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All I know is the future may be different than what I imagined, but my future is still mine to have, and I will not be allowing men like my father and brother destroy it.

“Thank you,” I tearfully whisper. “Thank you for giving me the strength to hold on to experience this with you.”

“I wasn’t going to let you slip away, Amelia. This life isn’t one I could walk without you. Not sure how many times I have to say it, but I will keep saying it if I need to.”

I’ve stood watching a lone figure linger at the Abbiati crypt, flowers clutched in his right hand. He’s smartly dressed as if he were going on a date, but if that were so, he is in no hurry to leave the cemetery.

I watch him begin to wipe his face, and as much as I hate to, I have to intervene. I have to learn who this stranger is.

“Can I help you?” I call out, restarting my movements to take me toward the family grave. I know I shouldn’t interrupt, but no one’s here and we’re on a time limit today. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry or disrupt, but I wasn’t expecting anyone to be out here.”

“I’m Ryan,” he states, clear and precise. “I’m Manuel’s... I mean I was...”

“Manuel’s boyfriend?” I ask, a small smile gracing my pale lips. It didn’t take rocket science to put the twisted fact together.

“Right. I’m sorry,” he immediately apologizes, blushing somewhat beautifully. “I wouldn’t have been here, but Manuel and I would have celebrated our sixth month anniversary together today. I know I had no right coming, but we joked about the date we’d have when we reached this point if we reached that point.”

I feel my eyes water, the bittersweet sting of a tragic love story still unraveling before me. This is Ryan, the man who made Manuel feel renewed, stronger, and confident. Even though Manuel has left a gaping hole in our family, it’s harder to see the obliteration his death has done to a man outside of the family fold we were so tightly knitted to.

“He told me about you,” I comment, musing the only way I can. “You were something special to him.” I watch as my words cut a little deeper than I wanted. “I’m so sorry your relationship with him was cut short,” I apologize, looking down, feeling that beat of dread begin to drum awake. “No one saw that coming.”

“No, you did,” Ryan accuses, cutting me off quickly. “You just never wanted to believe it. Manuel always wanted to believe Giovanni would sort himself out, but apparently to do so, he had to pay the cost.” He gives me a look, eying me up and down. “And from what your brother said at the funeral, so did you and him.”

“Enzo and I got lucky,” I feebly admit.

“Sometimes surviving doesn’t always make you the lucky one,” Ryan comments, his words sticking in my gut – he’s right. “It was great to finally meet you; I just wish it hadn’t been like this.”

“Don’t go,” I say, stopping him from leaving. “At least take my number. I would love to get to know the man that kept my brother so happy.”

There’s a sad smile on Ryan’s face, almost a grimace as if I’ve wounded him. It takes a moment before he shakes his head at me and declines my offer. “I would, but there are just too many memories.” He speaks so solemnly and heartbrokenly that I can tell he’ll have a hole in his heart that will never heal. “I really would but had it been different then I would have jumped at the opportunity. I can’t afford to fall in love with him more than I am when I know there’s no future now. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I sadly announce, accepting his option. “If you ever change your mind, then find us. All he wanted was us to make his life better than it was.”

“I know. Just make sure you love Zane with everything you have. If you don’t, you’ll only regret it,” Ryan speaks, a sad smile on his face before he gives me a final goodbye and hastily leaves before the tears threatening to fall cause him to unravel.

As I watch the grieving man walk away, I look back at the grave. The amount of hearts Manuel touched beyond our knowledge could be numerous, but seeing Ryan’s broken appearance tells me there are a few of us who will never recover no matter how bright our smiles. I take one last look as Ryan disappears from my sight and I take a deep inhale.

“So, that’s Ryan?” I ask, turning back to the marble front of the family crypt. “That’s who you hid from us?” I laugh deprecatingly. “He’s definitely swoon worthy, and I can’t believe you spoke to him about Zane.”

The moment my humor defuses, the sorrow weeps its way into my system. I take a moment of deliberation. At first a nervous wave creeps over me, like when I first came here to see my mother again, but the moment it crashes, the riptide is so powerful I tire of fighting and release a sigh.

