𝗧he rain attacked his face in waves, striking and staining the open gash in his forehead as he ran deeper into the storm. He tracked the sound of shoes on faded gravel and pieced together the path his sister and Niccolió had taken by the swayed footprints in the muddy pieces of the ground.
The circus music that had taunted him and Rueben into minor captivity gradually faded behind him the more he sprinted until all he could hear were the wisps of his sister's breath and the fear locked in bolts of static coruscation around them.
Matteo suddenly stopped in the middle of the park, rapidly becoming aware of how dense the patterns in the dirt truly were. His breath escaped in puffs around him, encapsulating him in the moment as he turned around a few times, gauging his surroundings. The wind was strong enough to knock a grown man to his knees—the torrent thick enough to rattle his bones.
He strained to see through the pelting fog.
Gunshots covered his right side.
Shouts remained intense at his back.
But none of it was his sister.
Matteo shut his eyes shut, no longer giving a fuck if he was creating the perfect opportunity for an easy assassination as he desperately attempted to focus on his sibling's whereabouts. He knew his sister was fast—she'd proven that time in and out during childhood—but he also knew that she was not treated well here. Traumas littered her skin as he was sure they tarnished her mind; she would not be at full strength to escape Niccolió.
He cursed himself under his breath, achieving naught.
He'd been a coward since the moment he left his mother's womb. He'd tried to distract himself from that narrative, tried to rewrite the words of a book that hadn't been his to author in the first place—struggled to navigate a world in which he was nothing more than a rat and his predators were hawks circling him like the prey he'd claimed not to be.
Matteo was not the resilient, determined brother who had put his body between his father's hands and his sister's soul. He was not the man who had selflessly shelled the dangers of the mafia in order to learn a few tricks over his father's abuse. He was not the man who'd joined a lethal organization and slandered his name just to force a new plot out of his family's path.
He was the man who had forced his lover to carry his child because he couldn't do anything other than watch. He was the man who had put his faith, trust, and loyalty into the same person who had knowingly and enjoyingly tortured him for three years.
And he still did—he still loved and protected the villain because of his last name.
But he yearned to be better.
To be worthy of his twin sister's love.
Of his daughter's.
Yet, every time he was tasked with a difficult situation, he ran the other way.
Rueben had given him an earful—had bitched him out in more than one language—over the last few weeks because of his pitiable desire to ditch life when it got hard. Because he had shown Rueben that he was a man crafted out of brick and not the play-dough he really was.
He deserved the anger.
The pain.
The rage and mistrust—all of it.
Matteo smacked the side of his head, bit down on his tongue, squeezed his eyes until his emotions ran rivers in the rain, and listened. Lights danced over the outside of his eyelids, sending him to forbidden lands of color and mockery—preaching delicacies that he would never be worthy of understanding.
He took a few blind steps.
One, then two.
Until the music he'd heard earlier pierced his eardrums with a different—higher—tune.
Matteo's eyes tore open as he dug his foot in the ground and darted halfway across the open land. He ignored the machinery and sudden brightness of carnival rides and focused on the only place around here that would make sense. Until the rubber of his boots graced the bottom step of the haunted Mirror Maze—the only ride with an interior.
Bright, white lights lip up the exterior, but there was no EXIT, only an ENTER.
The information flew to the back of his mind as the sound of Rayne's terror penetrated him straight through the heart. Splashing water and muck up the back and front of his pants, he ran up the three, fake metal steps and headed inside, only stalling once the atmosphere captured him.
Blacklight coated him in semi-darkness.
His reflection bore at him from all angles.
The melancholy dullness of his sister's former yell slowly exited his mind as he began to spin in circles, taking a good look at the man he had become. Sunken in cheekbones. Eyes swollen with tears and age. Unhealed bruises. One of his ears hung limply with a cut straight through the bottom where he used to wear one of his gifted earrings.
He hadn't even noticed that Evelyn had ripped it out.
