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Terrified, even. I’mhurtingher.
My hand drops from her throat as I blink out of my angry stupor, an odd buzzing in my ears. I back off with the knowledge I have to walk away right now.
I force myself out of the room, leaving her where she is. She looks small pushed up against the wall in nothing but her bra and panties.
My men standing guard in the hall must’ve heard our argument. Their faces tell me they’re uncomfortable, though they’ll never directly get involved. They’ll stand by and keep guard regardless of what I do. Louis was my only soldier bold enough to interfere if he thought it necessary. He often sided with Falynn more than me, but he’s no longer around.
I stride past my men, unable to make eye contact as a deep sense of shame hangs over me like a dark, ominous cloud.
I’ve always had issues with my rage. It’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. In the past I could control it, hide behind a cold and detached mask. That changed when I met Falynn, and she stirred emotion out of me in ways I hadn’t ever anticipated. While there was good in it—I was able to tap into the intense feelings I have for her—the obvious bad is that I can no longer control myself.
Even when I try, I’m always a second away from losing it.
But I’ve never grabbed her like an enemy before. Not to this extent, to the point I could no longer distinguish my wife from any other enemy of mine.
Few things scare me. This does. On a level that disturbs me to my core.
I put as much distance between us as possible. I head down the grand staircase in search of even the slightest distraction. I’m a lost wanderer in my own home.
Carlotta waits for me on the bottom stair. She’s in her nightgown, the long and cottony fabric making her look that much more pint-sized. Yet, somehow, she’s as fearsome as any wild animal out in the jungle; her face is screwed into a deeply lined scowl, her eyes smaller than pinholes.
“If I may speak freely, Mister Sorrentino…Giovanni,” she says with great restraint as I bypass her and move toward the study. She follows, her slippers scraping along the marble floor.
“Speak as freely as you ever do, Carlotta,” I bite out tensely. The buzzing hasn’t stopped in my ears. My fingers feel numb, like they’ve taken away their strength from me after what I’ve done to Falynn. They’re protecting her from me.
I’m protecting her from myself.
“You don’t see it, do you?” she asks, trailing me as I approach my liquor cabinet. “You don’t see how you become more like him every day?”
“If this is a lecture about my father, you can save it. I’m nothing like him. Don’t fucking tell me I am, because I won’t ever be him!”
She’s not afraid of me. If anything, she stands tall, even at sixty inches. “You were a young boy when it happened. You and your brother. You had no idea what was really going on. We protected you from the truth—Iprotected you from the truth, Giovanni.”
A grunting noise leaves me as I pour a full glass of cognac and then down every last drop. It’s true my childhood is fuzzy. My memories of Ma are mostly a patchwork of good times I’ve held onto in order to preserve her, though I rarely think of them. I’ve always been a man who looks to the future, more concerned with proving myself to Pa, ascending his throne.
Now that I have, I’ve only obsessed over how to grow my empire. I’ve obsessed over how to prevent past shit from happening again, like my failures with ensuring Falynn is safe.
“Your father was a very cruel man,” Carlotta says into the heavy silence of the room. She speaks to my back, because I never grant her a single look. The shame I’m still reeling from prevents me from doing so. “He was cruelest to Rosana. He despised her. He made it known at every turn. Sometimes…sometimes I wish I had interfered. I was too young myself back then. I didn’t want to get involved. I failed her.”
I swallow hard, pouring more cognac. A funny emotion wells up inside me. Something I fail to place, but something I’ve vaguely felt before. I stare into the contents of my glass.
“I saw the bruises on her wrists. I heard her screams when he’d order to have her locked away. But I turned the other cheek. Your mother was a very ill woman, but she was a very loving woman. She tried her hardest to hold on for many years. Just for you, her boys.”
“Carlotta,” I say, my throat sore. “I don’t want to hear any of this. This happened decades ago.”
“You will listen!” she snaps. “You said I can speak freely…so I am! You need to understand the brutality your mother went through. Why she took her own life.”
I heave a difficult breath and scrub a hand over my face. Pa always said Ma was murdered. He told Giancarlo and I one of his enemies had broken into our home and shot her. I’d been in bed when the gun went off. I still remember the crass bang ringing through our large home in the dead of the night.
I was young. Maybe six or seven. I was admittedly afraid to get out of bed. So I sat there, my heartbeat racing, and I listened to the chaos that was unleashed in the coming moments.
Sirens blared. Voices shouted. Footsteps pounded the floors. Our home was flooded by my father’s men and emergency responders making it to the scene.
Giancarlo and I eventually crept into the hall. We peered through the second-story banisters that overlooked the ground floor and watched the paramedics wheel out a stretcher. A bloodied sheet covered the body lying on it.
Ma.
I’d cried silent tears while Giancarlo sat like a blank, ghost-white canvas. It was the last time we ever saw her…
