Chapter 28 28

Chapter 28 28

“Don’t,” Isabella said. She stood suddenly. The chair scraped against the floor. “Don’t excuse me. Don’t try to let me out. I don’t deserve your kindness, Giovanni. I don’t deserve your understanding. I deserve your hatred, Giovanni. I deserve to suffer for what my father did to you.” Giovanni’s face broke. Something fierce passed through his eyes.

“You want my hatred?” he said, almost yelling. You’re willing for me to suffer? Is that so? You’d rather I was angry with you, that I punish you, that I judge you for sins that were no possible your sins?”

“Yes!” Isabella shouted back at him. “Yes, because this guilt is killing me! This guilt is taking my life! I see you and I see a young boy who turns sixteen next to his dead brother and later see my father as his murderer! How can we bear this?! Because this was my father too, this was the father who loved me, this was the father who raised me, he was the reason I am who I am today!”

“Well don’t then!” Giovanni yelled. “Put it down, you said it yourself! The villain is him, Isabella! The monster was him, Isabella! Not you! You are not guilty, Isabella!” The words rang in the high walls of the study. They were both panting. There was an energy that could be felt between them. It had been there for many years, and they both knew the power of what burst here, today.

Isabella’s feet gave way. She fell on her knees. This type of movement could be found under someone who is submissive, willing, who surrenders. “Please,” she said. She cried as she looked up at him. “Please, Giovanni, how do I do the right thing? How do I atone for my father?”

“Get up,” Giovanni said roughly, called hoarsely.

“No,” Isabella fell to her knees. “Not unless you tell me what you need, what will make this fractionally less awful. I’ll do anything. Accept any punishment. Just tell me how to fix it.”

“You cannot,” Giovanni said. “There is no way to fix this. My family is dead. They’re not coming back. Nothing you can do or say. No amount of suffering will change that.”

“Then why?” Isabella’s voice broke. “Why keep me? Marry me? Why not just kill me like you did my father if you’re so intent on dragging this out?” Giovanni’s fists clenched by his sides.

“Because I am tired!” he shouted. “Tired of killing! Tired of revenge! Tired of hating! Your father was supposed to be the end of it! The final.vengeance! But I killed him, and nothing was fixed! It only made me more empty!” He turned his back to her, and his shoulders were shaking.

Isabella slowly stood; she didn’t know whether he was capable of stopping himself anymore. “Giovanni-”

“I thought marrying you would be the ultimate punishment,” he said, and his voice was raw. “I killed your father. His daughter doomed to an eternity of the same fate. He made me. He destroyed everything I had, and I thought making him look at his weaker half for as long as god allowed him to live would be my revenge. But he died, and nothing changed. No better, no worse, even, just emptier. I do not want this, isabella.”

“What? Except what?” she whispered. Giovanni turned back to her. And stared. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t have to. It was written in how he was clutching at the mask he’d used to hide from her. In the exhaustion she could feel from him, across the space that separated them. In the pain. In the barely constrained emotion that he’d tried to hide and had two fractures to hide.

“Except you are not what you were supposed to be. You were supposed to be easy to hate. Easy to punish. Easy to destroy. But you are not. You are just broken. Like me. And it does not make me feel powerful. It just makes me feel like more of a monster than your father ever was”. The words hung between them. It was raw and true. Isabella took a slow step closer. In front of the jaws of a dangerous beast.

“Take it off”, she said in a murmur. Giovanni stopped.

“What?” “The mask”, she said.

“Take it off. Please”.

“No”, he replied. And took a step back.

“Please, Giovanni”, she said. And took a step closer, to keep the short distance. “I have to see you. I want to see the boy who endured. The boy who has been given all this pain. Please”. Giovanni’s hands moved to the mask. Reddish eyes narrowed in fear. And withdrew.

“You do not want to see”, he said.

“Yes,” she said. And touched his mask slightly. “Yes”. For a few moments, Giovanni did nothing. Stared at her. Then slowly, his hands moved up. His hands seized her own, which were trembling with every bite. And together, they parted the mask from his face.