Matteo didn't have time to look further—to notice that the gash on his head had yet to slow down despite the fact that he was no longer in the rain. He didn't have time to realize that he'd been stripped and left unarmed in Evelyn's presence—and that even if he found Niccolió, all he had to protect his twin were the two fists he was born with.
He hurried ahead, catching bits and pieces of his sister's racing body in the reflections. Unable to tell if she was getting closer or further away from him, Matteo picked up the pace, calling after her, tearing, begging her to stall for time so he could reach her.
His fingers barely registered the graze of solid air before Matteo ran smack-first into a mirror. He toppled backward, caught off guard by the dizzying maze of the Mirror Maze, and fell to the ground. The darkness of the black light only amplified the stars behind his eyes.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Rayne screamed.
Matteo turned his head in time to catch sight of her—right before a dull thud echoed around the room. He scrambled to his feet, turning the other way and beginning to run again, chasing the minor pieces of her reflection that were allotted to him at this angle.
"Rayne!" he called after her.
But it was no use.
Matteo halted in place, feeling all of the blood pour out of his body in uninvited drains. Rayne's eyes were shut, her fingers folded in her palms, her lips flat without emotion. His knees wobbled as her body was pulled by the ankles to an unknown destination—as he noted the red streak following the trail from under the locks of their identical, auburn hair.
She looked peaceful—perhaps for the first time in her life. A sleeping deity. A gift of unconsciousness and rest that she'd never seemed to obtain over the course of her short life. A false perception of need given by a villain who never should've had the chance to lay his hands on her.
Matteo started walking—stalking.
Niccolió wouldn't have killed her yet. He wouldn't have hurt her to the point of no return because his sadism was a scouring, rabid dog that had yet to be fed. And everyone knew that the first bite was an unholy deliciousness one could only acquire once.
Using his hands to guide him this time, Matteo began to plague the interior of the maze with his passion and love for his only real sibling. His expression disturbed the back of his eyelids every time he turned the corner and came face-to-face with the man who'd been a weak bird who'd pretended he could fly at an early age. A kid who was forced to grow up without actually doing so.
Because while he'd always been a weak man, he had always been able to handle what these men dished to him. He could handle the emasculation, sensory deprivation, hose showers, and long weeks without stabilizing food. But Rayne?—they could steal and steal and steal the one thing she'd tried to keep as her own her entire life, and each time she failed, they would take and take and take pieces of the very soul that made her the person she was.
And it was entirely his fault.
He'd put her in this mess.
It was his job to get her out.
"Let go of her, you bastard," Matteo hissed.
"I chased her. I caught her. Don't you think I deserve her?" Niccolió spoke for the first time.
"Not a chance. I'll find you and make sure of that."
Niccolió's laughter grated against the walls, reverberating off the silver glass, "When will that be? Will be it before or after I rape her to death? Because, by all means, you can have the corpse when I'm done fucking it. It'll be of no use to me then—no matter how tight she is."
Matteo winced at his dirty words, "If you lay another fucking hand on her, I'll—"
"You'll do nothing," Niccolió snarled, "You will be nothing because you are nothing!"
The threat was evident in his voice.
Matteo upped his pace, slamming his shoulders, back, arms, and palms into the walls hard enough that some of the mirrors began to crack under the pressure. He forced his way through the maze, ignoring the guttural cackle of Niccolió's voice, trying to do the same with the effortless smacks.
"Wake up, bitch!" Niccolió screamed
Matteo heard a fifth and final smack before his upper arm connected with a thick slat of reflectional glass. His eyes widened, rounding in delicate fear as he caught sight of Niccolió's intentions. Brute force hard enough to shake the interior stunned Matteo as Niccolió hooked Rayne by the neck and threw her against the wall, pushing her further and further up until her toes were barely touching the ground.
"NO!" he screamed, launching forward.
Matteo smacked into another mirror hard enough that the glass gave way under his weight and rained down on him. Large pieces slashed over his lower arms, slicing his suit until he was a mix of fabric and blood while microscopic pieces fell into his palms and struck like splinters.
