Special mass release for the novel's launch, 13/20.
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MISHA
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Even then, I always found my gaze analyzing her, how awkward and cold she was, how heartless, and I also wondered why she hated me, what I had done for her to treat me in a way she didn't treat my siblings.
I wondered if she was in my place, loosing her mama, she would break that indifferent shell around her and show some emotion, or if she was a heartless psychopath. How would she look when she's breaking like I was? I wanted her to feel my pain, to be miserable with me, to break with me, to hurt like me, to lose her mind like I felt close from losing.
She was always so composed, so in control of herself, so unbending. That made me mad beyond my mind.
But then she left to the US, as all went according to her plan and she not only got accepted into all Ivy leagues, MIT, as in Oxford, and in the top 10 universities of Italy with the lowest percentage of acceptance. All just for the sake of passing, since, from the beginning she wanted MIT. And though I thought I would feel better with her gone and away from me, I felt weird. Angry that she was not around for a reason I don't understand.
I ended up focusing extra hard on my studies just to at least get into all Ivy leagues and in MIT, to prove her a point she hadn't even asked, even though my mind was set in MIT for Aeronautics and Astronautics, to avoid accidents like what happened to my mama from happening again.
But then the worse happened in her 15th birthday, when she was away from us, and I got the answer to my questions in the most horrifying moment ever. We were all gathered in zia Anna's place, because she was intending on making a big call to Zoe Maud later for her birthday, when we received a desperate call from one of the people under our companies who worked in Boston, telling us to put in the international news and we did.
It was a broadcast of an assault in the international bank located in Boston, minutes from Cambridge where zio Christoffel and Zoe Maud were supposed to be, and everyone, even I, panicked when we saw the wanted criminal holding Zoe Maud at gun distance, with a fearless and indifferent look in her pretty face. Until zio Christoffel who looked ashen pale offered himself to be in her place, and that was when real fear flashed in her eyes.
Everything happened to fast.
When he accepted the change, and zio Chris went willingly to him, Zoe Maud seemed to hiss something at the criminal, probably nothing nasty give her personality, and that got the criminal annoyed enough that he kicked her hard to the ground. Zio Chris went mad seeing that happening to his little daughter, and reacted before the criminal could point another gun at her. But that was a deadly mistake.
Zoe Maud screamed so loud that the TV reporters were able to get the sound of her horrifying scream in the second the criminal shot zio Chris on the head and then on the heart right in front of her, and as quickly as a thunder, the second he kicked zio's bleeding body at her and one of his guns fell down, she picked the gun and shot him twice. And as that was enough for the police to finally fucking act on it, she threw the gun away and turned to her papa.
She broke in a way none of us had ever seen. She screamed and yelled and cried desperately, as she held his dying body in her arms, his blood tainting all of her white clothes, which was a miracle for her to use, and she kept holding him until the medical team made her loosen up her grip. She pushed them away and ran to her papa, in pure desperation, climbing dizzily on the med van, still crying and calling him, in a hopeless act of denial.
None of us let out a sound for what seemed to be hours, too horrified to speak, overwhelmed by grief, sadness, we just cried. Papa and zia Anna quickly called for our private jets so we could all head to them as quickly as possible. It took us two days to get there.
When we arrived, Zoe Maud and Nila, zio's girlfriend, were preparing his burial, they didn't speak a word to any of us, they looked like ghosts, as if they were now dead inside and with no reason to live. Zoe Maud even ignored zia Anna, and anyone's hug or touch, she didn't recognize our presences, too lost in her grief, in the terrors of what she had watched on her birthday. Before any of us could say anything about it, she booked a flight to Amsterdam, with a note that said that her papa had asked her on the will to bury him in his famiglia's graveyard.
We all went after her, in enough time to be there for the burial.
And when we saw her papa's lawyer, he had already seen her and Nila and givens them the assets her papa had left them, so, he just divided the rest, as zio Chris even left things for me. But that was all, none of us managed to contact her, she avoided all of us, refused to come back to Italy, and just popped up, like a ghost of who she once was in a weekend to tell us that she was going to stay in the US, to attend MIT again, but this time on the course her papa study in there.
Which I could completely relate with.
By then, a year had passed, I became the only one of us aside from her to get accepted into all Ivy leagues, MIT, and in Oxford. The universities in Italy aside, I felt great with myself, though she didn't even pay attention to it, too lost in her own grief.