Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“I abandoned Rome to a psychopathic dictator—but you stayed.”
He continued to stare at me.
“I betrayed my country and my people for one person—and you stayed. You continued to fight against Darius and preserve the Roman Republic. Even when you knew it would probably claim your life, you continued to fight back. My reign has ended, and yours has begun.”
He continued to hold his silence as he stared at me.
I couldn’t figure out how he felt about it, not when his face was as stoic as stone. “Do you accept?”
“You didn’t betray your country, Con. A man should always put his family first, and that’s exactly what you did. You wouldn’t be the right leader for Rome if you’d done otherwise. I think I made you feel bad because . . . I didn’t want to do it alone. I blamed you for everything, when it’s obvious Darius was always a complicated problem. And what I said about your brother . . . it was fucked up, and I regret saying it. Would take it back if I could.” He looked away when he finished, like he didn’t want to see my reaction to the last thing he said.
I’d felt no anger toward him at all, but now, I felt somehow lighter. “You can take it back.”
After a hesitation, he turned back to me.
“Because as far as I’m concerned, it never happened. So, do you accept?”
His eyes flicked back and forth between mine, but he let me change the subject and move on from the past. “Yeah.”
I smiled. “Good.”
“Do I get your place?”
“Fuck off,” I said with a laugh.
“Well, what the hell are you going to do with it?”
“Fair point,” I said. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll sell it to you—if you let us stay there when we visit.”
“Are you gonna visit often?”
“Probably not.”
“How much?” he asked.
“More than you can afford. But in a couple months, you should be able to cover it. I’m flexible.”
“Sounds like a deal,” he said.
“The least I can do for . . . abandoning you.”
He looked at the TV again and watched it for a while.
I stayed at his bedside even though I still had a lot of things to do. This story had a happy ending, but I was still bummed I wouldn’t see him every day like I used to. He was the closest thing I had to a brother . . . since mine had died.
“Have you gotten Edric yet?” He turned back to me. He pushed the blankets to his waist as if he’d gotten warm in that little bed.
“No. I’ll swing by tomorrow.”
“Alone?”
“No. Tommaso said he would help me.”
“Good,” he said. “Do you . . . feel better now?”
I thought about it for a while before I shook my head. “I made my peace with it when Aurelia told me she was pregnant. That made me realize I needed to live in the present and not the past. But it means a lot to me that I can bring him home . . . and lay him to rest. It’s closure, the last page in this shitty story.”
“It wasn’t all shitty,” he said. “Pretty fucking epic if you ask me.”
I’d met the love of my life, finally put Isabella behind me, and met some of my closest friends on the way. And now, a new stage of my life was about to begin—and I’d never been more excited. “It was, wasn’t it?”
The cemetery was located outside of Taormina, a short ten-minute drive. My mom hadn’t spoken of Edric in a long time, but I knew she still went there every single morning. That was confirmed when I arrived at his headstone and a fresh bouquet of flowers was there.
He hadn’t been gone that long, but time had already made its impact. The stone had lightened from exposure to the sunshine and the salt in the air. Grime had started to build up in the crevices of the engraving.
Tommaso and some of the other guys unloaded the oil drum from the back of the van. They rolled it down a plank of wood to get it to the dirt. They’d drained it in Palermo, and now nothing was inside except for the bones. Even sealed inside the oil drum, his body had still decomposed, and since it’d been over seven years, there wouldn’t be much left of him.
I grabbed a shovel and started to dig at my brother’s grave site. The others helped me, and an hour later, we reached the coffin that had already deteriorated. It was sealed shut even though there was nothing inside, so I pried it open and popped the lid.
I climbed out of the grave, then moved to the front of the van. I leaned against the grill and stared at the side of Mount Etna, the volcano quiet for the time being. I could hear Tommaso and the guys working, transferring the bones from the oil drum to the coffin before they sealed it shut again.