A muddy, ruinous mess collected under his feet—gore, rain, and landscape brought him to his knees. He could only scream to stop the continuation of the scene before his eyes—he could only cry out in hopes that Niccolió might allow air back into Rayne's lungs.
"Put her down!"
"Why would I do such a thing?"
"God, have me instead!" he cried out weakly, "Just leave her alone!"
Matteo fought to rise, steadying himself with the walls despite the pain pounding in his hands.
"I have no use for you," he spat, keeping his eyes locked on Rayne's bluing lips, "A week I've given this one to accept me as I am, a week I've given her to choose the better side. But she refuses. Hell-bent on rejoining her life with the miserable excuse of an heir. It's too bad daddy-dearest has likely gutted him as we speak. It's too bad that even if you escape, killing Rueben was our goal of the night."
"F-f—fuck—you," Rayne stuttered.
Niccolió slapped her across the face.
Her blood coated a nearby mirror as Matteo started running again. Half of his plea had been real, but most of it was just to abide by his ego while he regained his strength. He tried to push thoughts of Rueben to the back of his mind. Tried to rid the guilt that soared through his skin at the fact that he'd left him without a word of communication for Rayne's sake.
Matteo turned down hall after hall, leapt through doorway after doorway, keeping his eyes glued to the two of them. There were only so many paths he could take to get to the exit—and from the way Niccolió shamelessly mocked him, he knew he had to be standing close.
"You see, the funny thing about women is," Niccolió said eagerly, lowering Rayne enough that he could entangle his mouth on hers—enough that he could spread her dangling legs with his knees and sink between them, "—they're only good for the clam between their thighs. Good for procreation, not love. For ownership. There was a time when men were the breadwinners and women were nothing more than toys to get off with," he laughed as Rayne tried to separate their lips, "I'll right those wrongs. I'll make sure you're nothing more than an incubator for my kids, and a slave to my cum. You've already shown you can carry, despite what your father says he did to you. I've already killed your little spawn. Your womb is mine to bear."
Matteo dated around the last corner, spotting the two of them against the wall.
Niccolió turned his head, offering him nothing more than a coy smile. Matteo didn't want to believe what he was saying about Rayne and her child—he knew that Niccolió was nothing but a freak who wanted to spin the world off its axis to anyone who got in his way.
"I'll fucking kill you," he still said.
Matteo began to run at him with full force, balling his fist and getting ready to launch it. Niccolió just laughed and laughed, not bothering to move out of the way, and it was only when he was about to land the blow did Matteo know why.
Niccolió's grin unfolded, and his reflection moved.
Matteo attempted to slow his speed, but it was no use. The ground went out from underneath him as he went full-force into the wall of mirrors stopping him in his path. He tried to shield his body with his hands, but the action was futile. Glass slashed over his cheeks, his hands, his body, his neck—embedding themselves in his skin as his head hit the floor of the park game with a bang.
His vision went in and out as his eyes were blinded by black lights.
He could feel Niccolió and Rayne pass his disgruntled body as they headed for the true way to the exit—as he lay there, trying his best to achieve control of his consciousness.
"You see, it was never my intention to kill your sister as you and your friends—hell, even Evelyn—assumed. I've always been fascinated by her," he preened, "Ever since I saw her standing all alone in the station so long ago. My goal was always to take her and make her mine. To force a marriage on her in the same way I'd force myself on her. To fuck her so good she'll love me. To fuck her so good, she'll be the one crawling back for more. And then," Matteo sat up, holding his head as Rayne's yells masked the sound of Niccolió's fading footsteps, "And only then, will I kill her. When she's all used up and boring, I'll gut her like the slut she is."
The words emptied Matteo's insides.
The depravity and sickness inside them brought him back to his first months in captivity. He'd been forced to watch Carson, and Dimitri, and Tomás have their rounds with Lilliana just to spite him. Forced to watch as they covered her mouth so vibrations of her screams hit them in the center of their rapist dicks. Forced to be bound to chairs—to lay in bloody beds in which she'd just been assaulted on. Over and over. Until the sordid tale was less fictional and more real.