“He’s just another thing to hurt us all,” I whisper, running my fingers over Manuel’s name. “He’s another person who lost out on a life with you.” My hand falls, flattening against the marble stone, and I bow my head. “I wish you were here. I wish you were here to join us. And all I can do is hope you'd be proud of everything we have in store, Manuel.” Allowing my eyes to flutter shut, I try to not let my emotions get the better of me. “I don't know what will happen with Giovanni, but he'll never ever get a free pass anymore. He will never have a place in our family. He ruined that the moment he even thought of his plans for us.” Finally opening my eyes, I allow my hand to drop away from the stone wall and I stand up straight. “I just wish you were around to get this chance with us. Especially after meeting Ryan.”

“Who’s Ryan?”

I spin around, falling over my own feet as I do so to find my father standing before me. He’s dressed down in jeans and a simple shirt, the businessman persona completely wiped out of existence. Ever since that day at the hospital, he has worn grief as if it were made for him. His doleful eyes do nothing to me now, my compassion annihilated, much like my love.

“Had you been more welcoming before all hell broke loose, you would have known about him,” I comment, my tone sardonic and catty. “Why are you here?”

“I came to pay my respects,” my father replies, flicking his gaze to the tomb. “Whatever you may think of me, Manuel was my son and your mother was my wife.”

I scoff, laughing minimally. “That should have been something you had thought about before you had a hand in everything that’s happened.”

I decide to cut my visit short, so begin to walk toward my father, but only so I can get to the car and flee. However, as I bypass him quietly and without a farewell, he reaches for me and gently wraps his hand around mine.

“Amelia, bambina,” he says, catching my attention.

“It’s just Amelia, now,” I respond with a shrug to get his grip off me. “There isn’t anything you can say or do to make this right. You did the one thing that ruined your chances.” I watch him, amazed as he stands confused, so I decide to enlighten him. “You let Gio go. If you had any ounce of remorse, any hope of saving your family above your reputation, then you’d have made sure he went to the right people. Not your fucking brother.”

“I want to fix this,” my father argues, definite. “I will fix this.”

“Sorry, Sal, but you can’t fix this.”

***

“Enzo, think about it!”

That stops me from throwing the last of my items into the cardboard box ready to move out. I stand there listening, but there’s utter silence that follows the statement. I worriedly look at Zane, who’s also stopped all movement to listen.

“Go and see what’s happening, I’ll sort the rest of your things.” Zane gestures to me, coming over to take the clothing out of my hands and get me to go and find out what’s happening exactly. “I’ll be right down.”

“Okay,” I whisper, braving the fact that my father is soon to find out what has become of us. “Don’t be too long,” I say, tossing the comment over my shoulder as I leave.

I hear him tell me that he won’t be and I continue out onto the landing. I look down the corridor toward the stairwell. The only light emitting the long walkway of rooms is from the stairs themselves. Daylight assaults the end of the corridor, sprinkling a delicate ray into the darkness into the windowless area.

“No!” Enzo finally bellows, clearly after some quiet deliberation.

I rush toward the stairs, making it I find my father reaching out for Enzo only to have his lash out as he fights to get away from him. It’s total red rage disgust that has Enzo forcing distance between him and our father, driving the older man to recoil.

“I don’t want some empire, some abundance of power to feel like you’re asking for forgiveness. Believe me,
Sal
,” he emphasizes our father’s name, the first time he’s never used it, “You’d need to try a lot harder than offering up this pathetic excuse for a life.”

“It’s always been yours, though,” my father argues, a desperate man, fearful of his own son. “You’re my heir; you’re the one who will continue my legacy.”

“You’re right, I am your heir, but I will never be what you want me to be. I want to be in control of my own life, I want to do good and not terrorize people. I don’t want whatever you’ve set up for us to inherit.” Enzo remains strong, his voice confidently carrying each syllable of his words. “I don’t want whatever family I make in the future to be born into a world so driven by money and revenge. I never wanted it. I was only here to protect my brothers and sister.”