Isabella saw his face fully in the light for the first time. The scars were there. One still cutting through his left eyebrow. Another gliding over his cheekbone. A third one disappearing into his collar, futilely trying to hide where his throat had been sliced. Filthy, brutal reminders of a filthy, brutal night. But beyond the scars, she saw the young boy in the sixteen-year-old boy’s picture she found. The same strong features. The same intense amber eyes. The same resolute jaw. Just older. Hardened. Marked with violence and sorrow. She saw what he was and what he became, and her heart split for both.

“You look like him,” she whispered. “The boy in the photo I found. The boy with your family. You still have his… eyes.” Giovanni’s jaw hardened.

“That boy died that night. So did the rest of my family.”

“No,” Isabella countered. She raised her hand, palm open, and gave him all the time he needed to pull back. He didn’t. Isabella traced his scar on his eyebrow with her fingertips. “He’s still in there,” she murmured. “Buried underneath all this pain and anger but still in there.” Giovanni’s eyes slid shut.

“You should spit on me. Hate me. For everything I have done to you… for taking you… for keeping you locked… for ruining your life.”

“I used to,” Isabella confessed. Her fingers followed the scarline on his cheek. “I used to hate you with every part of me… months and months ago. Now… now I know the truth, and I don’t know how I feel. I just know it’s not… not that.”

“Then what?” Giovanni asked. His eyes opened. He was searching her with a intensity so deep it made her breath catch.

“I don’t know.” Isabella admitted with all honesty. “Grief. Guilt. Sorrow for what the amount of things I could never understand. Sorrow for all of what you lost. Sorrow for what I lost because of you. Agony, perhaps. Resonance through shared pain.” Her fingers discovered the scar on his neck. The one that should have left him dead. “You were so young. Just a boy. You were forced to endure pain that should have wretchedly snatched your youth.”

“I survived to gain revenge,” Giovanni revealed. “Fourteen years I hunted. I planned. I killed. It’s all I am now.”

“But that’s not all you are.” Isabella drew close to him. Close enough to sense his body warmth. “You are the same person who gave me back my paintings. Gave me books when I was lonely. Looked pained when you heard of Audrey’s accident. You are the same person who asked me not to grieve the sins my father.” Giovanni looked down at her.

“You are searching for good in me,” he scoffed. “It doesn’t exist.”

“It does,” Isabella insisted to him. “It remains. Damaged. Lost. But existing.” Her hand strayed from his cheek to his chest. Over his heart. “I can feel it.” Giovanni’s hand came up over her. He covered hers.

“Isabella——”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “For my father. For every moment you’ve ever stumbled from. For the family you lost. For the boy you were that night. For everything I stole and couldn’t return.”

“Stop apologizing.” Giovanni’s voice was rough. “You did nothing wrong.”

“Neither did you.” Isabella twisted his hand so that she could grip his fingers. “You were sixteen. You tried to fight. You tried to save them. You did everything a boy could do against armed men. And you have spent fourteen years punishing yourself for surviving.” Giovanni pulled her hand away from his chest. He did not let go. Just held it between them.

“This is dangerous. This moment. This understanding. It complicates everything.”

“Everything was already complicated.” Isabella watched their hands. “We are bound together by blood and death and grief. By my father’s sins and your revenge. By the fact that we are both broken by the same night even though we experienced it from opposite sides.” She raised her eyes back to his face. “What happens now?”

“I do not know,” Giovanni said. His thumb moved across her knuckles. A small gesture. Almost unconscious. “I cannot go back to hating you. And I cannot keep hating myself for what my father did. We have to find a way out. Together. Because we are all either of us has left.”

Giovanni looked at her face. She could see him trying to make a decision. Trying to figure out what this meant. Then an unexpected thing happened. He pulled her in. He threw his arms around her. His hands touched her upper back. Carefully. Like she could break. Isabella froze for a moment. And then she melted into him. She threw her arms around him. Her face buried in his chest. And she wept. For her father. For his family. For the boy he was. For the girl she used to be. For all the pain and death and loss. Giovanni held her. He moved his hand to her hair. He stroked her gently. And for the first time since this nightmare began, Isabella felt like it wasn’t that terrible. Not the end of humanity. Not a curse that doomed her to repeat the mistakes of her father. Maybe. Even if it felt like an impossible dream, like a lie she was telling a child to pacify him. Maybe there was a way to live with it. To live beyond the revenge and sobriety.

Together.