I feel sick.
With every passing second, panic and anxiety push further up my throat. My limbs feel sweaty and cold, and every now and then, an unbidden tremor runs through them. The men left only an hour ago, and I can't rid myself of this feeling, this sick expectation.
I feel like something awful is going to happen.
A warmth takes ahold of my hand, and I look down to see Leah intertwining her fingers with mine. We sit cuddled up on the couch, Samuel across from us. Nico sits on the other side of me, his leg jostling every now and then.
I feel for him. All his brothers—his family—are out risking their lives, and he has to stay here. He has to wait like the rest of us.
But I'm glad, selfishly, because that means I have one less person to worry about.
We just sit here, existing in silence. Until Nico's phone pings, and he looks up at me with an apprehensive expression.
"What?"
"Um, nothing. I just got a text from Sa—"
"What does it say? Is he okay?"
"Oops. I wasn't supposed to tell you," he winces as he looks back at the text, assumedly reading the rest of it. He stands, backing away and holding his phone to his chest like I'm going to perform a double leg takedown on him to wrench it away. Honestly, I might.
"I'm just gonna—" he breaks off, running away before any of us can do much of anything.
I barely resist sprinting after him. Nico wouldn't keep it from us if he found out his brothers were in danger, or some otherwise crucial information. I know that. Santo would've texted me—or better, Samuel—if he was in trouble. So I settle back on the couch, forcing myself to trust them.
Trust. I've been doing a lot of that lately.
I can't lose him. If he really gets himself killed, after everything, after bringing me into his life and helping me find a home here, God, I'll fucking kill him. I swear I will.
I'm stewing in thoughts ignited with anger and smoke when Nico sheepishly lowers himself to the couch next to me. He's hugging Pistachio to his chest, and the little dog squirms before settling with a small sigh on Nico's chest.
"Just... you can go upstairs if you want. To your room."
"What? You're telling me to leave?"
"Oh. No. No!" His eyes widen, but he seems unable to clarify. "Just, I don't know, if you were thinking about going to your room before but you weren't sure, you can definitely go now."
"Nico, what the fuck is going on?"
"God, whatever!" he throws up his hands, disturbing Pistachio. "I fucked it up. Santo wanted me to get something ready for you and I messed it up. Don't tell him."
"So... I should go to my room," I say with narrowed eyes.
Nico shrugs in a pained motion.
"I'm gonna go to my room."
"Okay," he squeaks, and I share a bewildered look with Leah on my way out of the room.
When I see The Brothers Karamazov perched in the middle of my bed, panic immediately squeezes my heart. As I get closer, I can see there's a part that's been freshly underlined. Without thinking, I flip the book upside down, my chest battling to house the choppy breaths I suddenly can't seem to get ahold of.
It feels like something too final, like he's giving me something to hold onto. I don't want anything to hold onto, I don't want it to feel like his last words to me. All of a sudden, reading it feels like saying goodbye forever. So I wait for that feeling to go away. That notion of doom.
An hour later, I'm still waiting. It just feels wrong, him leaving me. It feels bad. I trust Santo and his brothers; I trust their discernment in handling matters like this. Someone like me, someone so inexperienced in comparison, can't know anything they don't already know. It's why I never voiced it, this stupid anxious voice in my head nagging at me. Telling me that we're missing something.
"Hey," comes a tentative voice from my doorway. Nico. His face softens as I quickly wipe away some stray tears. "You couldn't read it, could you?"
I shake my head, not trusting my voice.
Slowly, he comes and sits on my bed. Carefully, like I might burst into tears if he moves too quickly.
"Do you think things are gonna be that bad?" His voice wavers, and he's staring unwaveringly at his lap. "Do you... do you have that feeling too? Like things are gonna go really bad?"
"Hey, no," I soothe, scooting closer and rubbing a hand across his shoulders. "Nico, I don't know. I'm just scared. Waiting is the worst. Your mind can run to awful places."
He nods, sniffling, and my heart breaks. I fold him in a hug, and he rests his forehead in the fold of my shoulder, taking deep breaths. Needing to know that I think everything will be okay to start believing it himself. I wish I could reassure him, but how can I?
Eventually, he goes back downstairs, but not before making me promise that I'll read the quote. I sit there, trying to hype myself up for it, but every time I extend a trembling hand to the withered pages, my heart feels like it's trying to fight its way out of my chest.
I just can't stop thinking about Santo as a kid.
As an angry, sad child who underwent things I don't know the half of. I have more glimpses of what his childhood must've been like now, and it breaks my heart. Even what I don't know, what I hope one day he can tell me—it makes my heart bleed for him. And suddenly I want to grab him, to scream at him that I love him, that he deserves love, God, someone like him deserves it more than anyone else, I think, and I need him to see that.
But he's not here.
And I think about the way that when a child is born, the world seems to do nothing but set in upon it. There's been so much pain. I can feel it in everyone around me. It's almost unbearable when I think of it all, and my own pain, so familiar to me, is almost an afterthought. Santo, Massimo, Tommaso, Nico, even Luciano, Carlo... our parents, who have done nothing except stitch their own pain into our skin with bloody needles and thread and pushed us into the world, saying, "now go, and try to live. Try to live like this."
Pain is intertwined so closely with our lives, an invisible thread that passes through every part of us.
And I feel without a shadow of a doubt that there is so much more to come. I can only hope, with some part of me that feels rusty and unused, that the world will give us a break this time.
And as the blaring sound of the mansion's security alarms rips through the peaceful air, I know we will never be so lucky.
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- G