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It’s this that has me snapping entirely.

"Can't you see what's become of us?" I ask, my tone one full of seething anger and grief. "You have a dead son, a fugitive one, and one who couldn't care less. Then there's us," I say and an involuntary laugh falls from my lips. It's a mirthless one, one that shows the sheer irony of this. "None of us want to be here and you stand there with nothing to say! What is up with that?"

“I’m in the same predicament as you are, bambina,” he responds.

That’s all he has for me?! As rage bubbles, I narrow my gaze on him, almost full of disbelief, but I take note that he’s being deadly serious with his comment. He acts like the doting father who’s losing it all when, at this moment, he’s the only origin of this hell that I can see.

“You caused this,” I begin to say, my voice quiet yet firm. “Can’t you see that? You’re the reason we’re at this point. You’re the reason Manuel is dead and Enzo and me nearly died! You’re the reason
he
put me on your desk like some sacrificial fucking lamb! That’s on you, Sal, and the life you’ve pushed upon us without our say so.” I take a smooth, calculated step forward, the anger only just simmering. “And now you stand there and act like you’re one of us and can look mournful.” I shake my head in dismay. “You’re not. Never were and never will be.”

Even now, my father doesn’t spark up a conversation. No one else so much as moves in the room either, but he’s deathly still as he watches with soulless eyes.

Every tiny whisper of hate begins to spill from me, unraveling in tendrils of blackened tar, preparing to cause harm.

“You are the root cause of all our problems. We would’ve been better off had you died that day Madre did.” I watch that comment hit him right where I wanted it to – his cold morsel of a heart – and watch as his jaw clenches. “It’s been a long time since I valued you as anything other than the man who deals me jobs and money. I lost respect for you when you tested me and tried to break me with the task of killing Zane. As you can you see, I’m stronger than you are, Sal. My love for Zane was enough to withstand whatever you had planned for me. I believed in it and even you couldn’t break me of that. Now, I know you see that. You see us all becoming our own person because of the grief of our brother dying, and you know you cannot stop it. You’re not a part of this grieving, but you wish you were. You wish you weren’t now the outsider.”

My father’s jaw clicks again before he speaks, ignoring Manuel’s passing altogether. “He broke your heart twice. You should despise him and never love him again. You shouldn’t be so stupid with a man as flippant with his emotions as you are with your heart. You two are destructive and that’s all your relationship will ever be a result of... utter destruction.”

“If that were true, why are we still here?” I ask, concentrating hard on my father. “Why, when I was lying there dying, was he the one I thought of and wished I had proven how much I truly loved him? Why it is always Zane who saves me when I’m on that brink of fully breaking down? Why is it he who came back to me and committed to you if he’s so flippant with his fucking emotions? You don’t seem to have recognized any of mine and Zane’s true feelings for one another. All the while he’s been working for you, he’s been loving me. I thought he was stupid, but he’s actually just as desperate as I am to get a final shot. And that’s what this is; this is the final time, Salvatore, because this time you’re not something that can stop us.”

“I can stop you from choosing the wrong path,” my father speaks, taking an advance toward me.

“Not this time,” Enzo says, stepping in front to block my father. His voice is still gruff, but he won’t allow my father or Giovanni to rule this family anymore. He’s taking his place as the oldest of us all. “You do not get to decide anything for this family anymore. You especially do not get to decide who Amelia will love or who she will kill. Those days are gone. You get no control.”

“This is still my family,” my father argues, admonishing anything other than that fact.

“This stopped being your family years ago,” Enzo comments back, retorting his words with vigor and anger. “You were on borrowed time.”

“This is bullshit,” Giovanni sniggers from his corner.

This causes me to look at him, seeing all his malevolence and knowing that I need to verbalize everything I feel for him like I did for my father. If I don’t do it now, I never will.

