Deviant Prince [Romano Brotherhood, #2]

28 | Massimo

16 years ago
The Romano Mansion; Chicago.

Mamma is gone for days sometimes. Santo is inconsolable. He worries for her, even though she has never spent a day worrying about him. He loves her, and every time, she gets a little closer to killing him. And it's like the closer she gets, the more he loves her.

Nobody knows of the disgust I feel towards it all. The abuse, the fights, the way Santo and Tommaso can still laugh together when Mamma's not here. The way my brothers love, like it's so easy. Worse, the mantra I've been repeating for years—that this is all for them, all to keep them safe—isn't working anymore.

Somehow, I know that this should inspire in me a certain depth of emotion, some kind of devastation.

But maybe because I just don't understand it, or them, all it does is leave a vague, sour taste in my mouth. I can't bring myself to care about any of it.

It's getting harder to keep my brothers alive. Mamma dismisses most of the house staff, and the place falls into disarray. Despite her episodes, which often end with one or all of us bloody and bruised, our main issue turns out to be food. There's nobody making sure we have any of it. Alerting the rest of the world to our situation seems like the one thing that would make everything worse, so I don't venture out of the oppressive walls of our prison. We eat when Mamma is lucid enough to send for food.

I know enough about my father's world to understand that Made Men look out for each other's families. The oath we all eventually swear binds us together as good as blood. If one man's wife suffers, the rest of the men take her in. They care for her because it honors the code. 

But nobody comes for Antonio Romano's family. Nobody helps us. We will always only have each other.

Tommaso is growing up into a rowdy, unpredictable mess. He's been raised in a hell house so I wasn't expecting anything different, but with Santo's issues—his anger digging deeper into him every day—it's too much to keep ahold of.

I lie awake sometimes trying to dissect my lack of emotional response to it all. It's almost relieving to be able to do that. The mental distance allows me to see it all clearly. We're dying in this house. I can feel it happening, but it has to be for the best.

It's those nights I wonder if I should just speed up what fate has already decided. 

I wake up forcing myself to be grateful Mamma hasn't killed my brothers yet and go to bed wondering if it would be better to kill them myself.

One morning, Mamma comes back after being gone for a week. We were beginning to think she was dead. I began hoping for it. But there she is, sprawled out on the floor in the kitchen, pale and sweaty.

The weeks after that are odd. She stops disappearing. Stops all the drugs and drinking, even starts showering and taking care of her appearance. It's like she woke up and decided she had mourned my father long enough. The change in her is fascinating. It only proves to me the pointless and complex nature of emotions.

They seem easy enough to control, even when the worst happens. Mamma couldn't control Papa, and I'm pretty sure she couldn't have stopped his death. The only thing she can do is stop crying about it, even if she still feels like her insides are rotting.

I practice it sometimes. Stretching my face into the foreign shape of a smile in front of the mirror. Laughing until tears streak my cheeks. At any given time I can express any given emotion, and none of it has to be real.

There's a kind of warped satisfaction to it. If I were to go out in the world, take a walk on the street, nobody who saw me would know what's happening to us. It's my secret, our secret.