Turning Point||Book 2

49: Xenia/Romano

Xenia Butler

Time? Time evaporated from my grasp, like water through cupped hands, and I didn't need a functioning phone or a ticking clock to know that at least twelve hours had slipped by unnoticed. I hadn't left the spot in the room where I'd read the words of Romano's letter over and over again, and I suddenly felt disconnected from the passage of time.

Grief? Oh, I knew it well, intimately acquainted with its depths, corners and shadows. I had walked its lonely corridors, tasted its bitter tears. Yet, now, faced with the final loss of my twin, I found myself strangely numb. The well of sorrow within me had run dry, leaving only echoes of what once was. Was it exhaustion? Or had I simply grown accustomed to carrying the weight of mourning? Perhaps I'd shed all the tears I had left for her on the day she was declared to be in a vegetative state. Something had to be the reason for not crying for her, even though I wanted.

It must have been as a result of another emotion.

Rage.

This one was a relentless force in my chest, born from just one thing: a name. Rossi. From father to uncle, son to cousin, and to him. His letter had reached into the depths of my heart, ripping out the strings until they were shredded. His raw emotions, the apology, his confession—it all stirred something in my gut and chest. But it was his actions, the vivid description of them, that stoked the flames of anger in my soul.

How dare he presume, after seeing how much I'd been trying to make amends between Joe and I, that I wanted her life taken in place of mine?

It wasn't his place to make that choice. He could have asked me squarely, instead of choosing for me in such a callous manner, all in the name of preserving my life. He likely buried her alongside Renata and Ponzio—unfitting company for Joe. She'd never have wanted that, even though she didn't exactly like flowers over her gravesite.

God, I wanted to hate him. I tried to summon that emotion, to engrave his name into it, but all I felt was regret. Regret for not obeying his final orders.

I hadn't known his plans, not even a hint. It was clear why he kept it from me. Perhaps he saw it as a noble act, but to me, it was cowardice. To dispatch me and leave me with such a grim letter was proof. If I had reached that building, I would have called him a coward for not even mustering a proper goodbye, or a better explanation for why he couldn't have found a better way. All he could offer were empty words and a failed attempt at a goodbye in the form of sex. Damn Rossi. All of them.

He was a disappointment, a failure in my eyes. This was me speaking from a place of raw pain, a pain born from placing my trust in him as he'd requested. So this was the outcome of my trust—the goddamn death of my last living family member, and his pathetic attempt to compensate for it with his damned money.

There's really no world in which we could exist together. Nothing had ever been so true.

The tears streaming down my face weren't for Joe; they were for me, selfishly shed in my own sorrow.

I'd been trapped in this suffocating room for hours, the only sounds the creaking of the ceiling fan and the erratic pounding of my heart. It felt like I was burning alive, consumed by feverish thoughts. Another name haunted my mind: Salvatore. The Black Hand. Whatever title he preferred, it didn't matter—he wanted me.

And he'd get me.

Yes, I regretted disobeying Romano's orders. I regretted my futile attempt at heroism, trying to salvage what was already lost, because that decision had led me here. If I hadn't clung to a past that existed only in Romano's mind, I would have been far away from this chaos, far from yearning for the same man I didn't want anywhere near me.