“What?” I ask.
“What? You ask what?” he shouts. “Fucking mess is what. I have been managing, but fucking shit, Antonella, you can’t pull shit like that.”
I tilt my head slightly.
“Look at you, all worked up,” I say. “Could it be you care for your baby sister?” I add in a smug tone.
“You’re family,” he says harshly. “We take care of family.”
“We do,” I say and grab his hand. “I’m alive. It takes a bit more than that to kill me.”
He grunts and grabs my hand back.
I glance at our hands.
It is the first time I truly realise I have a brother.
I belong here.
I have family here.
Family that catches me when I fall.
I am allowedto leave the hospital two weeks later, with a still-hurting chest.
Two weeks that have almost killed me with boredom, and most of all with my own thoughts.
What happened with Rosalia and me—it still lingers with me.
She saved me.
She chose me over Adria.
She chose her family over me.
She stopped, although she told me she would never stop.
She stayed while she could have gone.
She kissed me, although she hates me.
She comforted me, while all she wanted was to hurt me.
And against all logic, against all I stand for, all I have said, I am seeing the person who is behind the facade.
“Why are we driving to the masseria?” I ask when I realise we’re leaving Palermo behind us.
“Don’t you know?” asks Salvatore.
“Know what?”
“Adria, she burned down the house.”
“She what?”
“It burned down the night we were in the club, after Rosalia took you,” he says.
“What a bitch,” slips from my lips. While I know it is not fair, and I shouldn’t say it, because Adria was, in the end, only an abused, neglected child.