Matteo heard Rayne growl at Niccolió.
Then heard the sound of her knees hitting the floor as he took his anger out on her.
And suddenly, he was thirteen again, fighting against his father—fighting for him to get off of her in the shower. To not push her head underwater for a minute longer. To let her live for the sake of both of them. Because Rayne was too young. Because Rayne looked like their mother.
Tears, loud and unannounced, spilled down his cheeks as Niccolió forced his sister to keep moving.
Maybe this was all his fault.
Maybe if he hadn't convinced his father not to take the life of his only sister that night, she might have been happier. If he hadn't selfishly pulled Carson's hands out of her hair and thrown his naked body off of her because Matteo couldn't bear to lose his twin, would she have found a greater meaning, a thicker solace, in death?
Maybe it all came down to him.
His decisions. His life.
If he hadn't run after Lilly that night—if he hadn't put everyone he loved behind a singular, romantic relationship—would his sister be as deeply wounded as she was now? Would she have been able to move on from what their father did to her, instead of living a life only to be pained by the hands of several more men?
Would she know love? In its purest form, or simply?
Matteo curled his fingers into his fist, pushing glass deeper into his skin.
He sluggishly rose to his feet, swaying back and forth as his mind was still heavily fogged with dizziness and fatigue. The mirror before him produced nothing other than his place-faced expression underneath shards of redirected black lights.
He saw a flaw in each piece.
Saw the faults he had created in his family.
The agony he'd stood in the center of for so long, he couldn't see beyond it.
Pausing for no less than a beat, Matteo pivoted on his heel and drilled his hand into the mirror. He felt his skin rip and tear, felt rationality leave his woozy mind as he repeated the motion again, and again, and again, and again until the mirrors were diminished to the muddy floors and his hand was strained to surrender its attack, too swollen to move.
His actions had begun to pave a clear path toward Niccolió.
Heavy breathing and loud crunches stunned his foe enough that he kicked the back of Rayne's knees, sat her on the ground before him, and used her hair as a leash. He smirked smugly as Matteo prepared the furtherance of his onslaught with his good hand.
"You're not taking my sister, you fucking freak!" he said lowly, but not less definitively, "I won't let you have her. I won't let you turn her into a mule for your sadistic needs."
His eyes glanced down at his sister as she fumbled with her misshapen shirt.
Niccolió's eyes entertained the dare in Matteo's words.
Without waiting for an answer, Matteo continued taking down the mirrors. One after the other, with a punch, a jab, a kick—whatever it took to destroy the few things that were keeping him apart from his other half and the ability to save her.
The word EXIT thrilled the fire in his eyes as he took down the last mirror in his way, leaving nothing between them other than a few structure-bearing walls and beams.
Niccolió's hawk-like eyes barely moved as he slipped behind the last turn before the door. A smile still stuck to his bastard face, he cocked his head and looked Matteo up and down, maintaining the grip he had on his sister. Matteo knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"What now, little Teo?" he flashed his teeth, reusing the nickname Enzo had given to him, "You have no weapons. Your fists are shredded. You can't reach me. How are you going to stop me?"
"Like hell, I can't reach you," he snarled.
"Better run then," he eyed Rayne.
Matteo heard the gears in his brain click.
He let out an ear-shattering scream, a dense pain that came in accordance with the shallow ending of his sister's greater-than-life, and began to race, completely forgetting that the end of every mirror maze had a transparent wall to deter people from entering the wrong door.
He slammed into it with both hands at the same time Niccolió tossed Rayne against it.
He felt the force of his sister's body weight hit the wall and reverberate against his fingertips.
"NO!" he screamed, pounding the plastic.
Niccolió righted his hand in her hair and lifted his fist, drilling it squarely in her face.
Rayne's hands flopped to the side of her body, lifelessly as her blood coated the other side of the wall.
