The coffee pours slowly into the cups, dark, bitter and boiling, just like everything else in my life. The one shard of light to lift my days of late is the very person Remo is hellbent on breaking apart.
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
I push an espresso in his direction and bring the other to my lips. Remo’s expression is thunderous. He’s more than angry—he’s disappointed. And the guilt hits me hard.
“Look. I’m handling it,” I assure him. Though ‘handling it’ is a tenuous description.
“No. You’re losing perspective.”
I shake my head. “I’m gaining it, Remo.” I glance sideways at him. “You know she was abused in high school?”
“So?”
“So… hurt people… hurt people. You know that as well as anyone.”
We all suffered at the hands of our father until I orchestrated his death.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” His eyes are wide. “She didn’t just hurt you, Fiero. She broke you. There’s a difference. And she broke all of us.”
He picks up the espresso and throws it in the sink.
“I can see what’s happening. Your dick had a taste of that treacherous piece of pussy and you don’t want to stop. Well, if you can’t fucking break her for what she did to you, break her for what she didto us. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you’ve broken people for a lot less.”
His voice cracks and for the first time in a long time, I hear a slither of emotion. Images flash behind my eyes. Remo at thirteen, pounding on my bedroom door. Cassio crying because he thought he’d done something terribly wrong. My brothers eating dinner in silence because my father had turned the house into a fucking mausoleum.
“I lost my brother that year,” Remo says hoarsely. “We all did.”
I look away, fixing my gaze on the window.
“And now what?” In the corner of my eye I see him gesture violently toward the door. “Now she sucks your dick a few times and suddenly she’s some tragic little victim?”
My temper sparks instantly. “Watch your mouth.”
Remo laughs in disbelief. “I rest my goddamned case.”
I shove off the counter, the room thickening with tension.
“Shewasa victim,” I say coldly. “Her uncle drugged her. Photographed her. He abused her through high school.”
“And what about us?” Remo fires back. “What about what happened toyou?”
My jaw grinds hard enough to ache.
“Do you know what it was like watching you turn into…” He gestures at me helplessly. “This?”
My throat tightens unexpectedly and I stare at him.
He’s looking back me with a kind of desperation, like he really needs me to understand, because I seem to have forgotten.
The reality of this moment slams into me and for the first time since Pfeiffer walked back into my life, I fully understand the scale of what this is doing to all of us.
This was never just about her and me. It ripped through the whole family like a knife slicing through steak. Every one of us bled from it.
Remo shakes his head slowly.
“So forgive me,” he says bitterly, “if I’m struggling to celebrate the fact she’s suddenly sleeping in your bed.”