A New hope

Chapter 21-sunday

Cassio P.O.V-

Sunday

Guilt is eating me alive. I knew I should never have taken her to that damn party. We were getting along so well, Ciana and I. I wanted her to like me, to favor me over our other brothers and the only way I could think of doing that was by making me seem cool by taking her to a party. All I did was hurt her and now she must hate me. My selfish pride thought I could protect her, but she was so adamant on going off with her friend, the Swedish girl, that I let her go off into danger alone.

It is my fault entirely, which is why I avoided her all yesterday in shame. not like she was really out of her room, but when our brothers went to check on her, I purposely left her alone. I knew she thought that it was my fault, she never would have been able to get there without me, she must be furious with me. I'm too much of a pussy to face her anger and disappointment.

Tullio's hand slaps down onto my back, breaking me from my cloud of self-pity. "Want to play a round of cards?" he asks me in Italian, our native language. It's usually the language we differ to if Ciana is not in the room. We usually don't do it out of secrecy but just because it's normal and how we have been doing it since birth.

I sigh looking at the card deck in his hand, we are all grounded, rightfully so, and with that means absolutely no electronics. So, board games and cards are one of our only forms of entertainment now. "Yeah, why not. Not much else to do." I reply to him also in Italian.

-

We've gone through 15 different games in the last two hours, and we are both starting to get bored out of our minds. "There you are," we both look to see Roman standing in the doorway of the game room, "you weren't answering my texts." I quickly look around making sure that Gio and Alessio aren't around. Lucio is currently snoring on the couch to my left and Elio is reading some weird self-help book in the corner of the large room. I turn back to him, "you can't be here Roman, we are all grounded. If Gio and Alessio see you they will go ballistic, no one is allowed in or out."

He raises an eyebrow. "What the hell did you do now? All of you grounded?" Shame fills my body, and I look down onto the ground. When I don't say anything, Tullio fills him in for me. "Ciana was hurt at the party Friday, bad." Roman's eyes fill with concern, and Elio looks up from his book in the corner. I see him starting to make his way over to us.

"Some asshole almost fucking raped her, "Elios seethes, eyes lit up in anger. Romans entire body tenses up, and he swifty turns to Elios now feet away, "What?" his voice full of promised violence, "who?"

"We don't know" I cut in, "She won't tell us."

"Is...is she okay?" Roman asks.

Tullio shrugs, "As good as expected, she's got bruises all over her. A huge handprint on her neck makes it look like she was choked out. Gio went to get her checked out at the base hospital this morning just to make sure" he looks at his watch, "She should just be getting out of her therapist appointment soon. Poor girl has been through too much."

Roman grasps my glass of water and cucks it against the wall, shattering glass and getting water everywhere. Lucio jumps from his sleep at the noise and falls ungracefully into the ground. He groans. We look towards Roman who still has his hand up from throwing. "Anyone up for a round of sparring?" he asks. We all nod, going to get up when Romeo Greco waltzes into the room. We all nod in respect to the left hand of the Mafia, the 3rd in command. Alessio walks in behind him, looking unimpressed but not surprised at Romans presence. "Do I have a gift for you boys," Romeo's slightly accented voice says. Romans face spits into a grin, resembling a Cheshire cat. He cracks his knuckles. Romeo continues, ignoring his brother's antics, "Diane Mitchell, Ciana kidnapper and tormenter."