Matteo's eyes blurred his vision as he cried, screaming and screaming and screaming as he desperately looked around him—hoping, seeking, searching for the path Niccolió had taken to reach the end. Structure-bearing walls covered the exit closest to him. Beams stood in his way.
But he was so close.
SO. CLOSE.
Matteo moved to find another way, to get lost within the mirrors he'd shattered, to get lost in the mirrors that still stood, but just as he went to take a step, a glint of something sharp illuminated under the black light and in a rapid second, the wall was no longer transparent.
Thick, amalgamating, quickly clumping, red liquid sprayed over the entirety of it, morphing underneath the special darkness of the maze. Matteo's eyes widened in stunned horror as a scene straight from an alien horror movie burned the back of his irises.
"NO! FU—NO!" he pounded the wall, "RAYNE, FIGHT!"
Matteo hit it one more time and used the pain in his hands and the fear in his heart to propel him. He jumped over broken shards and leaped around walls. He danced over the remnants of his spilled blood and swung around beams, doing anything he could to increase his speed.
He kept screaming.
Kept calling out his sister's name.
"Rayne, you fucking LIVE! I know I've screwed up more times than we can count, and I know I'm a shit brother most of the time, but that doesn't change the fact that I am as selfish as I am human and I love you—I need you! So you better give me the chance to fix this. Give me the chance to be the two-minute, younger brother you never wanted, but somehow loved anyway! FUCKING LIVE!"
Matteo's eyes spotted the dripping wall before he got a response. There was so much blood—too much blood—for him to see. But he kept running. Running and running until the toe of his boot connected with a faintly heavy obstacle and he fell face-first into a still-warm puddle.
"No," he whispered, "No, no, no—"
It coated his suit.
His lips.
Drenched the tips of his hair.
There was so much—why was there so much??
Matteo's arms trembled as he tried to get off the ground. His lips quivered as he slipped and fell down twice—a bearing of a reality too heavy to comprehend. His mind could not understand the tangible, could not grasp the truth. It was cruel. Too cruel. To be shunned from a goodbye—ripped away from the people who bore nothing but love simply because of the brutal injustice of another person.
They'd been here before, hadn't they?
Puddles of red and fervent hands.
Nights spent bathrooms trying to mend themselves for the show tomorrow rather than sleeping.
Matteo finally shoved to his knees, wearing his sister's blood like a battle flag. He was anxiously about to turn around and face the ill intentions of a sick man—to accept that if she was gone, she deserved to be put to rest in a place that was not as gruesome and as haunting as this one.
But that was when he heard it.
A shiver of sound.
A cracked door in a dark room.
A whisper barely perceived in this universe.
"Get him off of me."
Rayne's voice was barely audible, but it was loud enough that he jumped to his feet and ran outside, hope blooming in his chest at the chance that she had won. His foot brushed over Niccolió's limp and deceased hand without a care for how he'd met his end or if he was still suffering.
Matteo dashed out of the maze and into the pouring rain, stopping once his shoes hit the dirt.
Impossible as it felt, Rayne stood a few feet away from the exit, a blood-soaked knife trembling in her hand. Her hair was tied back but was still unbelievably plastered to her cheeks. Her dark outfit was marred by the stained truth of what she had done.
But none of that mattered.
Because his sister was alive.
His sister had fought.
She had fought and won.
"Rayne," he breathed, stepping toward her.
"Get him off of me," she repeated, eyes frozen in terror.
He was confused, "What?—"
"Get him off of me!" she said again, louder and louder with each repetition, "Get him off of me! Get him off of me! Get him off of me!" each word fortified with a vehemence he could not fathom—a considerable note of apprehension, revulsion, and suffering all laced in one; each syllable pronounced thicker than the last, "Get him off of me! Get him off of me! Get him off of me! "Get him off of me! Get him off of me! GET HIM OFF OF ME!!!"
