Giovanni (Benedetti Brothers 4)

“Is he the one who put those marks on your back?”

She watches me cautiously. I already know the answer, but I want her to confirm it. I want her to know I know.

She nods.

“When?”

“After the attack on my father.”

“When he thought he’d killed Emil?”

She nods again. “I was lucky they didn’t find my father when they found me a month later. They just assumed he was dead.”

I hear her mistake. They. Not he. “Why did they do it?” I ask, curious if she’ll pick it up.

She pauses, but I can’t read her expression. She doesn’t mention the plural. “To punish me.”

“Why?”

She looks off, just beyond my shoulder, and it’s like she’s going back to that time. Her expression is fixed, but I see the emotions flickering through her eyes. The battle she’s waging against them on the inside. It takes her a long time to return her gaze to mine.

“Do we really have to do this?”

I nod.

“It’s a long, boring story.”

“I doubt it’s boring.”

“Alessandro and I, we aren’t twins. We were triplets. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” But I do catch her use of the past tense there.

“No one does, I guess. My brother, Stefano, died while we were still inside my mother’s belly. We weren’t to term yet, but the doctors knew my mother wouldn’t be able to carry us that long. But this was still…a surprise.

“When Stefano died, my mom went into premature labor. I was the first one delivered. The only one who came naturally. After me, there were complications, and they had to open her up to get Alessandro and Stefano out. When they did, when they were taking them out, that was when she died. My father lost my mother the instant he saw Alessandro’s face.

“He told me when I was older that Alessandro’s hand was wrapped around Stefano’s neck. Dad was drunk when he told me. I don’t think he remembered the next day. But to my father, Alessandro was the cause of not one, but two deaths, and he never forgot it. He hated Alessandro for it. And all those years growing up, I didn’t mind. I used my father’s affection against my brother, got everything I wanted. While he was hated, I was loved.”

She turns her eyes up to mine.

“I was a brat. I was awful to my brother. And I deserve his hate.” Emilia looks down at her lap where she’s wringing her hands. She has been since she started telling the story, but I’m not sure she was aware of it. “I could have helped. I could have made a difference with my father, but I didn’t.” She looks up at me again. “I chose not to.”

“You were a child. I doubt your mind calculated that.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I think I do, actually.”

She exhales loudly, shakes her head.

“Does Alessandro know where you are now?”

“He didn’t.”

“Was the whipping all he had planned for you?”

Her eyes study mine for too long before she nods in confirmation. But I know she’s leaving something out.

“But now that he knows dad’s alive, that he didn’t succeed in killing him, he’ll look for me. He’ll know I was the one hiding him.”

“How do you do it? The money, I mean? It must be expensive to hide him, pay for that equipment. I assume he has medical care.”

She nods. “He had set up a bank account for me from when I was little. Another perk of being the favorite. I don’t know if Alessandro knew about it. I guess not, or he’d have found some way to seize it. He can’t anymore. I’ve moved it. But there isn’t a lack of money.”

I move back around my desk, have a seat.

I open a folder on my desk, leaf through it, although I’ve already read its contents. “Your father, his condition is not improving, correct?”

She takes a deep breath in and raises her head so that her chin juts out as she glances at the folder, sees what I’m looking at. She stands, turns the folder over so she can look through it. “Why do you have this? It’s my father’s medical file.”

“I have a right to it, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think you do.”

“Well, if I’m responsible for him…”

“You’re not responsible for him. You’re just helping me keep him hidden for now.”

I don’t reply.

“Where is he?” she asks, closing the folder. Keeping hold of it.

“Sit down, Emilia.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

I scribble an address that’s about two hours out of the city on a sheet of paper, hand it to her. “He’s here.”

From the look on her face, she’s surprised I gave her the information. “And Nan too?”

I nod. “Would you like to talk to her?” I offer. “Just to confirm I haven’t murdered a dead man.”

“He’s not dead.”

“He’s not made any progress in four years. He wouldn’t be alive without the machines.”