Mena
I felt my blood boil. Here I was, trying to have a normal conversation, and all I got in return was an outburst. “Dude, what the fuck?” I questioned his tone. “I’m sorry for calling, and I’m sorry for caring, but someone has to do it. You haven’t called or texted.”
“Because I’m busy!”
His response felt like a slap across the face. I was also busy, yet I hadn’t stopped thinking about him for a second. “Are you okay?” I laughed in disbelief, genuinely wondering if he had lost his mind.
“Am I okay? I’m supposed to be asking you that question,” he breathed. “You’re calling me in the middle of the night and asking me if I’m okay?”
“So I can’t call you to see how you’re doing without getting yelled at like I’m some dog?” I argued.
“Who was yelling at you like a dog? I’m just talking.”
“Well, if this is your way of talking, you definitely need to work on that,” I pointed out, disagreeing with his words.
“You know what, Mena-You’re right,” Alessio spoke, defeated, but I could hear the sarcasm in his voice. “After trusting my brother to take care of you and receiving a call this late at night thinking something might’ve happened to you-I’m the bad guy.”
I didn’t know how this had turned into him trying to make me feel bad. “I never said that,” I mumbled.
“But that’s what you want to hear, right? It’s me who has to ‘work’ on everything because you had a fucked up life, and now you’re too good to be in the wrong, so I have to take the blame for everything.”
He went off topic, and I wanted to believe it was because he wasn’t thinking clearly. This was why I hated sharing my life with others. They would always throw it back in my face whenever it was convenient for them.
“I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, you’re stressed right now, and that’s why I will end this call so you can think about your words and beg me for your forgiveness,” I spoke calmly. “Goodnight, Alessio.”
“Mena-”
I hung up and grunted in frustration. It wasn’t supposed to go like that. We were supposed to ask each other about our day and end it with an ‘I miss you’ and ‘I love you.’
Calling him was a mistake.
Stomping back to bed, I buried myself under the covers. To my dismay, Gian and Pilar were still busy breaking the bed, and I could still hear them loud and clear. As if it couldn’t get any worse, my phone screen blinked, showing several texts with apologies from Alessio.
I threw my phone onto the nightstand, then buried my head in my pillow with my hands over my ears. Desperate for the noise to end, I let out a muffled scream.
“Can one of you just come already!”
~
With a growling belly, I smiled at the room service I had just ordered as it sat on the table. It was morning, and Pilar and Gian were still not up, likely because they had been busy for hours.
So was I, because I hadn’t gotten much sleep either. If it wasn’t the sound of them that was bothering me, it was the thought of that phone call with Alessio.
After our call, I had received about ten missed calls and many more texts. At first, I was planning to ignore him, but eventually, I settled for a thumbs-up emoji because I felt bad, and wanted him to get enough rest and focus. Even after all of that, I still wanted to talk to him, hold him, kiss him.
Finally, the door to Gian’s room creaked open, and I spun my head. He stood in the doorway with Pilar by his side, and I immediately showed her a frown. Her face was flushed, her hair a mess, and her lips sealed closed for once.
“Good morning, Gigi,” Gian greeted me, casually. “Did you sleep well?”
“Sleep well?” I cackled. “Are you kidding me right now? I woke up at night thinking we were getting assassinated.”
Pilar and Gian exchanged a glance, then burst out into laughter. “I told you to keep quiet,” Gian hissed with a smile, putting the blame on her as she buried her head in his shoulder. I just smiled like an idiot, looking at the two, happy my ship had finally sailed.
“I should uh…” Gian looked back into the room.
“Get ready so we can go?” I said, finishing his thought for him.
“Do you need help?” Pilar asked him. I scowled, “I think you helped him enough last night.”
“She sure did!” Gian laughed, walking back into the room on his own. I patted the seat beside me, and Pilar joined me.
“Was I really that loud?” She asked, stealing some food from my plate.
I hummed in response. “But the two of you look really good together. You should consider making it a thing.”
I had already prepared for my next counterattack, but to my surprise, Pilar didn’t shoot down the idea. “We had a good talk last night, and we might,” she shrugged. “But only if you’re okay with it because you’re my best friend, and I know he hurt your feelings.”
