Somebody's Angel (#5 in a Military Romance / BDSM Romance series) (Rescue Me) (76 page)

“You don’t have to go in there, Marc.”

He tore his gaze away from the knobs to stare down at Angelina, taking a moment to shift his focus back to the present. The look of concern on her face melted his heart even more. She’d been his rock today. He’d made the right decision to include her in this exploration into his past.

“I have to,
amore
. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder.”

She furrowed her brows but nodded and squeezed his hand. Steeling himself once more, he turned back toward the closet. This had been one of their favorite places. Until…

He saw things so clearly now that hadn’t even broken loose during the interrogation.

He remembered one of the dreams that had haunted him in recent months—fighting against Gino in the military. Clearly, he’d been remembering this time when they’d pretended to fight battles against each other, vying for supremacy. Gino called it playing Romulus and Remus, but Marc didn’t like the comparison. Romulus had killed his brother, Remus.

He paused before asking, “Do you mind if I look inside?”

“Of course not, Marco. I’m not sure if you will see anything you remember, though. Francesca loves clothes—and shoes.” The woman looked away sheepishly. “I’m afraid I spoil her a bit, but I had my children late in life and didn’t expect to live to experience the joy of being a nonna.”

“You were another mother to Gino and me.” Marc blinked. He didn’t know what compelled him to say that, but once the words came out, he realized how true they were. He’d had no shortage of mother figures as a boy.
“Grazie.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. He absently stroked her arm in a comforting gesture before turning back to the closet door. He needed to complete this mission. Gaining access to this house and that closet was one of the main reasons he’d been drawn back to Italy so soon. The memories flitting forth in his consciousness since the interrogation proved to him this was very much where many of his issues began.

He’d found the house so quickly, as if his mind knew exactly where to go. Or perhaps Gino had led the way.

So why were his feet firmly glued to the ground and his eyes staring blankly at the closed closet door? His mind flashed to a time when Gino had taken refuge here. Apparently Marc wasn’t the only one who had hidden in this closet. This new scene from the past crashed in on his mind’s eye with dizzying speed.

Marco called out to Gino but heard no response. He knew Gino was hiding in the closet. Why didn’t he answer? The voices in the kitchen became heated. Someone argued. Why would they be yelling? Zietta Natalia screamed, “My sister is dead!”

No, Mamma was sleeping.

Marco walked over to the closet, always one of his and Gino’s favorite hiding places, after their wolf’s lair. When he reached out to open the door, he looked down and noticed he wore his Sunday suit.

“You in there, Gino?” The inside of the closet was dark. Maybe Gino hadn’t come in here after all.

Marco heard a sniffle and a rustling in the corner. Gino was in here! Marco got down on his hands and knees, hoping Zietta Natalia wouldn’t be upset if he got his pants dirty. He crawled inside anyway. Gino needed him.

“Go away, Marco. I don’t want to see anyone today.”

A gentle but firm hand on his back pulled him back into the moment. “I’m here, Marc. You won’t have to face this alone.”

Marc realized he was on hands and knees just outside the closet. He reached up and gripped Angelina’s hand as if she was all that kept him from falling into a deep, dark abyss. When she smiled, he relaxed his hold—a bit.

“Come inside with me,
amore
?”

She gave him a tremulous smile and nodded. Why hadn’t he realized before that having this brave woman at his side only made him stronger? She slipped off her shoes and went onto all fours beside him. Turning back around, he crawled closer to the door. When he reached it, he froze again. Somehow he knew touching that doorknob would be his undoing.

“Would you like for me to open it?”

Relief flooded him.
“Sì. Grazie.”

He’d reverted to the language of his boyhood, feeling he was back inside the body of that three-year-old who had hidden in this closet to block out the scary world outside. This place didn’t feel like a refuge to him anymore. Could he put himself back in there? Did he want to?

Angelina reached out and turned the knob. Slowly, she pulled the door toward them. He had to side crawl in order for the door to swing wide enough. It came to rest against the wall.

“Why don’t I go in first, Marc?”

He nodded, his vision bombarded by the sight of dozens of brightly-colored clothes, but they soon blurred and faded away.

