Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
"You ever think about it?" Lorcan again.
"Every day." Giovanni's voice was flat. Empty.
"Me too."
Silence. Just the road and the heater and my confusion. At the time, I didn't understand it. Just assumed they were talking about Enzo.
But now... with context. With the monster comments. With Giovanni's complete unraveling tonight.
The dog story.
Not Enzo.
Something else. Something that happened at Auggies. Something that replicated the night we buried my best friend. Something with frozen ground, a pickax, and secrecy between two boys who've carried it ever since.
Something they buried together.
Someone.
My stomach turns.
The pieces assemble themselves against my will.
I can pinpoint it now. If I had to choose the exact moment my cousin became a stranger, it would be then. That Christmas with Lorcan. That spring when he graduated. That summer when he stopped meeting my eyes for longer than necessary.
I thought it was Auggies changing him. The military discipline, the regimentation, the brutality of that place.
But it wasn't the academy.
It was what happened there.
What he and Lorcan did there.
The dog story. But it wasn't a dog. That was just code. They buried a body together. Who?
On the monitor, Giovanni lifts Emmaleen. She's limp, boneless, deep in subspace's aftermath. He carries her like she's sacred. Like she's breakable.
Like he knows exactly how fragile a body becomes when you've already broken one before.
I watch him navigate the dungeon, moving through the door to the sparse bedroom. He places her on the vinyl mattress with surprising gentleness. Straightens. Walks over to the tub.
Water runs.
The tub fills.
Giovanni returns, lifts Emmaleen again, carries her to the bath. Lowers her in with hands that shake slightly—barely visible, but I see it. I see everything now.
He kneels beside the tub. Starts washing her. Shoulders first. Arms. Each movement deliberate, careful, tender.
His mouth moves. Talking. Always talking.
I adjust the audio feed again, fine-tuning until his voice clarifies.
"...loved words too. My mother. Remember how I told you she'd read to me before bed. The Little Prince. She called me that…"
Aunt Priscilla. Giovanni is talking about his dead mother.
To a girl who can't hear him. Can't process. Can't respond.
"...poetry. She's the one who taught me about terza rima. I told you that, right? The trinity structure. Past, present, future all woven together. She said it proved time wasn't linear, just... circular. Everything coming back around..."
He's washing Emmaleen's hair now. Gentle. Methodical.
"...died when I was twelve. Car accident. Except it wasn't. Angelo told me years later. Suicide. She drove into that bridge on purpose..."
Emmaleen's eyes are closed. Tears slip down her cheeks, mixing with bathwater.
Giovanni doesn't notice. Or pretends not to.
Just keeps talking. Keeps confessing to someone who isn't conscious enough to bear witness.
"...left a note. Just one line. 'I'm sorry I couldn't love you enough to stay.'"
Disturbed.
The word arrives as a clinical diagnosis.
My cousin is deeply, profoundly disturbed.
Not broken the way Emmaleen is broken. Not fragmented by external forces.
Broken from the inside. Shattered by accumulated trauma he's never processed, never addressed, never allowed himself to feel.
The kidnapping. Aunt Priscilla's suicide. Whatever happened at Auggies with Lorcan and the dog story.
And that's just shit I know about. God only knows what he's been up to since. There's at least a decade between us now where I wasn't even around. Too busy with my own life on the Pittsburgh riverfront.
Meanwhile, layer upon layer of violence and grief has calcified into the armor Giovanni calls control.
But it's not control.
It's dissociation. Compartmentalization. The monster and the man, kept separate because allowing them to merge would mean confronting everything he's done, everything he's survived, everything he's become.
I watch Giovanni rinse Emmaleen's hair. Watch him drain the tub. Watch him lift her out, wrap her in a towel that's too thin to provide real warmth, carry her back to the bed.
He dresses her in the transparent nightgown and lies her down, posing her in the fetal position. No covers. There were never any covers in that room. Hell, the bed doesn’t even have sheets. And while I do realize that it was planned that way for a reason, for fuck’s sake, how the hell can he look at her—shivering and shaking from the cold—and not be compelled to go find her a fucking blanket?
He doesn’t notice her. Not really. He’s not seeing her at all.
He’s seeing… something else.
He’s somewhere else.
I watch as he sits on the floor beside the bed, back against the wall, head tipped back, eyes closed.
Staying the night, I guess. Keeping vigil.
Protecting her from the monster he believes lives inside him.
Giovanni is unraveling, and he's taking Emmaleen down with him. Using her as a vessel for his trauma, a mirror for his self-hatred, a proof that even broken things can be possessed.
But that's not training.
That's not even control.
That's just mutual destruction dressed in protocol.
I sit down in the control room chair. Settle in. Wait.
On the monitor, his lips move again. Soundless now, the audio too distant.