Matteo barely reached her side when the knife tumbled out of her weak limbs. He'd barely held his hands out to catch her before she collapsed into them and the ground underneath their shoes and began scratching at her skin. Tearing at her hair. Slapping her head. Her fingers crawled around her skin like an infestation of bugs until her nails left marks that would not fade—until Niccolió's blood was not the only blood she wore like a cloak.
"GET HIM OFF OF ME!" she screamed.
Matteo clutched her wrists, scarcely stopping her from scratching her eyes out as he tried to pull her close. His heart battered against the dullness of his chest as he observed how stone-cold her expression was. That while she was shrieking her sentiment out, her face was careless and without feeling.
Lifeless eyes and an unmoving illustration.
She was a picture-perfect actress in a world of robots.
"GET HIM OFF OF ME! GET HIM OFF OF ME!"
"How! How, Rayne, please—tell me how and I'll do it!"
But she wasn't coherent.
Her breathing was as shaky as it was hollow. She could not answer him because she was too busy fighting off the prying hands of another man with everything inside of her, keen to rip out the few things that gave her access to the beauties of the world, as much as it did the horrors.
She was in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, and if he didn't do something fast, he knew he was going to lose her forever. A fate worse than death.
He did not want to mourn her while she was still alive—after she'd fought so hard.
Matteo took in the area around him. He noted that, while the rain was still coming down aggressively, it wasn't moving Niccolió's blood from her skin fast enough. He sought a barrel of water to drench her in, a bag to soak her with, a well to dump her in.
But none of that manifested.
All that appeared was the deep beginnings of a muddy puddle.
"Fuck it," he mumbled under his breath.
Thinking beyond her short-term physical health, Matteo scooped up his sister and ran to the puddle, falling to his knees the moment he got close enough. He dropped her inside of it, silencing her screams just as he shoved her far enough under to replace the red with a dirty brown.
He repeated it a few times.
Then he grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her up. Matteo gazed into her iridescent, golden eyes—eyes that were slowly retrieving color the longer the coldness of the water came in contact with the warmth of the wind. Matteo used both of his thumbs to mold the dirt to her skin. He watched patiently as soot dripped from her eyelashes and each blink brought her back to him.
"He's gone," he breathed worriedly, "He's gone now, Ray."
"He's gone?" she echoed, brilliantly somber.
"He's gone," he nodded, confirming, "He can't hurt you anymore."
Rayne pulled herself out from under his hands and sat back on her heels, relaxing enough that it encouraged Matteo to do the same. Her fingers trembled as she glanced down at them—still caked in red; nails still tainted the shade of her assailant's insides.
She remained silent as she stared at them.
Matteo wanted to touch them—to force her eyes away and let her know that she was more than what stains she wore on her skin—more than whatever had happened to her, but he knew that if he crossed the quiet boundary she'd just set, she might not come back to him again.
"Is he dead?" she whispered after another still moment, "Did I kill him?"
"Yes. You did. I didn't confirm with a pulse but—"
"I stabbed him," she cut him off, "I stabbed him twenty-seven times."
Matteo swallowed his feelings and forced his eyes to remain normally perceived. He did not want to scare her, but he couldn't help the equal pride and horror that swirled through his system. He never wanted her to know what it was like to jam a blade into someone's guts—never mind to do more than twenty times, the heat of the moment or not.
It wasn't surprising that she was capable of it.
But it stole his breath that she'd managed it in such a short time.
"I don't want to be a killer," Rayne snapped him from his thoughts, her voice suddenly breathy and emotional, "I don't want to become the type of person who senselessly takes the lives of others no matter what shit I'm involved and I didn't want to stab him twenty-seven times but each time I lifted that knife all I could see were the times he touched me with his dirty hands—"
"Hey! Hey," Matteo grabbed her by the shoulders, straightening her.
Rayne peered up at him with such saddened eyes, that he could physically feel his chest snap in two. It was like, in this moment, they were no longer fraternal twins—no longer twins at all. Because inside the glimmer that once made Rayne the person she was, was now nothing more than tainted awfulness. Underneath the amber glaze they once shared, there was an iron sword ready to cut down any idiotic fool who stepped too close to her.
