Make Them Regret It Chapter 22
“She kept her hand on her stomach,” I said. “Even at the very end, she never let go.”
My second brother collapsed, pressing his face to the cold floor, and didn’t move again.
My older brother hadn’t spoken a word.
He was clutching something in his hand, his knuckles white.
It was Gia’s half-eaten piece of chocolate. He had pried it from her fingers.
After a long time, he finally spoke.
“Gia… did she blame me?”
I thought for a moment.
“She didn’t blame you.”
“She just kept asking why her daddy hadn’t come yet.”
My older brother curled around that small piece of chocolate and cried like a child.
After I finished lighting the candles, I walked out of the room.
Behind me, my father called out, “Blythe!”
I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.
“Father,” I said, “you always said the women of the Romano family would rather die than suffer humiliation.”
“But that night, the ones who drove them to that point weren’t just those three men, and it wasn’t just Isabella.”
“It was you.”
“You made them believe that no one in this world was coming to save them.”
On the day of the burial, it rained.
Someone in the family suggested putting up a monument for the dead women, with a passage praising their loyalty.
I tore up the draft.
They had not died to be praised.