REESE

chapter twenty three.

Third Person POV:

The eyes are the window to the soul.

A very popular phrase that holds more significance and truth than we could ever really imagine. It is frankly quite astonishing knowing how much we can learn about the thoughts and feelings of a person, just by looking at their eyes. Happiness, excitement, surprise. Our eyes brighten, while our pupils dilate in an involuntary response. Anger, wariness, fear, terror. Our eyes narrow causing our eye colour to darken. This is a response we cannot feel but onlookers can identify if they look close enough. Pain, heartbreak, sadness, confusion. Our sensitive eyes glisten with emotion and can sometimes turn dull. Inadvertently conforming into a sort of distant staring of someone who is just not fully 'there'. People can learn to mask their emotions like they never existed using their facial features but a person's eyes will always tell you what you need to know. Learn to read the eyes, you in turn learn to read the person.

Our eyes are unguarded, unprotected, and unlike our mouths, our eyes don't lie.

So that's why when Alexander Di Genova looked into the eyes of his little sister for the first time in ten years, he was engulfed with a consuming emotion that shook his very core and derailed the images he had of the baby sister that once loved him.

He felt despair. Complete and utter despair.

The familiar blueish-green eyes that used to look at him with such adoration, happiness, respect, awe and love were now looking at him with an emptiness and unfamiliarity that was completely and utterly foreign to him.

It was then, at that moment when he made eye contact with her, he realized just how desperate he was to change the way those eyes looked at him. He didn't care about what he had to do, he would get those eyes to brighten when they looked at him once again, even if it was the last thing he would ever do.

It was ironic wasn't it? The eyes he fought so hard to ignore, were now doing exactly what he once wanted. But now Alex was fighting Koda's eyes for a different reason, he was fighting for their attention. The only difference was that Koda's eyes no longer wanted or needed that attention anymore.

The Di Genova brothers fought hard to obtain their titles and earn the respect of their own Mafia and then in-turn the rest of the Mafia world. Ever since Alex took over as the Don, Gavino took over as the Underboss, and Max and Rocco took over as the Capo's of the Italian Empire, they relished in the formality and respect people showed when they were near. However, seeing their little sister treat them like business transactions instead of her blood brothers, caused them to feel waves of grief and terror like they had never felt before.

She called them by their titles and full names instead of the nicknames she created when she was young that always seemed to show her love and endearment towards them.

They never hated formality as much as they did in that moment.

They had finally found their sister. After years of searching, hacking, failing, and then trying again, the whereabouts of their sister lay right in their hands but they were held back by a question that no one thought to address.

What now?

What were they supposed to do when they figured out where she was? What were they supposed to say? It was painfully obvious that what they chose to do and say was the wrong thing. She wanted nothing to do with them, but they wanted everything to do with her. The Di Genova's were just now realizing that all the struggle they went through when looking for her was simply the easy part. The reconciliation, and the plea for forgiveness was going to be the hardest thing they would ever have to fight for.