Alessio

"You believe them don't you?" Pietro asked. "Even if they did give us their sales slips with as many people they've sold to it would take us hours to sort through them and would role out almost no one. Hell, even we would be on that list."

"Yes Pietro, I realize that but it's more than nothing like we've got now! Their refusal to give it to us-"

"Is exactly what you would do too. To give it to you at all would be a break to Omerta."

"What would you have me do? Accept the fact that my Katherine was one necklace slip away from death? Allow a potential threat to my wife to just roam about free to do so again? Damn it!" To make my point I shot through the foot of our hostage.

"He's not going to give you the list even if you shoot him in the dick." Pietro said flatly. "You wouldn't talk even if yours was being sawed off."

"I'm not opposed to doing that to him or anyone else who threatens her."

"Great. Start with your father."

My phone rang before I could address that one. "What?" I demanded without a glance to the caller ID.

"Luridi branco di cani bastardy!"

(Filthy bunch of sons-of-bitches)

"Ari?" She had resounded to silence since Padre had killed Sergio, she'd spoken to and seen Pietro on several occasions but not to me. Something was wrong. "Calmati. Cosa c'e"

(Calm down. What's wrong?)

Pietro patted our hostage on the shoulder. "Don't go anywhere friend, yes?" As though he had a choice being bound to a chair. I followed him out the door with my full focus on the phone.

"Sei un stronzo!"

(You're an asshole)

She hung up and I stopped at the side of the car and stared at my phone. "Very mature."

"What'd she say."

"I'm an asshole."

"I know, but what did she say?" I gave him a frustrated look.

"Just drive." I muttered getting into the car and calling her again, she didn't answer this time. I sighed and let the line quiet for several moments before begrudgingly telling her only that we would be over.

I thought surely I'd have to beat my way into the house but when we approached every single guard turned their head away.

Pietro and I exchanged looks but didn't hesitate in going up the marble stairs, skipping one or two at a time.

"She told them to let us in but not to tell Dante." I thought out loud. "If they saw us, under code they would have to tell Dante..." So they weren't seeing us, nor were they foolish enough to turn their backs either though. She was at least healthy enough to give instruction if nothing else.

We came into her room and I spun quickly to survey the whole place, it was empty. "Damn it-" I started and stopped when she came into the room.

She was carrying a first aid kit and wearing a bruise along her cheek. I cut in front of her and put my hand to her cheek. She jerked backwards but I went in for it again. "What the fὑck happened?" I demanded.

She swiped my hand away. "This isn't about me-"

"Ari." I said sharply. "What happened? Did you shἱt brother do that? I swear to fὑcking God I will-"

"This isn't about me!" She said louder this time. "That's from a sparring session, calm the hell down. I need to talk to you."

"That's not from sparring. Don't you lie to me Ari or I'll-"

"We. Need. To. Talk."

I huffed angrily. "I thought you didn't want to talk anymore."

"It's not about us." She said and moved the rest of the way through the room, away from me. She opened the door to the adjoined bathroom.

"Sergio?" I asked with a blink following her in.

He was sitting on the sink without a shirt on and a cigarette hanging in his mouth. He was littered with wounds and bruises ranging in all different colors. Brown showing that it had been committed some time ago, purple over a wide variety of space signaling that it was committed with a large object not a fist, deep splotchy colors of red and black swelled together. I didn't want to look too deeply at his injures, while I could move my eyes away from his injuries and pretend I hadn't seen them, I couldn't look past one particular thing.

Fresh ink scrawled across his chest, still pink around the edges and slightly raised from the rest of his skin. Famiglia è tutto. Family is everything. At least it wasn't done with a hot iron, and it was done in good quality, they could have left him with some sort of chicken scratch. The penmanship on his tattoo was phenomenal.

Ari gave me a look, like this was all my doing somehow before turning back to him and lighting the cigarette before applying a rubbing alcohol soaked rag to a cut just below his eye. "I'm sorry." She said as she tended to him in a more gentle tone than I knew her capable of using, he flinched, or occasionally exhaled heavily past the cigarette but otherwise said nothing.

I left the bathroom, Pietro moved in further and I exited to Ari's room again. Maybe I was being insensitive ignoring Sergio in his obvious tortured pain...maybe I just didn't want to look at that tattoo for another moment.

