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I straighten, my entire body as rigid as a board. “What?”
“Did you really think that I wouldn’t recognize one of my best friends?” A tightness spreads through my chest as I shake my head. “How long?”
“Since the party for Bella.”
“Why did you pretend like you believed me when I said I wasn’t Joe?”
He tilts his head. “I decided to humor you.”
I shut my eyes, realizing that I’m going to have to tell Cathal my story and hope that he doesn’t rat me out to the Benedetto family. “Because I couldn’t risk it.”
“You want revenge on the Benedetto family, right?”
I nod.
“Where’s Aiden?”
That question is the hardest anyone has ever asked me since his death. No one knows what happened to our family. No doubt Cathal presumed all of us were dead. I feel my throat trying to close up, but still the tears won’t come. “In Dumbarton Oaks Park.”
Cathal’s frowns. “What?”
“Buried in an unmarked grave the night we lost everything to those bastards.”
Cathal’s eyes immediately fill with tears and, in a way, I envy him. At least he can cry. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.” A solemn silence falls between us for a short while before he nods. “It makes sense why you’d want them to pay.” I notice the way his jaw clenches. “But did you really think I’d get in the way of that plan?”
I shake my head. “We’ve not seen each other for fifteen years. I didn’t know what to think.”
Cathal swallows. “What are you going to do?”
“Destroy them all,” I say.
Cathal’s brow hitches up. “As in, every Benedetto?”
I nod.
“But Nina hasn’t done anything, neither has Bella.”
I narrow my eyes. “None of their children have done anything, but they are Benedettos. All of them are the same.”
“I beg to differ. Nina and Bella are different. They’re not like the rest of the family.”
He’s right, they’re not, but it doesn’t change anything.
“You’re blinded by rage, Joe.”
I shake my head. “Don’t call me that!” I snap.
He gives me a pitying look, one that only deepens my anger. “Aiden was everything to you. I get it.”
“You don’t. You can’t.”
He nods. “No, I can’t understand what it’s like to be a twin, but I was close to Aiden, too.” His lips purse together. “When you both disappeared, I searched for years for you two. What happened?”
I shake my head. “His death haunts me to this day,” I murmur, still feeling the memories of Aiden’s death, like a perpetual nightmare replaying in my head.
The pain of having to dig Aiden’s grave while my father hurried me along with cold indifference, as if it didn’t affect him at all. It still lingers deep in my bones and heart like a dark wound that will never heal.
The sound of my shovel against dirt and freshly turned earth will haunt me forever. Even after all these years, that wretched noise still lingers in my ear like a monster who refuses to be silenced.