Gino sat huddled in the corner. Crying. Gino never cried. Both were dressed in black suits, white shirts, and neckties. Marco stared at the scuffs on Gino’s shoes.

Gino carried something furry in his hand. “Here. You need this.”

Marco took the thing and saw it was a wolf’s mask. The gray fur around the eyes was soft when he petted it. He looked up at Gino. “What’s this for? It’s not All Saint’s Eve.”

“No, of course not. Mrs. Milanesi gave it to me because we play so much in our wolf’s lair. You need to use it to fool them. It won’t help me.”

“Fool who?”

Gino sighed. “Our new mama just got married.” Marco wasn’t sure what a wolf’s mask had to do with that—and why did Gino still call her their
new
mama? This mama, who used to be Zietta Natalia, had been taking care of them since their real mama went away. He didn’t know how long ago that was. It was harder and harder to remember their first mama anymore. He had only been three when she died. Marco understood now that death meant she would never come back. But Zia Natalia really was the only mama Marco remembered. Gino kept the memory of their first mother alive by talking about her.

“We need to be on our best behavior now, even more than when it was just Zia Natalia and us. We don’t know if this man wants other people’s kids or not.”

“What will wearing the wolf mask do?”

“I was studying in school about Romulus and Remus. They were abandoned by their real mama and then a she-wolf found them and took care of them.”

“Mama isn’t a wolf.”

Gino rolled his eyes. “No, but it’s like she’s the she-wolf in the story. She took care of us both. But she didn’t have a papa wolf around to make decisions for her. We have to pretend to be like Papa D’Alessio wants us to be or he’ll talk Mama into sending us away.”

Gino had gone from worrying about being rejected—first by Mama and now their new papa.

All of the sudden he had Marco worried, too. “But I like our new papa. He brings me candy.”

“Well, he’s just trying to get Mama to like him. I don’t trust him. You have to be careful who you trust, Marco. Not everyone will take care of you.” Then Gino turned around and began carving something into the wall.

“G for Gino.” Gino scratched out the letter with a paring knife from the kitchen.
“M for Marco.”

Marco didn’t know why Gino wanted to mess up Mrs. Milanesi’s wall. He hoped they wouldn’t get in trouble for it.

Then Gino carved another letter underneath the G. This time, an R. He didn’t explain what it meant. After carving “&R,” too, he turned to Marco.

“R&R is for Romulus and Remus.”

Marco nodded, even though he had no clue what it meant. Gino was smarter than he was, too. He needed to listen to his big brother.

“We played Romulus and Remus fighting over whose hill would be where the city would be built, but…”

“Don’t worry, Marco. I will always look out for you.”

Gino always kept him safe.

A painful keening sound filled his ears.

“Let it out, Marc.”

Jarred back to the present, Marc found himself huddled in the corner of a dark space. Curled against him, her arms around his waist, sat Angelina. She hadn’t let him come in here alone to face his ghosts.

To face Gino.

Guilt at how he’d treated his brother in his last months nearly ripped him a new one. Marc’s chest ached to the point of exploding.

“
Dio
, I miss him so much.” The pain hurt more today than it had when he’d heard the news of Gino’s death. Tears streamed down his face.

“That’s it. Let out all that pain you’ve buried for so long.”

He’d spent a decade telling himself Gino was a shithead who had betrayed him. Somehow that made the pain of losing him in Afghanistan easier to bear. Since Angelina had come into his life and he’d lowered some of his barriers, all these memories he’d kept under lock and key in the recesses of his mind kept blasting away at him. He hadn’t remembered his brother at all the way he was—only as some caricature he’d created to keep from owning up to how badly he must have hurt Gino by his rejection.

There wasn’t a damned thing he could do to unfuck that now, either. A million visits to his brother’s grave would never erase those last months.

“He died thinking I’d abandoned him.
Merda
, I
had
abandoned him.”

“I think he understood, Marc. He loved you so much.”

She didn’t know what he’d remembered, and he wasn’t ready to put it into words or even sure he ever would be able to do so. “Where’s Mrs. Milanesi?”

