Page 26 of Tragic Empire
Her funeral, her deathbed wishes, her plans for me.Just in case, she’d say.Nobody prepares for accidents, and I’m prepared for everything,she’d boast.
One of her most firm demands was always that I move on. She told me how angry she would be in the afterlife if I wallowed in my grief for too long. I couldn’t understand the concept. I wouldn’t want her to be with another man, the thought made me sick to my stomach. But Isobel always was more selfless than me. She cared about people so deeply, me more than anyone else.
Despite her wishes, moving on is a concept that feels like it will never be fulfilled… and still, progress is necessary. If I continue to exist like this, I won’t continue to exist at all.
Throwing myself into the firing line to save my sister months ago wasn’t just a brotherly sacrifice that any Moretti would make. IhopedI would take a bullet to the chest. I desperately wanted the sweet fucking relief of death because if I weren’t breathing, maybe I would have my Isobel again. Just fucking maybe we’d be at peace with our son on some inhuman plane of existence and I could feel whole again.
Thinking like that… I can’t afford to do it any longer. My uncle took the bullets meant for me, and dying now that he’s gone would be a mistake. Squandering his sacrifice isn’t something anyone would forgive me for, least of all myself.
My family isn’t just the brothers I grew up with anymore—it’s Jade, too, the sister whose life I missed for nearly two decades. It’s her son and daughter, the latter of whom she named after my deceased wife. There’s too many people who would mourn me unnecessarily. There’s two little babies who need all of the Moretti protection they can get.
So, no, I can’t say it’s time to move on, because I doubt I can. But it’s time to move forward. And there’s no way I can do that if I’m living in this house. At least not for a little while. I need a responsibility, something tomakeme progress.
At the sound of footsteps, slightly muffled by the thick lawn, I look up from my hands and find my brother —my future capo.
He speaks and I blink, trying to shake myself out of my mood.
“She picked me?” I double check despite hearing Apollo clearly as he informed me of Ana’s decision. A decision I was sure she would make.
She’s too young, and too hurt to marry Apollo and give him an heir. And marrying my father seemed out of the question. I couldn’t see her making that choice, knowing how it would affect her life in the future.
“She did,” he confirms simply. Eyeing the clove cigarette between my fingers, he scrunches his nose in disgust. “She might change her mind if she notices that filthy habit, though.”
Taking a small drag and blowing out a puff of smoke, I shake my head. “Pretty sure if the widow thing didn’t scare her away, this won’t either.”
It’s not even a habit. I hardly smoke, just on the hardest days. I don’t think I’ve smoked a whole pack in under a month or so since… I can’t even remember how long.
“Besides, this is my last. I doubt I’ll need them when I’m away from this place.” Too many fucking memories here.
“Not to mention the grieving bride you’ll have to take care of and the syndicate you’ll have to run. Where would you find the time?” he drones, snark dripping from his every word.
Apollo isn’t the sort of man to coddle. He doesn’t treat me like a man sitting by his dead wife’s grave, smoking while feeling sorry for himself. He treats me like his little brother who is sulking. I think if he were any other way, I wouldn’t know how to react. Being the oldest, he’s meant to keep us all in order. He can’t do that if he manages the lot of us with kid gloves.
“Tell me about her,” I request, stubbing my smoke out into the ground, growing tired of it before it’s even finished.
My brother chuckles. “We’re pretending like you don’t already know everything about her? She’s our little sister’s best friend, among other things. You even knew she’d pick you.”
“Of course, I did,” I grunt.
And of course Apollo picked up on the fact that I came out here to bid Isobel goodbye. We’re the perceptive siblings after all. We need to be. With him as our future capo and me as his lifelong advisor, we’re trained to be as assessing as possible.
“Haven’t you heard? I know everything.”
He snorts, knowing that I’m citing our youngest brother. Matteo seems to think I can hear through sound-proof walls and predict the future. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s just the most easy to read person on the planet. He wears every emotion on his face. In a lot of ways, Matteo is the most human of us all.
Needing to hear whatever information my brother has gathered, I sigh irritably. “Just tell me, Apollo.”
“Ana Knight,” he starts, vocalizing her name with an air of boredom. “Nineteen years old, twenty in a couple of months. Stepdaughter to Bron Knight, and until yesterday, girlfriend to Cole Knight.”
“So, theyweredating?”
“Not publicly, but Jade confirmed it.”
“Continue.”
Apollo rolls his eyes. “Ana is a society type, playing the dutiful mafia daughter as if she was born into the role. She attends fundraisers and events and no one has a bad word to say about her, at least that they’ll say out loud.”
I figured as much. Why anyone would put her through the horror of yesterday when no one seems to hate the girl, I have no idea.