It had been a long time since I'd been in this room. I ran my hand along the mantle, following pictures with my eyes. Picture of baby Aria in her mother's arm, Dad standing beside them with Dante on his shoulders. They looked happy and carefree, all of them. It was one of few photos Aria had of her mother. Beside it was her father with his arms around Dante holding his hands in place around a gun, large orange noise blocking headphone on his ears. He couldn't have been older than three and already learning the ins and outs of shooting. Next was all of us, Dante, Aria, Pietro, and myself around the tree, Sergio was falling backwards, I was trying to catch him and keep him from falling off, no older than 5 or 6 myself, Pietro and Aria were on the ground, Pietro on his feet arms out ready to catch Sergio should he fall and Aria was just leaned against the tree looking up at us, she looked confident. It was as if she knew there was absolutely no way I would let him fall. Before I got to examine the next picture Aria's voice brought me back to here and now.

"Dante doesn't like pictures around the house." She explained.

I turned to watch her, she pulled off a pair of blue rubber gloves and dropped them into a waste basket.

"I moved them in here to keep him from throwing them out. Not that I've lived here in some time...still seemed wrong to just throw them out."

I looked back to the pictures, lifting one that had been faced down I couldn't help but smirk. Aria and I on the same bike, she was riding on the handles her face all scrunched up like we were about to wreck and she was preparing for impact. After a moment I laid it back as she had had it. Face down.

"You don't have anything to say?" She asked after a moment and crossed her arms over her chest.

"What Ari? What am I supposed to say?"

"You don't care what daddy dearest has done to Sergio?" She demanded.

"Could've been anyone."

"Family is everything?" She said doubtfully, obviously not impressed with my lie. "Dante found him in one of your warehouses."

My brows knit together. "Well the obvious question here would be what was your brother doing in our warehouse?"

She made some sort of noise, similar to a scoff, some sort of noise that obviously said I can't believe you are really this big of an asshole. "That is hardly the point of all of this."

I shoved my hands into my pockets with a shrug. "Seems to me like he's going pretty far out of his way to test the boundaries of the alliance."

"Look at him!" She yelled and motioned back towards the bathroom. "Do you even see what your father and your men did to him? Can you for one minute of your whole life pretend this isn't about that stupid business your family runs? Can you stop worrying about alliances and boundaries and who went where and just look at what they've done to him!"

"I see that my father was again presented with more than enough cause to execute Sergio and he has once again spared his life."

Her head started going, shaking slowly back and forth and not stopping. There didn't appear to be enough doubt and disdain in the world to satisfy the look she was giving me right now.

"Why am I on trial here? I haven't done anything." I finally continued when I'd had enough of her disapproving glares fueling our silence.

"Exactly." She breathed and I frowned.

"I don't know what you expect me to do Ari. He's made his bed, he was the one who showed Padre so much disrespect. After everything he's done for him-" She couldn't even contain her disbelieving laugh at this. "He is continually granting him a pass for the actions that would get anyone else killed. He should be grateful. If he'd shown even a sliver of respect to Padre this never would have happened."

Her shoulders were heaving chest going up and down rapidly, she was furious, breathing hard. "Respect?" She asked. "What he's done for him? Do you even hear yourself talking?"

Pietro came back into the room just in the nick of time to put his hands on her shoulders and mutter for her to calm down. She turned back around to face Pietro and give me her back. "Calm. Down." He repeated and put his hands to her cheeks. The bruise she wore didn't seem to bother her as she didn't flinch at all. "He's going to be okay. You did the right thing in calling us. We'll call doc-"

"No." She shook her head quickly and pulled away. "Your people did this to him, you're not laying another hand on him."

"Don't be so dramatic. What are you going to do with him then? Nurse him back to health yourself? Take him to the hospital?" I sighed.

"Well, sure, why not? He can walk, he can get to the car. Why shouldn't I take him to the emergency room?"

The humor left me quickly, no more mocking tone. "You can't do that. You know you can't do that. You take him in there and they're going to ask questions. No doctor is stupid enough to think this is a series of wounds inflicted at once. You can't blame some car crash or stumble down the stairs. It's pretty damn obvious he was-" I stopped abruptly deciding this was not the sentence I wanted to finish.

"Tortured?"

I sighed and tried to talk some sense into her, gently this time. "If he talks you know as well as I do his luck will have run out. He can't implicate any of our men and leave with his life. The best thing you can do for Sergio now is to keep him away from Padre. Okay?"

