“I think I’ll just check out her paintings and let you have your moment with your sister.”
Matteo’s eyes narrow. “Did you two fight or something? You’re always bickering,” he says, glancing between his sister and me. “You’re acting odd.”
Of course I’m acting odd. Just a few months ago, I was forced to punish my brother and send him away from New York, bleeding from a bullet in his arm. He’d brought it on himself—kidnapping and threatening to kill a don’s wife would do that—but I never thought I’d be forced to choose between my blood brother and my sworn brother.
That I even made the choice eats at me.
All that, coupled with the fact that I want Gabriella Rossi badly, would be enough to throw me off my normally rock-steady balance.
I’m saved from answering when a voice calls out to Matteo. We both follow it to see Sofia running toward him, sliding a hand into her husband’s arm before turning to me. Despite what my brother did to her, she doesn’t seem to carry ill will for me.
“Oh, hey, Nico,” Sofia beams. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“How are you doing, Sofia?”
“Great,” she says, turning to her husband. “We have to congratulate Gabby on her graduation, then check out her paintings. I’ve been looking forward to this day all week.”
I watch with amusement as Matteo’s gaze softens when he looks at his wife. A woman whose family arranged the match but who seems to own Matteo’s heart.
“Of course,tesoro mio.” His voice is soft and so unlike the commanding tone he uses with our men. When they walk away, I decide to enter the hall with the paintings and easily find the corner with Gabriella’s name listed by a series of paintings.
I’ve watched Gabriella paint her entire life so I figured I know what to expect, but I’m still struck by her talent. The paintings are placed in a line, and it takes me a moment to realize that they tell a story, one I’m seemingly a part of—memories.
All the noise and chatter in the background fade, my heart pounding hard against my ribs as I look at the paintings. It’s likely most won’t recognize the characters drawn, but they are memories I’ve lived—she’s lived—so it’s easy to pick up on them and understand their meanings. The colors, textures, scenes, and figures have been used intentionally in the project, and the emotional theme is clear.
Grief and Loneliness.
I move to study the first painting more closely. The figures are all black silhouettes, but their size and shape make them easy to differentiate. This one is of four boys standing at a grave, and just behind them is a woman in a dress whose face is covered by a black mourning hat. She’s holding what seems to be an infant wrapped in pink.
Antonia Rossi’s funeral.
I remember the woman, the day, the moment. I was only twelve when she died, but I remember the grief in my best friend’s eyes as he said his goodbyes at the funeral. The heartbreak on all the Rossis’ faces. Gabriella had been an infant, quiet as a mouse in the arms of Silvia, her nanny, during the whole procession.
There is a lump in my throat as I move to the second painting, a depiction of some dance recital. A young girl dances on a stage in a tutu the same shade of pink as the baby blanket in the first painting, and in front of the stage are seven seats. One is occupied by a woman, and the other five are occupied by youngmen. I spot myself easily as the boy holding a bouquet of white roses, just as I had years ago when Matteo dragged me to his sister’s first ballet recital. She’d only been eight at the time, and I couldn’t understand why I had to show up for some kid’s dance show, but I’m still the only one who showed up with flowers that day. Truthfully, they were the ones my mother had sent to give to Gabriella afterward. The last seat in the row is empty as it had been that day. A seat that had been reserved for Leonardo Rossi, but the man never showed up. I remember the heartbreak on that little girl’s face when she saw her father’s empty seat. Gabby had quit ballet after that; no one questioned it, but we all knew why.
Dammit.
The third painting is no less heartbreaking than the first two. The memory of Gabriella’s eighteenth birthday comes to mind as I stare at the painting of a young woman in a pink dress on a bench, surrounded by flowers and butterflies. There’s a man crouched before her, holding a gift in one hand while touching her cheek with the other. She’d been crying for a long time when I found her seated alone in the atrium, hiding from the rest of her family.
It’s no secret that Gabriella has always hated her birthday, often fudging the date and choosing to celebrate it a few days after the fact. For many years, that had been the case, but that year, scheduling hadn’t worked out, and the party for her eighteenth birthday was held on her actual birthday.
Leonardo hadn’t shown up—it was, after all, the anniversary of his wife’s death. Still, the Rossi brothers had done their best to make up for his absence, as they always did, but it hadn’t been enough. I sigh as I stare at the painting, my mind drifting back to that day and how I noticed the birthday girl missing from her own party. I set out to find her and hand overmy gift. I had a date planned for that evening and was in a hurry to leave, but the moment I saw Gabriella crying on that bench in the atrium, all plans to leave vanished.
Leonardo built the butterfly atrium for his first wife, Antonia. It was one of the many gifts he’d given her in the nearly two decades they shared as a married couple. To find Gabriella seated alone in the one place her mother loved most broke my heart completely. Knowing she blamed herself for her mother’s death and the pain her father suffered made me want to comfort her, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to make her feel better. So I dropped to a crouch in front of her and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
That afternoon, we sat in the atrium, just the two of us, sharing funny stories of her brothers’ childish antics. It felt good to see her laugh. When I mentioned her mother, she was silent for a while before asking me to tell her more, so I shared every story I could remember about Antonia Rossi. We spent hours chatting and laughing. We missed the party, and I missed my date, but I realized I didn’t care one bit about that. Seeing her smile—that’s what mattered to me.
Something shifted inside of me that afternoon, a spark that threatened to show me Gabriella Rossi as more than just my best friend’s little sister, but I pushed it back down.
I hear someone behind me, and I turn to see some guy in an oversized jersey staring at Gabby’s paintings. I don’t want anyone near me or these paintings, so I stare him down.
“Leave.”
He’s gone before I can blink, scrambling out of sight and leaving me to face Gabriella’s past alone.
With the distraction gone, I turn to the fourth painting, which is a progression—Gabriella running across a field in apink sundress. At one end of the field is her family: Leonardo, her four brothers, Silvia, and a fifth figure, who I assume must be me. Gabriella is running away from her family, and as she reaches the far end of the field, she turns into a bird and flies away.
I stare at the painting longer than the others, the implications clear. She’s fleeing from her family, and I can’t stop the sting that settles in my chest. For two years, I’ve forced our relationship on to her and onto myself. Finally, she accepted it and lumped me together with the rest of her family—a family she clearly wants to flee from, if the painting is anything to go by. So why the fuck does it sting?