Page 25 of The Arrival
Shifting his gaze ahead, Giovanni nods. “It’s terrifying. And very hard. It never stops being hard.”
Nino sighs, reading between the lines. “G, give me a break, alright? I haven’t even called you in six months—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Giovanni stops along the path where a stone wall emerges as a barrier between the lake shore and the trail. He runs his fingers through the length of his wavy brown hair. “Look, this is… Father and Cellina have been badgering me to talk to you for months, and I know it’s overdue but I just… Will you listen? I just need you to listen.”
Swallowing, Nino sits along the edge of the low wall, preparing himself for whatever’s coming. Since they’ve barely spoken since October, he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, but he can’t help scanning his memory to make sure. “Yeah, what is it?”
Giovanni paces, inhaling deep and then blowing out a breath. He stops and looks at Nino. “Do you remember right after Mom died, when Dad got sick and I disappeared?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And you started leaving peaches outside of my door, but then I tripped over them and yelled at you?”
Nino folds his arms, thinking back to that time. It’s fuzzy in his mind—disjointed flashes of photos without context, but with a melancholy and raw overlay. “I remember you eating peaches with me late at night when you came home from meetings sometimes, but I don’t remember you tripping or yelling at me…”
Giovanni steps toward the wall and plops down, hunching with his elbows against his thighs and running both of his hands into his hair. Nino glances over at him, confused. “Why?”
His brother takes another breath, his broad shoulders rising and falling. “Because that night was the worst night of my life. After we found out Mom had died, I ran away from Father and the estate because I… I just needed some time alone. When I finally came home, he ripped me to shreds.
“He told me that he and Mom hadn’t raised me to be a pathetic coward—running away from my responsibilities and sticking my cock in anything that moves. He told me that they had wasted their time with me—that I was worthless and that Mom would be ashamed of me. He promised that he would end my life if I kept dishonoring our clan name.”
The air around them stills. Tenses. Nino can feel the stress of it in his throat and temples. He remembers those words explicitly, because he overheard them that night. The rage and frenzy in his father’s voice from behind the closed door. The dim yellow light shining from underneath the door sweep and the dark hallway where he sat crouched against the wall. All of it washes over him as if it were yesterday.
Giovanni goes on, still stooped and with his fingers massaging his scalp. “Later that night, when I left my room, you’d put a pile of peaches outside my door. I didn’t see them so I tripped. I guess you had been waiting there—God only knows how long—but when I saw you, I started screaming at you, just like how Father had yelled at me.
“But then you started crying, and I… It’s like I saw myself and what I was doing, and itcrushedme. Everything. The things Father had said about me… Even though I’d tried so hard for so many years to please him and Mom, it killed me. Mom being gone, him being sick, then you, bringing me fucking peaches because you felt bad for me, and you basically hadno one.”
Sitting up straight, Giovanni sets his shoulders, blankly staring at the trees and brush in front of them. “Something… clicked. That night. I looked at you and realized, ‘This kid doesn’t have anyone else but me.’ It was weird because when I thought about it later, it really felt like Mother and Father had been preparing me for this all along. Everything was in place for me to take over and I’d even been registered as your legal guardian. I don’t know when they did that, but it had all been predetermined.”
Giovanni looks over to Nino, his gaze softening. “So I knew what I had to do. I decided that you weremykid that night, and I had to look out for you and take care of you. I told myself that I wouldn’t ever make you cry or talk to you the way Father had spoken to me—that I would make sure that you always hadeverythingyou needed.”
Evoking these things and listening to his brother talk makes Nino’s heart heavy in his chest. His mother’s death, his father screaming and those dark days of his youth. Giovanni has never spoken about these things with him. They lived through it together, coexisting in a strange, delicate parallel of discomfort, but they never talk about that time.
“Why are you telling me these things, G?” Nino asks, his voice quiet.
Giovanni lifts his hand, rubbing his palm against his forehead and taking another breath. “Because I hit a breaking point last year. And instead of talking to you about it, I screamed at you and upset you, which is exactly what I promised myself I’d never do.”
“The way I reacted to your relationship with Cellina was rude… and selfish,” Nino reasons. “I should have been supportive. I was wrong.”
“You should have, and you were. But if I had talked to you like this earlier on, it wouldn’t have happened. That’s on me. I’d spent a century looking out for you, protecting you. Protecting our family estate and reign in Milan. An endless stream of business meetings and talks, appointments and parties and deals. People coming along and challenging me. Doubting me—over and over I had to prove that we still deserved to oversee this realm.
“I never thought about myself or my needs, because I wanted to prove to Father that he and Mom had prepared me well, and that Iwasn’ta disgrace. Everything I did was for our family. I existed solely for you and them.”
“That’s not healthy, G.”
“Yeah, I know that, Sigmund Freud. Are you going to keep listening?”
Nino chuckles, bringing his fingers to massage the bridge of his nose. “I’m listening.”
Sitting straighter, Giovanni folds his arms. “After you met and bonded with Haruka, things shifted for me. Obviously, you were mated, which meant that you had someone to look out for you now—your own life and family to focus on. I started to lay off a bit, trying to feel at ease. But then you were vanished, so I rushed back in.”
“You did,” Nino acknowledges. “I can’t believe you ran two major aristocracies for that long. I appreciate everything you did, but you’re insane, G. Asao should have just canceled all our appointments!”
Giovanni shakes his head. “I know I’m a vampire, but I legit almost fucking died from anxiety.Sostressful.”
“It was too much.”
“It was. And I don’t know the exact moment, but somewhere in that chaos, I started to think about me again. Spending all that time with Cellina… For me, she was always like a far-off, blurry window—a glimpse of a life that I wanted forever ago. A life that I had dreamed about but could barely fathom. When she and I reconnected, the window became a little clearer and I started dreaming again. Before I knew it, I felt starved for it—forsomething. My own life.