“Go for it!” I encouraged, giving her a slight push. “We’re all good now.”
“Good,” Pilar sighed happily, taking a bite from my toast. “Because he’s your brother-in-law, I’m not going to say too much, but he’s just as big down there as his ego-”
“Nope!” I shouted, stopping her. “Whatever he got going on down there, I do not want to hear about it.”
“Sorry, my bad.” Pilar chuckled. I thought about Alessio, and the joke he had made about his brother’s size. Back then, Gian gave him a look as if he wanted to choke him. A chuckle escaped from my lips at the good memory, but that soon disappeared after once again remembering that phone call.
“I called Alessio last night, but it was 2 AM and then he went all crazy on me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he was all like ‘don’t call me around this time because it’s late and my heart almost stopped’ and other dramatic stuff,” I spoke, trying to mimic Alessio’s tone, which only ended up making both of us laugh.
“So I said, ‘You haven’t even called or texted,’ and then he yelled, ‘Because I’m busy!'” I continued. “Then the situation turned ugly, and I hung up on him.”
Pilar shook her head in disbelief, “The yelling aside, calling him at 2 AM knowing the situation he is in, is kind of crazy, don’t you think?”
“I know,” I admitted with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have called him, but he overreacted.”
“He did,” Pilar luckily agreed. “On a serious note, don’t let him talk to you like that. It’s good you hung up on him.”
I bobbed my head, listening to her advice. It’s the same way I felt, but hearing it from someone else made me feel better.
“These men with his level of authority,” she continued. “You’ll let it slide once, and they keep following the same pattern.”
“Patterns…I know all about that.”
The mention of patterns took my thoughts to Anson and how I gave him a pass one time, which I never should’ve done. I didn’t do it because I wanted to, but because I was too scared to talk back. That was then, but this is now.
We spoke some more, until it was time to go, and we were back on the road, on our way to the mansion. Somewhere along the way, Pilar decided to make a quick stop to buy some snacks, leaving me alone in the car with Gian.
I glanced at him through the rearview mirror, and he smiled at me. “Better looking than Alessio, right?” he joked, doing a complete 180 from yesterday.
“You wish,” I chuckled with a grin. “I just want to say, thank you for coming with me and everything.”
I felt genuinely grateful for his presence and was not ashamed to give him all the credit. Without him, we would’ve left with nothing. Better yet, without him, we wouldn’t have been here at all. Alessio had only agreed to it, knowing his brother would be there.
“No problem. Despite everything, I had fun.”
“Of course you had fun,” I knitted my brow. “I heard it.”
“You are really not going to let it go, are you?” “Never.”
After teasing him for a while longer, I shifted the conversation to something that had been on my mind. “Can I ask you something?”
“One question,” Gian yawned, leaning back. One question was all I needed.
“You are really set on me telling Alessio the truth after everything with the Baldinis is over. Why is that?” I asked, curious about his reasons.
Gian took a moment before responding. “Has he ever told you how our Grandpa Alessio died?”
“Never,” I said, shaking my head. It was something that had briefly been addressed at the Fanucci brunch and had never been brought up again.
Gian turned to meet my eyes. “He got betrayed by one of his own. Then he went crazy, confronted him on the spot without any backup, and it cost him his life.”
It sounded oddly familiar to our situation. The story of their grandpa, the first Alessio. Gian’s concern wasn’t just about the MISA, but a fear deeply rooted in their family’s history.
“You’re afraid history will repeat itself. You don’t want him to lose his mind and do something he’ll regret,” I concluded.
“You know how he can get,” Gian confirmed. “When he gets angry or nervous, he shows self-destructive behavior.”
“I know, but I won’t ever let it go that far,” I assured him. The heavy responsibility now rested on my shoulders, but I meant every word of it.
I had yet to experience Alessio’s real dark side, and I didn’t know what to expect, but I did know that I would be by his side, even if that would happen one day.
“I know you won’t,” Gian acknowledged. “That’s why I want you to be the one to tell him. You’re the only one he’ll listens to.”