MISHA
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I glared at him, "What? You expected me to stay shut when she provoked me? You know me better than that, Leonid. You did spend more time of your life with me than with her. Don't come at me just because she's your best friend. I'm your brother."
"You don't get it, do you?" He clenched his jaw. "How could I side with anyone but her, when I already failed to be with her when she most needed me? We all fucking failed her," he yelled. "All of us did. You say Emma is amazing because she was with you when no one else was," he mocked, "than you have it better than she did. When her papa was murder in front of her, she had no one. She had no one to help her, not even indirectly. Like she said, the second she shut down, none of us tried to cross her walls and get to her."
My entire body tensed up.
"I failed her, Luigi failed her, all her siblings failed her, zia Anna failed her, all of us Campobello failed her, our nonni failed her, her nonni failed her. Fuck. Even Nila, who was so close to her back then, shut down and left the US, also being another person on the list of those who failed her. Zio Chris would never do what we did, she was right," he cried angry at himself, at us. "She's been struggling all fucking day, and you made it worse. You, Emma, Rosa."
Emma gasped, "What did I do?"
"You know what you did. What you're doing!" He hissed at her and she flinched. "You, Rosalia, and Grigori. You know what you're doing. That fucking aside, even though we've been doing a horrible job of having her back, she's still has yours, she's still on our side, even though it hurts her to be here with us, because she doesn't think she can count on us, as we can count on her. And she's right to feel that, because we never did anything to prove her wrong on that."
"That's not fair," Bram clenched his fists. "We also lost our father."
"Not in front of you," it was zia Anna who said it this time, and she looked no short of nauseated. "We all saw it from the TV. Mia was there, she was being held hostage with Chris. Santo Dio, if Chris hadn't switched places with her when she was held at the point of the gun, it would have been Mia who died 5 years ago. And I," her voice broke and papa held her, keeping her on her feet. "I know that with that personality of hers, she must blame herself for it. He died in her arms, she was drenched in her papa's blood, just as she said."
"Mama," Zoe Maud's siblings all stilled up, shaken.
"You were all always closer to me, kids," she pressed her lips together. "Not Mia. Mia was always, since she began walking, closer to Chris. Even her first word was papa, while all of you called mama first. And you did complain and cry to us, begging her to stay away and not play with you, I just… I didn't know she was listening to everything. Mia never complained about anything like you all did. She was confident compared to you back then, but she never complained. When you pushed her aside, when you talked over her during the meals, when you cried about her showing off."
I crossed my arms over my chest, clenching my hands in fists, trying my best to remain unfazed, even though I can feel my arms and hands shaking.
"Mia tried to please you silently, by listening to your pleads. She stayed away until she isolated herself and later left the villa for good. She stopped talking altogether, even with me, and only talked with Sasha and Chris. After Sasha passed away, she only talked, really talked, with Chris," I fully tensed up at the mention of my mama.
"She stopped playing with you, stopped eating meals near you, she stopped talking with you, she stopped being close to you, and she only showed her abilities to Chris. I didn't think much of that back then because I was too busy focusing on the six of you, but now I know that I was mistaken."
My eyes are burning?
Why are they burning?
Was it the whiskey?
"When Chris died, I got too lost in my own grief to reach out to her. I had to stay grounded here in Italy and be with the six of you. By only focusing on you and myself, I left her by herself. I… I thought she was going to be okay, because she was never dependent on me, but that was a grave mistake. Now she's out of my reach, pretending to be fine, and she spent so fucking long bottling up her emotions, staying silent when near us, keeping her distance, not letting us in, that now that she's definitively back to Italy, she can't do any of that. And even though you all were near her in the last 4 years, the only ones close to her were Leonid, Luigi, and barely Maria. But even them were not able to get through the walls she build."
I would probably be as lost as she is now, hadn't Emma reached out. But thinking about that makes me feel sick, as if I'm doing something absolutely wrong, as if I should have domed more than this, even if she didn't give two shits to me when I was in her place, 12 years ago.
Something is twirling vilely inside me, making me want to crawl out of my skin, but there's nothing I can do about this.
"Now, she's a frustrated traumatized adult who can't even talk about her own bottled up emotions, after pushing it all deep inside of her just to make you feel better. Just to make us feel better. And now that she's exploding, we don't know what to do either. I should have been a better mama to her, I should have seen the signs, noticed the little details. She tried to get my attention, but I didn't pay attention to it, not even when she kept messing with my roses, knowing that I would see it. But when I did nothing until she left to MIT, she stopped it altogether."
What? Messing with her roses? What does she mean?
"She didn't do that to get your attention, zia," Leonid groaned frustrated. "She did that because… ugh," he yelled, clenching his jaw. "Why don't you see it? I can't fucking say it because it's my secret to keep, you have to figure it out, damn it."
Why is he glaring at me?
What did I do this time?
"What is she hiding?" Emma frowned.
But Leonid glared at her, "What are you hiding, Emma Luna?"