He didn't know if he was proud of her bravery, or if he hated the fact that she had to be brave at all.
Either way, he was going to spend his life fixing what he broke. He'd give up everything if only to see the reflection he once loved beaming up at him like they were fifteen again, lying in a stolen garden.
"You are not a killer," he flicked his fingers under her chin, telling her without words to keep her head up, to which she cracked a smile, "You're a defender. You did what you had to do to escape a bad situation, but what you've been through doesn't make you a villain. It never will. A person's identity doesn't change due to the force of someone else's hand."
"But—?"
"But, nothing, Ray," he shook his head, "You did the right thing."
Rayne agreed, but dropped her eyes, nonetheless. Matteo released her from his grip and inched back, giving her space while he admired the breath that left her lips and clouded before her nose—the breath that could have been extinguished today if it weren't for her drive—her strength.
They remained soundless as she dipped her finger in the puddle, swished it around, and then dunked both of her hands until they were thoroughly masked in dirt rather than blood.
"Y'know," his sister said after a while.
"Hm?"
"Did you really have to drop me in this dirty-ass puddle?"
"I didn't exactly have a choice—"
Before he could finish his explanation, Rayne reached up and hooked the back of his neck, dunking him face-first. His mouth, open due to his fragmentary clarification, was awarded with dirt and muddy rainwater before she decided to lift him up. He promptly spit to the side and gagged—more emphatically when he could hear the beginnings of her giggles.
"That was so uncalled for," he said weakly, wiping the mud from his eyes.
"You did it first!"
"I had to!—"
"Nope!"
"Yes—"
"I'm older so what I say is right and you're younger so you're always wrong."
Matteo's jaw unironically dropped at the sound of her childish statement, so cartoonish, that Rayne put her hands to her mouth to stop herself from bursting out loud. His eyes narrowed to daggers the more she sputtered, but it was all just a ploy to urge her to let it out.
Seconds later, he succeeded.
Matteo cupped a handful of water and splashed her in the face with it, to which she greatly responded with a cup of her own. Rayne tipped her head back, yelping in glee so loudly, Matteo was sure they'd alert the enemies of their happiness, but he couldn't find it within himself to care.
They didn't stop until they were both equally soaked.
Matteo kept laughing, feeling the weight of their pain finally lift from his shoulders. The dawn of reality on his mind that his lover, his sister, and his daughter could all be in his sights at the same time again sent shivers down his limbs.
His chuckles echoed throughout the small, outside corridor for another minute.
Until he realized he was the only happy one.
Matteo opened his eyes and peered at his sister. A thick frown took over the center of Rayne's face—her teeth just peeking over her bottom lip in an effort to evade the quiver from within. Her eyebrows squished together. Spurts of air passed her lips and nose, and it took all of two seconds for the weight to push against his skin once more—because the truth was, they would never be free.
But he could at least help her heal.
"Hey," he said somberly, opening his arms to her.
The moment her fingers wrapped around his torn sleeves, she broke down. Her cries ricocheted around in his chest as she curled up into a ball in his lap and shattered. As she accepted her emotions and what had happened to her as the truth, rather than something she had to survive.
Matteo patted her wet hair and leaned his cheek on her forehead.
"It's going to be okay," he cooed, "I'm here now."
Rayne didn't stop sobbing, but she pulled out of his grasp enough to catch sight of his face. She reached up and touched his cheek with light, ginger fingers, almost as if she was making sure that, after everything, this was real life—that she was not trapped in a dream.
"Promise me you'll stay," she whispered.
"I promise, Ray," he obliged, "You're never getting rid of me."
Rayne tossed her arms around his shoulders and attacked him in a warm hug. He caught her, careful to make sure she would never fall again and drew her close, it was as if they were sharing the same skin again—as if they had never left the protection of their mother's womb.
"Never again," he repeated, "Never."