“She went to make us some tea.”

“The woman must think I’m a nutcase.” He sat huddled nearly in the fetal position in her granddaughter’s closet. Maybe he had finally lost it. The breakdown in the interrogation scene had only opened a crack into his broken psyche.

“I think she knew you’d need some time alone with your memories. Do you want to talk about them?”

Marc shook his head, an automatic reflex born of decades of being in survival mode and closed off emotionally. He’d worn Gino’s damned mask his entire life.

Merda
, he didn’t want to wear it any longer. He needed to share what he’d just remembered with someone he trusted. Angelina might even be able to help him sort out what to do now.

“He promised he would never leave me.”

“Gino?”

Marc nodded.

“I know he wouldn’t have left you if he could have helped it, Marc.”

A ragged sound of anguish filled the tight space, and Angelina hugged him more tightly.

“But I’m the one who deserted him. I lost my best friend that September day because of Melissa. I drove him to his death.”

She pulled away and framed his cheeks with her hands, turning him to face her. “Marc, listen to me. Gino chose to defend and protect his country, a mission he had prepared for by protecting and defending his little brother his whole life. He loved you so much, but he loved his country, too. His dying wasn’t your fault.”

Adam had assured Marc once that Gino loved being a Marine. Marc had tarnished his brother’s memory all because he’d misinterpreted Gino’s motives with Melissa. Why had it taken Marc so long to remember and accept the truth about Gino?

“He didn’t screw Melissa.”

“What?”

“In the parlor a few minutes ago, I remembered something. Gino had his clothes on. She was the only one naked. When I walked in on them, he gave me a look like ‘it’s about time.’ All I saw was Melissa—naked and on top of him. In my rage, I blotted out all the details.”

How many other things over the years had he misinterpreted through some faulty lens skewed by a history of abandonment and betrayal?

“Marc, you know he understood your anger. Big brothers expect their younger siblings to screw up. You thought your big brother, your best friend, was sleeping with that b—with your girlfriend.” Her body tensed, and he rubbed her arm reassuringly. He hated reminding her of his relationship with Melissa.

“I think Gino probably even welcomed your extreme anger, so you wouldn’t go back to her when you figured out he’d tricked you.”

He shuddered to think what life might have been like for him if he’d married Melissa. Gino most definitely had helped him dodge the bullet with Melissa’s name on it. No doubt in his mind Gino had proposed to Melissa just to make sure Marc didn’t get into trouble until Gino returned from his deployment. Removing the competition made it safe for Marc.

Grazie,
Gino.

He’d probably told her about the adoption hoping she’d see neither brother was going to have easy pickings to a fortune, although Melissa must have seen how Mama and Papa treated all of their children equally, blood or not.

Angelina stroked his cheek as she continued. “I know he expected to come home from Afghanistan and for you two to work this out, but…”

He thought about that a long while. “Do you really think so?”

“I have four overprotective big brothers. I
know
so, without a doubt.” She leaned her head on his upper arm. A comfortable silence ensued, and they simply held onto each other. “I wish I could have met him to thank him for being such a good brother to you. And we mustn’t forget that, if it wasn’t for him, you could be married to Melissa now. Where would that leave me—and you?” She grinned at him.

God, he loved this woman. “Perish the thought. I’m sure we’d have divorced by now, and she’d be living off whatever divorce settlement she would have gotten out of me and my family.”

Angelina smiled. “Marc, if Gino was even one-tenth of the man you are, he must have been very special indeed.”

“No, he was more like ten times the man I’ll ever be. I wish you could have known him, too,
amore
. I know he’d have approved of you. There’s never been anyone more perfect for me.” She looked up at him, and her chin shook with emotion as tears spilled down her cheeks, glistening in the light from the bedroom.

After the soul-searching he’d done over the past few months, not to mention today’s flashbacks, there was no longer any doubt in his mind that Gino had only taken Melissa away from him to protect his naïve, horny little brother from the Italian gold-digger. Marc hadn’t been experienced enough with women back then to see Melissa’s selfish motives—or to think beyond his cock. But his big brother sure had.