ll get Apollo for you, all right? He and Rayna will pack up Vaughn and make their way to you. Do you want me to call the mortuary for you?”

Apollo and Rayna are going to come stay with us to help me with the boys for a while, in case they have a hard time now that their mother’s trip to heaven is a reality rather than a story. It was Dad’s idea, actually, to have them come live here for however long we need. I considered objecting to the offer, but Rayna wouldn’t have it, even if I tried. The boys adore her, thankfully. And she’ll be a welcome guest. I can already smell the cookies she’ll throw in the oven as soon as she arrives. Leo and Bastian have adopted her as their favorite aunt, and I wouldn’t deny them the comfort of a familiar face during this time, even if asking for help makes me supremely uncomfortable.

“I already called.” I swallow, exhaling slowly. “They’ll be here in an hour for her. The boys are sleeping, she wanted the extra dose after their bedtime. She doesn’t want them to see…She said her goodbyes earlier, before their bedtime story.”

Dad clears his throat. “That’s good. They shouldn’t see her while she isn’t breathing. It’s hard when they’re this young. We want them to have good memories of her, not frightening ones. The funeral people will take her away before they wake up, and you can talk to them in the morning. I’m sure having Rayna and the baby there will distract them too.”