Devil’s Thirst: A Mafia Stalker Romance (The Moretti Men Book 1)
Devil’s Thirst: Chapter 37

My sister is the last thing I want to deal with right now. If Conner hadn’t been so pissed and Amelie so insistent on space, I never would have left that apartment. We were turning a corner. I could feel it. Instead of resolving our issues, I’m out in the rain about to get my ass handed to me for a second time today. The only two women in this world that I love, and I’ve hurt both of them.

The only thing darker than my mood is the sky overhead. Damn clouds came out of nowhere, just like my problems. Everything was gravy one minute, then shit the next.

The downward spiral continues when I get to Noemi’s place. There’s a severity to the atmosphere that charges the air. A quiet stillness that makes me feel like one wrong step will end in my beheading.

“The kids still napping?” I ask Conner as we step into the living room.

“My mom ended up taking them for the day.” He walks me to where Noemi sits on the sofa, a steaming mug in her hands.

Her face is blotchy, eyes puffy from crying. I knew as much. Conner had said so on the phone. He also said if I didn’t come over and “get my head out of my ass”—his words, not mine—he would do the job himself. The way he’s shooting daggers at me confirms that he’s yet to cool down. What I don’t understand is why. I’m not as present as I could be, but there are worse crimes. Why do they both seem so worked up?

“Hey, Em. I’m sorry I forgot to come by earlier. I’ve had a lot going on.” I sit next to her, my body angled toward hers. It makes me think of all the times we watched movies together as kids.

A twinge of regret twists painfully in my chest.

Noemi smiles through her tears. “I’m sorry to be a pain, but I really needed to talk to you.”

“What’s up? The kids okay?”

“The kids are fine. And despite how it looks, I’m good, too.” She gives her husband a look that must signal him to leave us alone, though he only removes himself as far as the kitchen table. I wouldn’t leave either if I were him.

“You don’t look fine. I’m sorry if I’m the reason. I know I haven’t stayed in contact like I should have,” I admit quietly.

“It’s not that, either. Well, that’s part of it, but I’ve understood. I promise.”

The silence presses in on my eardrums, pressure building all around me. “Then what’s got you so upset?”

She inhales deeply, then blows the breath past her nose as though preparing herself.

For what? What the fuck is going on here?

“You saw my email that I put all your stuff in storage?”

“Yeah, I actually stopped by not long after I came back.”

She nods almost to herself. “I considered having an estate agent get rid of everything when we sold the house. It wasn’t long after you’d left for Sicily, and you said you didn’t want any of it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to wade through all the memories. But I eventually decided I didn’t want to risk losing something of Mom’s that I would have wanted to keep. It took me a couple of months. I went through her bedroom and closet, then boxed up your room. At the last minute, I decided to look in Dad’s office in case there was anything of Mom’s in there.” Noemi stares at the mug in her hands, her chin starting to quiver. “I found a stash of old letters with pictures. They were from Umberto’s mother, giving Dad updates about him from the time he was little.” The sympathy and remorse in her eyes when she lifts them to mine clamps a fist around my throat.

Umberto was Dad’s lieutenant, essentially. His right hand. He was close to Noemi’s age, brought on to work for Dad when he was maybe sixteen and became a semi-permanent fixture in our home. Loyal to Dad until the very end.

“Why would his mother send Dad updates about him?” Had Dad bought Umberto in some kind of strange trafficking arrangement to breed loyal soldiers? It’s far-fetched, but my father was capable of anything.

Noemi is fighting back sobs, unable to meet my eyes any longer. “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I kept thinking surely you’d come back, but then years passed. I considered not saying anything at all, but … but I couldn’t bear carrying that. You know I’m not the secretive type.”

“Bear what, Em? What are you trying to tell me?” My tone is harsher than it should be, and I hear the scrape of a kitchen chair as Conner rises to his feet.

“Umberto was our half brother,” she whispers, her eyes pleading with me to understand. To forgive.

I hear her words, but they don’t make any sense in my head.

“He couldn’t have been. We’d have known.”

I would have known if I killed my own brother.

Her head shakes slowly side to side. “I’m not sure he even knew. We looked into it, though, and it’s true. Umberto was born six months before me. I wanted to know who this woman was that Dad had been with. When we found her, she was practically destitute. Dad had been helping her get by, but not with much, and without him, she was facing eviction. She’s kind. I could see why he’d been with her. She wasn’t all that different from Mom.”

I want to slap my hand across my sister’s mouth to keep her quiet. To stop her words from ripping apart my world as thoroughly as if the rain outside was made of pure acid. But I don’t. I can’t. My entire body is frozen solid with shock while Noemi continues.

“She’s a victim of his as much as the rest of us. I decided I wanted to help her, which is why I felt like you needed to know the truth. I didn’t want you to replace out some other way and hate me for hiding it from you.” She pauses, her voice lowering. “I’m so sorry, Sante. I hate to make things worse. You’ve been so hard on yourself about everything that happened, but you were just a kid.”

“I was sixteen when he killed her,” I say tonelessly. “That’s old enough to read the writing on the wall.”

“I didn’t know either. They both hid the destructive nature of the relationship better than I could have imagined.”

“You caught on and tried to stop him.”

“Only because Mom told me right before she died.”

I rocket to my feet, my rage boiling over. “He did the same fucking thing to you as he’d done to her right in front of my fucking face, and I still didn’t see it.” The manipulation. The nuanced threats sprinkled into everyday conversation. There were clues, but I simply ignored them.