“And you,” I say, turning to the man I fear most. I have been on the receiving end of his brutality for the final time. I’ll never  forget what he did to me nor what he did to Manuel, either. "You used to preach about how I was the one destroying this family. How I was the one failing our family, but yet you're the one who has taken a piece of us all, Gio. You're the one who's killed that little piece of hope in all of us. He was all we had left as proof that there could be a good guy among us and you tore him away from us all." My eyes stream with silent tears. They harden my conviction, illustrate my grief and, to me, right now, prove my vulnerability. "You killed him in a vile way to prove a point, So tell me, Giovanni, what point was it you wanted to be proven? Because the only thing I can think is that you're a psychopath who deserves nothing but a slow painful death."

“I get to see you all reduced to this,” he comments, gesturing to all of us.

We are the fallen Abbiatis. Each of us is united through grief and bound tighter as a family than ever. At first, the frightening moment happened when Manuel’s passing tore us apart, but our love and strength for one another eclipsed any of the evil in our worlds. We are still a union of siblings who were granted a second chance. My father and Giovanni do not come into that equation.

“At least we’re not in the habit of killing one another,” I speak gruffly.

I notice Zane and Enzo’s intense gaze upon me; clearly, this amount of exertion is taking a final toll on my body. They never wanted me to leave the hospital, but I couldn’t just lay in a bed while life continues outside my hospital room. It’s why I made my father feel needed by getting a nurse to check in, but other than that, I just needed to be among those who love me.

“That’s fucking great coming from you,” Giovanni speaks up, after having put distance between us all. "You wanted to kill Papà! You pulled a gun on him!"

I laugh, curling my arm around my tender stomach. I protect myself, bracing myself against the painful smarting as I wage a war. "Did you really think I'd pull the trigger on a man I practically idolized?" I ask, almost rhetorically. "Do you really think I was going to be able to kill a man who I thought could do no wrong? Do you really think I'm the one capable of killing my own?" I question, my eyes narrowing on him with every word I utter. “That’s your job, Gio, not mine.”

I watch him shake his head, dismay riddling as if to cover up how right I was.

“There’s a reason I could never kill him, but I’m pretty sure he was building up every reason to kill me. I’m surprised that he wasn’t thankful you tried to sort his every problem with the delinquent in the family. I mean, what you did, Giovanni, really, really proved how expendable we all are.”

“I could never have done that to you,” my father argues, sidestepping Enzo to face me wholly. "There’s a reason I never killed you either, bambina! I never could."

"Well, aren't you an honorable fucking man!" I exclaim, my tone weighted with a flood of sarcasm. "Should I be grateful you’d rather throw me to the dogs instead of killing me? Because, if I'm honest, at time killing me would have done me a world of good!"

“Amelia,” he responds, wounded by my words. “Don’t ever say that.”

“This life, the one you forced upon me, isn’t made for me, Sal. You never saw it before, but I hope to God you see it now. You stole my innocence from me, you tried to steal my happiness too, and it’s now because of you that my brother was stolen from me.”

“I didn’t kill him,” my father defends him.

“But you might as well have,” I respond, spitefully lashing at him once more. I feel my body sway, my adrenaline dwindling, absolving down from its climatic fight. I’m now left with my own persistence to not give up.

“Lia, I think it’s time you stepped down,” Enzo says, coming toward me. “You don’t have the strength for this.”

“I don’t care. This needs to be said,” I snap, pushing him away from me. I can feel that Zane has stepped closer; my body reacts to the protection he offers by being closer. “He needs to learn how he has no hope in hell in keeping this family intact anymore. We will never be that again and he needs to see how he managed to help make that so.”

“If I’m honest,” Giovanni pipes up, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s now gotten over his sniveling self and is trying in vain to bring back his old persona. “Someone’s kept well out of this.” He turns to face us all, but his gaze continues until he lands on the one person he wants to hear from most. “Carlo, you’ve been awfully quiet during this moment of total Abbiati defamation. Why not have your say?”

“It’s not needed,” Carlo gruffly replies.

