By Darkness I Burn [EN]

Chapter 1

Nevio – 20 years old

"What's funny?" I asked seeing Alessio's very smiling face.

"You look like about to have a breakdown." The bastard scoffed.

"What is a breakdown?" Giulio's voice sounded behind me, making me turn my murderous gaze from Alessio to him.

Before I could think of how to explain to a 9-year-old boy what a meltdown was, Massimo replied:

"The loss of self-control."

It didn't seem to help much, though. Giulio gave a brief grimace and shifted his eyes to his cell phone, seeming to have given up trying to understand us.

"You're good with kids." I mocked.

Massimo just shrugged and looked through the large windows of the mansion we were in, attentive to anything that wasn't us. Mansion, this one, where my other half's wedding would take place. My sister. My twin. The girl who not only was born with me, but was with me my entire life.

So, if I was going to be honest, I was also on the lookout for anything other than us. Waiting for the slightest slip up by the Famiglia to break up that stupid party and take my sister back to Las Vegas.

Yes, I still held a faint hope that she would want to run away from it all. In fact, I was rooting for it.

I was never a dream guy. I had goals – and I always conquered them. My twin's wedding, however, felt like a nightmare... A nightmare that could turn into a dream if I could just put a bullet in her future husband's forehead – something that would never happen, 'cause Greta would never forgive me. So today I was a dreamy man.

***

"Giulio, don't you dare!" I yelled at the kid about to jump into the fountain in the garden's mansion where my sister's wedding party was taking place.

Giulio wanted to explore and I wanted to clear my head, so I combined business with pleasure, telling my mother that I'd take the little menace to see around. At this point, after a few warnings about not removing rocks from the site, not pulling flowers, not taking coins from the fountain, and, lastly, not going into the fucking fountain, I wasn't sure there was anything this nice anymore. Still, it was less suffocating than standing inside the room, seeing all the fake smiles towards the century's couple.

I continued to follow the little problem my parents had placed in the world around the garden until we reached some white tents with sofas, equally white, arranged side by side, forming a circle. The tents had curtains, but these were properly tied to the support rods – probably, that way, nobody would think about fuck around. From here, the noise of the party was no longer heard and that gave me a certain peace.

Giulio ran over to a tent, about to throw himself onto one of the couches, but suddenly stopped, staring at whatever was there.

"Hello." He waved his hand, as if to get someone's attention, and I quickened my pace, going around the couch to see who might be hiding around here.

I snapped as soon as I saw her. Isabella. The freckled redhead I'd kidnapped almost two years ago.

Despite all the sofas available, Isabella was sitting on the floor. Legs in a burmese position and glasses on the tip of his nose. Leaving, momentarily, aside, the book she held in his hands, to smile towards my young brother. Her smile, however, faded as soon as she saw me, followed by a brief crinkle of her nose that made her glasses droop further and she had to push them up. At the same time, she got to her feet, ready to get away from here for sure.