I thought we were still close. Still brothers in everything but blood.
But watching him now, listening to him fragment himself into pieces—the man and the monster—I realize I don't know my cousin at all.
Not anymore.
On the monitor, Giovanni rocks Emmaleen gently. Her eyes are unfocused, lost in subspace's fog. She might not even behearing him. Might not register the words or the warning they carry.
But I hear them.
The monster.
I replay the scene. No pedagogical structure. No control. Just rage dressed as discipline, trauma masquerading as training.
Giovanni never recovered from the kidnapping.
The realization arrives fully formed, undeniable.
He was eight years old. Tied to a post. Starved. Beaten. Abandoned by his own father, who saw the kidnapping as an inconvenience to a business deal rather than a son's life in danger.
Salvatore has always viewed Giovanni as inventory.
Even now. Especially now.
Sending him to Riverview to oversee some backwater expansion—it wasn't strategy. It was exile. An insult wrapped in opportunity, a way to keep his disposable third son at arm's length while the real heirs, Marco and Angelo, handled actual power in Pittsburgh.
Giovanni killed Rico to protect this girl.
Giovanni is risking war with the LaRiccia family for her.
Giovanni is unraveling.
The monster, the monster.
The words echo. Loop, over and over, until they’re liturgy.
A memory surfaces—uninvited but persistent.
Enzo.
My German Shepherd. He was a present to me on my first birthday from my father’s best friend who bred protection dogs for elite clients. Twelve years of loyalty, companionship, protection. Executive-level training from the time he was a pup. One finger point would send him into attack mode. One word pulled him back.
Perfect discipline. Perfect trust.
Until the cancer.
I couldn't take him to a vet's office. Couldn't let strangers handle his death. Couldn't bear the clinical coldness of stainless-steel tables and fluorescent lights for a creature who'd been my brother.
So we did it at home.
My father, Manzu. Giovanni. Me.
Winter night, frozen ground. We dug for hours, breaking through ice-hardened soil behind the estate. My hands bled. Giovanni's did too. Neither of us complained.
My father made it quick. One shot. Enzo didn't suffer.
We wrapped him in his favorite blanket. Buried him under the oak tree. Marked the grave with stones.
Giovanni stood beside me the whole time. Silent. Steady. Present in a way that mattered more than words.