“Oh yes, it is!” Giovanni announces, admonishing Carlo’s claim. “The quiet ones usually have the best to say. Manuel always did, so why not you?”

That final comment riles Carlo. He steels his emotions, trying to gravitate his anger away from the surface, but it doesn’t appear to be an easy feat and he quickly gives up.

“Fine,” he sighs, stepping forward to make sure Giovanni and our father get a good look at him as he prepares to speak. “I’m just disappointed in the family I kept myself a part of. Not for Enzo or Amelia or even Bruno, but for sticking around to watch us reach such a horrific turning point.” Carlo’s voice is rugged and dense with harsh emotion that he never usually shows easily. He narrows his firm gaze upon our father and I see a change in Carlo. It’s remarkably like the one I had when I came home. “Look around, Sal. Look what you had a hand in doing to your daughter. Costello loved his daughter to the point he'd kill for her. Rossi does everything to keep his daughters away from the horrors he grew up in. Everyone adored their daughters, but you got power hungry. You sold yours out and never wanted to bring her back. You just wanted to extort her and think she’ll always be here. Now that she’s cutting loose, you still can’t see what’s causing her to run.” Carlo’s face reddens as he speaks, his gaze fixed on our father.

“Real Italian fathers protect their own, Sal, and while you were exploiting yours all around Manhattan and the Amalfi Coast, Enzo was playing the role you were always meant to fucking assume! So I’m with Amelia on this one. Don’t think that, for one second, I’ll allow you to stand there and mourn for a son you were more than happy to lead down the same beaten track you made Amelia. You don’t deserve to feel bereavement like we do. Hell, you do not get to feel that heart stopping moment like I did when I found three of my family members mercilessly attacked by one of our own! That is a feeling you have no right to feel. Until you truly love that’s not something you get to share.”

I try to keep my focus on Carlo, but I have to look at my father. I have to give him one glance to see how the truth really feels for the man who once had it all at his feet. I’m left breathless at how stoic my father remains, taking this onslaught as if his ultimate punishment is this. I know it’s not. My father deserves more than a few curse words and truths. He deserves to feel what we all have under his reign. But I will not be alone in that thought. I cannot do that alone and if this is the start of the rebellion, I am all for it succeeding.

“What makes this harder for me is the battle I’ve tried to fight against you, Salvatore. For years, I’ve been the disobedient one, the delinquent, and you never even so much as saw it, but I think now is the most perfect opportunity for me to step up and tell you exactly what it is I’ve been up to every time I have left the house.” Carlo is unstoppable now. All his secrets are flowing free and the liberation he wants is close enough for him to grasp. He’ll finally be free of his secrets. “I started to get people out of the lifestyle when Madre died. I hated what we did to people and I wanted a hand in helping. It takes a while, but every person I've been able to get out is one less person people like you can damage. Manuel and Amelia were meant to be two more people I got out, but because of you, we failed that! Because of you, I now have to live every day feeling like I failed myself and I failed them."

The ebb that rushes into my chest is a tidal wave of emotions I didn’t intend to feel because of Carlo. He's always been able to instill calm and remain that way, but seeing him this way tells the true fall of our family. I wonder if Sal or Giovanni ever saw this as an outcome.

Death doesn't stop in the absence of a beating heart. The ripple effect continues to invade and crawl into every corner of life and doesn't stop there. It craves more until it has every last drop of normalcy. Manuel's death will resonate within all of us for decades to come. It'll be a wound I never heal from, a scar that will all always pain me, yet a cross I’ll learn to bear.

Carlo has always saved people; this will be a failure that he'll take to the grave. It's a forgiveness he'll never find.

“All the years I played the doting son, I was actually the one who loathed you and your motives most.” Now, true venom laces his tone, taking every etched word victim. “I am not a part of this family for you, and I never will be. I am only still here as long as Enzo and Amelia. After that, we’ll be gone like Bruno is.”

Giovanni mockingly laughs at us all. “So, you’re all going to cast out your futures because of me?”