Broken Pieces

CHAPTER {14}

DOMENICO

My head was sunk in between my shoulders as I sat on the bathroom floor. My knees were brought up to my bare chest and my elbows lay on them. I hated myself. I hated myself for not being able to protect Akari as she had clearly been through a lot.

That was the only thing I never seemed to get right. The twins have been kidnapped, the house was once invaded causing Armano to be in the hospital, Alexandros was in an accident because I had sent him on a mission.

And now Akari has bulimia all because I never took her in earlier. I let out a sigh tipping my head back and resting it on the wall. I never seemed to get anything right. I could even see it in the dietitian's eyes that she was disappointed in me.

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"You need to make meal plans for her. It's best not to have her go over five hours of food to avoid purging and plan her meals to avoid bingeing. Bulimia is a hard recovery process, especially if you get used to it but with good monitoring after meals, she'll be fine." The dietitian finishes looking up from her clipboard.

She made eye contact with me and you could see her anger in her eyes. It was a common look I got from every older person who works for me in the Mafia, it wasn't new to me. She looked like she had a lot to say but she didn't say anything and stayed glaring daggers into my eyes. Our eye contact was cut off by the door opening to our left and Akari walked in.

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The look on her face broke me. She looked so broken. Everyday I wonder what happened to her, why she had so many scars littering her neck and probably the rest of her body.

I'm not stupid, I know my mother and I know she had something to do with it. But even with our share of abuse from her, none of us turned out like she did. She looks so dull and defeated.

Not once had she smiled since she got here. I mean how could she when Alex and Zachariah are throwing insults at her twenty-four seven. I tried to figure out why they treated her like that, then I realized how she looked exactly like our mother.

It was hard to catch at first because of the scars on her face but when you really looked at her, she was a replica of our mother. It hurt Alex and Zach the most because whenever she did show affection to show our father that she "cared" she'd only show it to them.

But it was occasional affection, the one she truly loved was Zachary. He was her golden child. I thought him of all people would take Akari living here badly but he seemed to like her. I guessed maybe since she looked so much like mom, he saw her as an angel.

He was honestly the luckiest of us all as he witnessed the good side of our mother and received less torture from our father. And then followed Zachariah, though he didn't receive as much affection as Zachary did he also saw the good side of mom and also didn't get much torture.

That caused a wedge between the two. Zachariah didn't like the fact that Zachary got more attention than he did and he hated that. So he became the trouble maker. Which was a cliche, the bad boy twin and the sunshine golden boy twin.

That left Alexandros and Armano.

Armano was the most neglected that he wasn't even tortured because half the time, they'd forget he even existed. He was the cliche middle child that no one knows exists until they do something great. Besides that, I basically raised him along with Mrs. Gardener.

Alexandros was noticed because he was always with Armano when they were kids. He saw him as his role model, even in school he always said he wanted to be like him one day. That was until he got to high school and became an egotistical teenager who only thought about himself. It's actually better now that he's grown up though.

And the there was me. My torture was indescribable. I had to take the fall for everyone. Zachariah's punishments were mine. Along with Armano's and Alexandros's and Zachary's. They were all mine and I took them with as much strength as I could but I could only take so much.

I was only just a kid.

My father was merciless with the punishments, especially since they were on me. It didn't make it better that he was always drunk whilst doing them.

My mother never cared for me but she did want me to overly succeed in whatever I did. 'Do better Domenico.' 'That's not how you do it Domenico.' 'You're a disappointment Domenico.' Those were most of the sentences she repeated to me every day.

It was not hard to see that our family started falling apart the moment I was born. The way they raised me was how they wanted to raise the others but the satisfaction wasn't enough, that's why the punishments got less and less the more children they brought into the world.

As I came back to reality I realized I had already taken my evening shower and was headed down to talk to Akari before dinner. It had been an hour or two since we came back from the appointment and Akari had been in her room the entire time.

I knocked on her door and heard a faint, 'come in' from inside the room. I opened the door and saw her lying on her back staring at the ceiling. I closed the door behind me and made my way towards her bed. I sat at the foot of the bed and watched as she sat up and rested at the head of the bed with her back resting on the headboard.

I looked back at her and looked down at the floor. "I know you haven't fully settled in yet and it's clear you don't trust any of us but please if there's something bothering you, you can tell me. I'm here for you." I said and that was the third time I had said 'please.'

It was a foreign word in my vocabulary, I got so used to just demanding and getting what I wanted that the need to plead was unnecessary. There were a few beats of silence before she let out a sigh. "My whole life I never felt comfortable in my body and that was because I was always insulted for the way it looked." She paused and took a deep breath and continued.

"I tried not to let their words get to me. I tried to look in the mirror and be proud of what I saw. I tried... but it wasn't enough. My...mother was the first one to take action. She was the one to force me to vomit and insult me afterwards." She stopped and I wanted to look at her but I wanted her to be comfortable and I don't think looking at her would make this conversation any better.

"I got used to it that when she stopped, I continued. I wanted to be pretty for her. I wanted her to call me her princess and call me beautiful, but she never acknowledged what I was really doing for her. But it was already too late to stop." She sniffed and I couldn't hold myself back anymore and I looked at her.

She immediately ducked her head into her knees and sniffed again. "I understand if you don't want me anymore. I'm disgusting, fat and not pretty enough to be apart of your family. It seems as if I'm ruining everything." She said, her voice slightly muffled due to her knees.

I was quiet for a bit still looking at her head tucked into her knees before I stood up and went to sit next to her. "Can I touch you?" I watched her tense and shake her head and I respected her wishes.

"Family isn't about looks or personality. It's about blood and trust. What kind of guardian would I be if I let you go just because of an eating disorder?" I say and she sniffs before mumbling, "It's not all," and she rested her chin on her knees and looked at the wall in front of her bed.

"What?" I asked, wanting her to repeat herself to confirm if I heard the right thing. She only shook her head and said, "Nothing," I looked at the side of her face. All I wanted to do was to protect her as if she was a fragile glass. But from the looks of it, she was already broken.

I guess all I can do is try to mend her back though I wish my brothers would try to do the same. The thing is I can't force any of them to do something they wouldn't want to do. It hurt so see that she was going through this alone. With us, we had each other but she as completely alone.

"Dinner is ready." I said as I stood up and left her room without another word.