"Va' a farti fottere!"

(screw yourself)

"Levati dai coglioni."

(Get off my balls)

"He's right Aria." Pietro said softly and she looked at him with a little less hatred than she had me.

She looked broken for a moment, but her fire returned quickly. "How? How can you just let this go? How can you be so calm? For God's sake they practically branded him!"

"At least it was done in good quality." I said and quickly had to dodge a flying picture frame she'd hurled at my head. I threw my arms open. "I don't know what the hell you expect me to do! I told you, my hands are tied. He's not family, by his choice need I remind, he's been given his life despite his betrayal, despite his disrespect, I haven't touched Sergio but if Padre told me to-"

"He's your brother!" She screamed, her fisted hands flew back down to her sides as though punching the air, her cheeks were pink, I couldn't remember when the last time I'd seen her this angry was.

But with equal rage and frustration I screamed right back at her. "I have no brother!"

"You're just like Ugo! Just like Dante! You're incapable of giving a damn about anyone, anything, other than that fὑcking Mafia! He. Is. Your. Brother."

"My brother is dead. I have no brother." Our voices were in direct competition, each trying to be louder than the others.

"You're a coward!"

"He left!" I yelled back.

"You were too scared to protect him when he was a fourteen year old boy and you're too scared to protect him now!"

"ENOUGH!" Pietro yelled and took a single step between us this shut us both up. "Jesus you two."

Ari blinked rapidly, furiously dispersing any stray moisture from her eyes at her frustration. I could count on only one hand how many times I had seen Ari cry and I had known her my entire life. The day her father died, the day Dante had hit her for the first time, the day Padre had nearly killed Sergio, and the day before she left me. To see her eyes glossed over now quickly diluted my rage.

She shook her head slowly. "How is it that I can look at Sergio and see him like a brother to me, but you, his own flesh and blood, can just brush it off? How can looking at him like this hurt me, and make me angry, and you can say he's lucky? How?"

I let out a sigh and spoke easily to her. "It's not as though I don't care Ari." I did. More than I was willing to disclose.

"But if Ugo told you to take care of him?"

I opened my mouth and then closed it. I'd killed people close to me before due to betrayal. When I killed them I even did so more furiously and violently than that of some nobody off the street. I'd taken out men from the inside, guys who were once my go to, but Sergio?

"Say it." She demanded and took several steps forward, past Pietro and right into my face. "If your father handed you a gun, and told you to shoot your own brother, his only crime not wanting this lifestyle, you would do it. Wouldn't you?" I didn't say anything and this time she screamed it. "Tell me what you would do!"

"I don't know." I admitted calmly.

"What would you do?"

"I don't know!" I yelled and threw my hands up into the air.

She turned on her heel brushing past me and into the night stand and pulled out a gun and forced it against my chest. I took it in my hand and looked down to it with a raised brow. "Tell me what you would do if your father forced a gun into your hand and told you to pull the trigger."

"Well, first off I'm pretty sure whatever gun he handed me wouldn't be, what would you call this, periwinkle?" I asked glancing down to the gun in my hand.

She grabbed my wrist and pulled it out, forcibly aimed the gun into the bathroom where Sergio was still sitting on the sink. "What if he told you to shoot your brother?" After a moment she put the gun to the side of her own head. "Or me? Or Pietro? How far are you willing to blindly accept your father's will?"

He pulse quickened at the image of the candy colored pistol to her skull and pulled the gun roughly away. "He would never tell me to shoot you."

"I didn't ask what he would tell you to do. I asked if you would do it." She motioned towards the bathroom again. "Would you kill him? Raise the gun point it to your own brother's head and pull the trigger?" She demanded.

I raised the gun, I couldn't see Sergio from where I was standing, the way the bathroom door was part way closed, I couldn't see the pistol aimed to him, but I knew how to find my target and I rarely missed.

"What would you do?" She asked again standing at my side as I kept the gun trained to where I knew he was.

Finally I let my hand drop and held the gun out to her. "I wouldn't do it myself."

She turned, she was out of my reach before I could stop her, she stopped at the door for the briefest of moments before turning back to me. She didn't try to wipe away the moisture on her cheeks as she spoke softly, but firmly. "You are exactly as I remember you Alessio Genovese." And then she left.

------------------------------------------

Don't forget to vote and comment <3