Conner storms over, but Noemi tries to call him off with a swipe of her hand.

“We don’t see what we don’t want to see. That’s natural. Umberto practically lived with us, and I never noticed how much he looked like Dad until they were both gone. That’s how our minds protect us.”

I recall the pride in my father’s voice when he spoke about Umberto. I think back to when Umberto first started coming by the house and how upset Mom was. I told myself she didn’t want work brought home. I convinced myself the reason Dad brought Umberto into the fold rather than me was because I was too young. I told myself everything but the truth.

“It’s a tempting excuse, but it doesn’t change the fact that I killed our brother.”

“No,” Conner interjects. “But I would have if you hadn’t. Maybe you forget that I’m the one who killed your father. Your relation to them doesn’t change the fact that they were both rotten.”

He’s right, but it doesn’t nullify the geyser of molten anger rising inside me.

I’m so fucking sick of living with this guilt. My innate weaknesses caused me to lose so much when none of it was necessary. If I’d been less naive. If I’d been strong enough to see the world for what it is.

“I have to go,” I say tonelessly.

If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to lose my shit.

They must sense the bleak nature of my mood because neither of them tries to stop me. The rain has let up, though the sky is every bit as ominous as before. I have no business going back to Amelie’s place while my head is such a mess, but I need to check on her. I drive home in silence. No music. Only me and my seething anger at my father.

I hate that he’s not here for me to punish.

I’d thought I was over that emotional hiccup and had moved on to learning from the experience, but this has sent me reeling back to the past. I feel like that teenager who got shipped off to Sicily all over again, and that makes me angrier than anything. That my father, yet again, has made me feel powerless, even from the grave.

When I let myself into the apartment, Freya begins to growl. I assure her it’s okay, but the noise is enough to wake up Amelie where she’s fallen asleep on the sofa.

“Sorry to wake you,” I say in a hollow voice. I feel so shitty I can’t even look at her, afraid she’ll see the shame in my eyes.

“It’s okay. I hadn’t even meant to fall asleep.” She stands.

“You can stay there. I can’t stick around. I just wanted to check in.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks warily, her voice etched in concern. I don’t want her concern or her pity. I don’t deserve any of it, and I know if I tell her what I’ve learned, she’ll say the same things as my sister.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

“If it’s got you this upset, I think I should know.”

“No,” I snap, finally meeting her wide eyes. “Nothing you can say or do will change any of it. The problem is that no one fucking tells the truth. Families keep secrets from one another, which leads to people making bad choices because they don’t have all the facts. If people would just be fucking honest about who and what they are, we could all go about our fucking lives.”

I’ve taken out my anger on Amelie and regret every word of it the second it’s out. Even more so when I see the wounded crease in her brows. She looks close to tears, and I’m disgusted with myself.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just upset, okay? I need to clear my head, and I’ll be good once I’m back.”

I don’t risk staying a second longer. She’s safer with Freya right now than she is with me. I’ll have to make things up to her in a big way once I get my head on straight.

Once I’m in my car, I text Noemi.

Me: What’s his mother’s address?

Noemi: Why? You’re making me nervous. She’s a good woman.

Again, my anger surges. I’m not going to fucking hurt the woman, but Em doesn’t know that. She only knows that I’m upset, so I rein it in and try to explain.

Me: I just want to see her, I swear. Not even going to talk to her.

The conversation dots come and go twice before a text with the address lights the screen. I put it into my GPS and start to drive. On my way, I pick up a bottle of whiskey because fuck if I don’t deserve a drink.

Evening sets in early because of the heavy clouds overhead, making it hard to see by the time I arrive at the building. I don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s not like I even know who to look for—I just feel like I need to be here. To process. Maybe to grieve. Fuck if I know.

I watch people come and go on the sidewalk as I sip my whiskey straight from the bottle. The next thing I know, two kids knock on my window and light streams in all around me. It’s morning, and I need to piss like a motherfucker.

“I told you he wasn’t dead,” one of the kids says to the other when I open the door.

“Jesus, I feel like I might be.” Did I drink that whole damn bottle? Not even close, but what I did consume was enough to give me a wicked headache.

The kids snicker at me, then run off. I look up and down the sidewalk, trying to figure out where I can piss, when a woman rounds the corner, several reusable grocery sacks hanging from her arms.

I physically flinch, feeling like someone’s put a fist into my gut.

She looks so much like him. I don’t doubt for a second that it’s her—Umberto’s mother.

She locks eyes with me and slows. The world around us disappears while time stands still. In our momentary bubble outside of time and space, I sense she’s just as unsettled as I am. Just as wounded.

A car whizzes past us, kick-starting the world back into motion.

I take a small step backward. The woman takes my movement as her cue to pass. She walks forward, her eyes fixed on the sidewalk at her feet. We don’t speak to one another. I think we both prefer it that way, or maybe it’s just me. It’s hard to trust my own judgment at this point. What I do know is she’s merely a normal woman taken in by a conman like all the rest of us.

The truth is somewhat deflating, but not in a bad way, per se. It’s simply sad to know what could have been without the poisonous influence of a selfish, evil man.

And if you let him drive a wedge further between you and Noemi, you’ve let him win.

Shit, it’s the truth.

I’ve been letting my father steal that relationship from me for years now. That has been my choice, as much as I hate to admit it. I let shame keep me away from my sister. The one person in the world willing to risk her life to protect me. What a terrible way to show my gratitude.

Fuuuuck.

I have a lot of apologizing to do—to both women in my life.

It’s time to go home.