“That’s not true,” my father argues, and I rush down the stairs as Carlo and Bruno enter. Zane now closely follows as promised.

“Oh, it is,” Enzo scolds, laughing mirthlessly. “I was here for my brothers and sister and now one of them is dead because of that action. So, I’m doing what I should have done years ago... I’m finally giving them the life no one bothered to fight to give me.”

“Fight to give you nothing?” my father mocks, disbelief being a mortal enemy to him.

I go and stand beside my brothers, a union of warriors who have fought the biggest battle of their lives and are ready to retire for a better life. He seems to think that after this, once the grief has wallowed itself away, we’ll be the family he fooled himself into believing was perfect and happy. However, as silence hangs around us, it’s now that my father sees we mean what we’re here to. He now sees us as the alliance we always remained beneath the blood and guts exterior of the Dio Lavoro.

“So, you’re leaving,” my father begins, pausing to breathe through his mounting anger, “What is this in aid of?” he asks, confused by his son’s sudden wayward logics. “What will you gain from leaving everything to get nothing?!”

“A revolution,” Enzo states, no derision in his voice.

“A revolution,” my father retorts, parroting Enzo’s words. “You wouldn’t know a revolution if it came and smacked you in the face! You only know what I have told you, what I have given you, what I have spent your entire lives spoiling you with!”

“Now, that’s where this all changes,” Enzo snaps.

“How do you propose to do that?”

“With the help of Gino,” Bruno speaks up, not saying grandfather just to effect purposes. “Did you know that man has accrued quite the establishment after the devastation you forced upon him. He also knows full well about how Madre died... the whole truth. He’s also well aware of the activities of Enzo and Carlo over the past few years and how Amelia tried to make a run, but you stopped her by sending her to Italy.”

“You have no secrets,” Carlo finalizes.

The final nail hits our father’s face as realization dawns in the darkest of clouds.

“There’s nothing keeping us here,” Carlo adds, no emotion to carry his words.

“I’ll give you your inheritance now, I’ll let you live free, work for someone else, but you don’t have to leave.” My father begins to look wildly back and forth between us all, fighting for a response, begging us to reconsider. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll break all my businesses, we’ll change. But you-don’t-have-to-leave,” he punctuates his words.

“We do,” I comment, adding to a hefty weight of truths. “This isn’t our home anymore. It’s been our personal hell for years, and we have all decided to leave it behind.”

“We aren’t surviving anymore,” Enzo states, comfortably stepping into his place as the new leader of this family. “And it’s time you realized what you have done to this family, Sal.”

It’s now that my father’s face begins to ashen. The extent of deceit run just as deep as his own and betrayal is something he has lived many close encounters with.

Enzo shakes his head sadly; an end of an era is just about to explode. “I really hope you love having this house to yourself, Sal. At the very least this is what you deserve.”

“You don’t mean it,” my father desperately says. “You’ll be back!”

I laugh, even hearing the men beside me chuckling along. Our father has no idea just how planned and plotted this is. He hasn’t a clue how long in the making this end result has taken, but he will.

“We’re leaving and we won’t be back,” I state, forcing myself to be the bearer of bad news and fuck me, it felt good! “We’re finally fixing our lives.”

“You have only yourself to thank for everything that’s happened,” Bruno comments, offering one of his final jabs at our father. “They’re finally getting the life you could never give them.”

“How is this fair that this is what I get?” our father asks, his eyes now doleful, listless.

“You also get to watch us leave,” Enzo comments, his tone sharp and rugged. “Remember it well because it’s all you’re going to have of us now.”

With that, he begins the march out. Carlo and Bruno follow, Zane and I do, too. We walk toward the blistering heat waiting just outside the door, promises of utter bliss hanging in wait, happiness begging us to enjoy it. There’s a new life just on the other side of this brick and mortar, but my old life is still one that bellows and howls and attempts every whisper to lure me back.