Sorellina | ✔️

Chapter Fourteen

EMILIO

Once Maddie is put to bed, we meet Alessandro in his office.

"You're letting Maddie attend school?" Xander is saying as I come in. He has the same anger Alessandro and our father had at his age.

"Yes, do you have a problem with that?" Alessandro challenges calmly.

"You said you wouldn't. You said you were going to keep her home-"

"And I changed my mind," Alessandro says.

"Because none of you know how to say no to her. Elijah letting her negotiate everything, Emilio letting her decide where she goes, and now you're letting her go to school. You all lost your fucking backbones," He says furiously.

"And I think you lost your sense who the hell you're talking to," Elijah says sharply. Xander shuts down, seemingly remembering who he's challenging. Alessandro cuts through the tension.

"Emilio, you said Maddie was talking to a boy over the phone when we returned?" Alessandro asks.

I'd briefly mentioned it to Sandro before dinner. Not just because of the 'no boys' rule, but because it's simply known that Alessandro needs to be made known of everything. For the safety of us and the business.

"Yeah," I say, "She misses them."

"I heard her conversation as I came home from the gym. She said she misses 'home', she kept using that word, she said she misses home...She said she misses her parents" Xander adds, "I feel like she's being ungrateful, does anyone else feel that way?"

"I feel like you're being an insensitive asshole is what I feel like," Carlo says.

I cut in, "Imagine being torn away from a home you've known all your life to go live with 6 brothers you didn't know you had, you wouldn't miss the familiarity you had?"

Xander hesitates, so I continue, "I don't think you understand that you and Francesco are the main ones making this transition so hard on her, to the point where she would rather stay with her abusive parents than with her brothers-"

"Enough. All of you. Xander, Carlo, Francesco, turn in. Emilio, Elijah, a word?"

They leave, and Elijah and I are left in Sandro's office.

Sandro pushes his laptop back slightly.

"I've arranged to have a few of our men stationed within a few a blocks of the school should anything happen. Elijah, you'll be driving her tomorrow morning 30 minutes prior to her school day to speak with Principal Thompson about switching her schedule around to align her lunch time with the twins-"

"Don't you think she should have lunch time with her class? It would make the transition easier if she spent time around people her age at school," I cut in.

Sandro shakes his head, "I don't want her eating lunch unsupervised. This is one thing that isn't up for discussion. We lead very dangerous lives, the mafia is already no place for a 13 year old girl, and now we're sending her out. I'm not taking any risks." Sandro was fully against sending her to school in the first place, I know there's no budging him on this. If there's anything he cares about more the business, it's this family.

He arguably took our father's death the hardest, he blamed himself all the time, wondered about every possible way it could have been avoided, and played a huge part in the stoic emotionless man he is today.

Having to take over the mafia when he was freshly out of school and raise all of us didn't help, and then everything happened with Maddie. I don't know for sure...But I'm almost certain he believes if dad was still here, Maddie wouldn't be how she is now.

And I can't help but agree with that.

We can't be what Maddie needs, when all she needs is a steady parent.

Which we know she'll never be able to experience.

MADDIE

At around midnight or 1am, I wake up from a nightmare that has me shaking. I don't remember the entire dream, but ghosts of mom and Daniel linger in the back of my mind.

I reach over to my nightstand to grab my pills to help with the dull ache in my ribs. My brothers incoherent voices died down about an hour ago and I don't want to risk waking them up.

My hand touches a smooth flat surface and I pull out the picture frame.

When I look at it in the dim moonlight coming in through the window, my heart drops.

When I was around 8 or 9, I don't quite remember, my mom and Daniel had an odd character switch. It lasted only a short amount of time, but she took me to a carnival, we took pictures and spent all day together.

She was like an actual mother.

When we got home, she got mad about something and we were right back into the normal cycle.

Just for a day, she had a normal life...Just for a day.

I cling onto that feeling as if it's a lifeline. I buried the picture deep in my nightstand, never meaning for it to resurface ever again. Seeing it now brings unwanted tears, and before I know it, I'm trembling from the silent sobs.

I don't even know why I'm crying.

It could be because my mom died, it could be because my mom died years ago. It could be because...I never really had a mom in the first place.

There's a soft knock on my door and Francesco walks in, I hastily toss the picture towards the nightstand drawer, it hits the side and lands on the floor. I panic, trying to wipe away any trace of tears.

Francesco flicks the light on and looks at me.

The thing with Francesco is that he's been nothing but hostile towards me, but for some reason, I feel as though I never know what to expect from him.

"Thought I heard you crying," He says, he looks just as unsure as I am. It seems as though he's not used to dealing with crying 13 year old girls.

"No, I just had a nightmare, that's all," I say shakily.

He must see my nightstand drawer open and assume I was just taking medications because I'm overwhelmed, "Next time you have a nightmare, we expect you to find one of us, alright?" He says sternly, but there's a note of gentleness I'm not used to from him.

I nod silently. His eyes find the picture frame on the floor and he reaches down and picks it up, examining it curiously.

I don't know what to expect, from Francesco I never do. He hesitates, for a moment not saying anything.

"You really miss her?" He finally says.

I don't miss the hint of judgement, nor do I miss the genuine confusion in his voice.

But in reality, I don't know how to answer his question.

Of course I miss her, she was my mother. But what parts of her do I miss? Why do I miss her? What do I wish I could get back?

"Sometimes," I say, "They were horrible, but they were all I had."

His expression hardens at that, and I realize confirming that my abusive guardians are the better option compared to the family that gave me a roof to live under isn't the model definition of grateful.

He opens his mouth almost 10 times just to close it again, no words seem to come to his brain, that's something I can relate to. Maybe being bad with words runs in the family.

"Okay," He says.

"Okay," I respond.

He hesitantly sets the picture down in the drawer. Almost as if he wishes he could just take it away. As if he wants to erase my past and start everything over fresh. If only he knew how much I longed for the same thing.

He clicks the light back off and starts to walk out, but he pauses at the door, "You had us."