MIA
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"Do you think Emma lied to him about writing the letters, Mia?"
"I don't know," I cried. "But it hurts that he's so sure she wrote it, that he never… her never considered me, Leo. Never. I was never on his mind. Maybe he was already in love with Emma, and assumed it was from her, he didn't care to go after concrete proof of who wrote it. Misha just... faithfully believes it's her."
"Did zio Chris knew Emma was not straight and with Rosa?"
A nod, "Mmhm. He knew. He loved her either way. That's why I'm also angry, mama will accept her, papa did, zio Ricco will, nonni definitely will, and Rosa's famiglia will be overjoyed for sure. Why is she doing this to us? To me? Why is she torturing me like this?"
He hugged me tighter as I cried. "I want to help you, principessa."
I denied, "No. I can't force it, Leo. I can't. As much as I'm breaking and I can't fucking handle them together, I can't force it. He hates me, there's nothing I can do about that now. He would probably not even believe me and say I'm lying, given the horrible vision has of me. I want to run away. It's been excruciatingly painful to live here, with him, Rosa, Emma. I can't stand it. It's tearing me apart. Making me want to crawl out of my skin."
"What will you do, Mia?" He asked, caressing my hair.
"I'll let him be, but I'm not going to let them keep lying for fucking no reason to the famiglia. I'll make sure everyone knows the truth until before mama and your papa's marriage. I will not permit that mama and zio Ricco go to their honeymoon thinking that they are a thing, when I know in my bones that Emma is actually with Rosalia. Not just in my bones as I've hacked her before and I know for a fact that she is. Sure, maybe she's bisexual and is with both, but that makes it fucking worse, she can't be with two fucking people damn it. Not with my Misha."
Sigh, "True, that's infuriating. I've been there, and though you acted as if you were attracted to me like I asked you to, and you never denied nor confirmed when they provoked us about you and me being a thing, when I was still scared of coming out, we never lied to them. We never faked being together, that would have been too cruel. Lying like that to the famiglia is not fucking okay," Leo groaned.
"My point exactly," I clenched my jaw.
"Don't worry, I'll keep this a secret, okay?"
"Thank you, Leo. Sorry for not telling you this before. It's kind of weird to be in love with the older brother of my best friend, my parents' godson, younger brother of three of my siblings-in-law, and now," I scoffed, "with my step-brother."
That got a giggle out of Leo, "When you put it like that, it's weird."
Feeling better with myself, I sat down, "That's what I've been saying."
After some minutes in silence, letting my pretty face get back to normal so nobody can notice I was crying my ass off up here, and so the tears in his light green shirt would dry out, he held my hand and kissed my knuckles softly.
"So, the plan is to separate Emma and Rosa from my brother, and then what? Will you make a move on him?" He finally broke the comfortable silence.
I felt my face burning, "I wouldn't even if I wanted to. He's one hundred percent hating me now. If not just for me being me, but because of how I'm treating he oh-so-precious beloved sweet-bloody-heart Emma," my eyes rolled hard with disdain. "I've been here my whole life for him, Leo. Though I know that it's asking for too much right now, but I want him to wake up and see me. I don't want to force my pretty face in front of him, so he would open his eyes. And I don't want to go to him and tell me I'm the writer of the letters, because that would break what he knows now, it would feel like I'm imposing, like I'm asking for him to turn to me, and again, I never wanted to force anything, that was not the purpose of the letters, to make him love me."
I'm so pitiful right now, Dio santo have mercy on me. I'm pathetic.
"In fact," I chuckled self-mockingly, "until he shouted at my face that he loved Emma since she wrote him the letters, and I realized how her actually cared for the letters I wrote him just so he would know someone was there for him, I had no idea if he had even read them. I kept writing in hope he did, both for him, and because it felt freeing to write like that, to pour my love for him in those, that were not necessarily love letters, buy were letters with love nonetheless. I didn't know if he had just thrown them in the trash, if he had burned it, or kept it. And one hundred percent did not, ever, think of the possibility that he would actually fall in love with the pen pal."
Leo licked his lips, "He had it back in our Milan villa, and he has it in his room here. It's a small side of the wall between his bookshelves and his maroon red safe where I saw a glimpse of died paper before, which must be where she keep the letters. He never allowed any of us to touch it or to see it, even less to know what he kept inside, or where did he get all of those dried red rose petals. His room is always with a rich scent of cinnamon, not like real cinnamon, but cinnamon scented perfume. Could be simply because of him, or because of the letters."
My eyes widened, "He has it all? I thought he'd thrown the petals away."
"He did not. I bet that if we counted the petals, there would be the amount you said you got him, 880. The time you weren't here, your mama asked him if he had gotten those petals from the roses in her garden, he said he didn't, but that was it. He has it all. There's also some drawing of him, and of other things, but I thought he had drawn it, since his art skills are better than mine, and knowing how to draw is good for any kind of engineer, and the three of us are."
Indeed, my Misha is in a similar field as me, not the same, but similar. It feels good.