Chapter 148: Of Grief and Guilt

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[Lorenzo Castelli]

The Castelli mansion had never exactly been a peaceful or calm place place...not with the guards, servants and three Alpha sons running around (maybe two since Lorenzo didn’t do running around).

But after Isotta’s passing, Lorenzo realized that silence could be far more grating than any noise.

In the weeks following the funeral, he found himself anticipating his mother’s footsteps in the hallway outside his bedroom.

He could almost hear the gentle knock she always gave before coming in, even though she was never too good at waiting.

He imagined her in the kitchen chatting with the staff about dinner, in the garden fussing over flowers she believed were better company than most of the men his father employed, or in the sitting room with Matteo nestled beside her while she read from a book neither of them had much interest in finishing.

But instead, her rooms stayed shut tight, her favorite chair was vacant, and the scent of her perfume to hide her pregnancy scent, one that had lingered since their day at the amusement park...gradually faded, leaving behind a scent Lorenzo couldn’t quite place.

That hurt the most.

Her perfume had been one of the few things that could soothe him when nightmares dragged him back to her death, and when the scent finally vanished, he found himself in her bedroom one evening, gripping the back of her chair, furious over something as trivial as the passing of time.

The world had taken his mother, his unborn sister, and the only haven he’d ever known, yet it continued to spin as if nothing significant had changed.

The sun rose every morning, meals were prepared by the servants, guards changed shifts, and people still grumbled about petty annoyances like coffee quality or the weather ruining plans.

Lorenzo found all of this infuriating, but he didn’t have the energy or desire to explain why their normal lives felt like a slap in the face.

His father changed, but in ways that were complicated.

Frederick kept running the organization, knowing that to show grief would only invite their enemies to see weakness.

He put in longer hours at the office, while the men who had once feared his temper learned to tiptoe around the subject of Isotta unless absolutely necessary.

Sometimes Lorenzo would find him sitting alone with a whiskey and smoking a cigar, staring off into space, and on those occasions, he would quietly slip away before his father realized he was there.

They had never been great at talking about feelings, and after the funeral, it seemed they both agreed that silence was the only language they could share that wouldn’t make things more painful.

Dante dealt with his grief in a different way.

At sixteen, he was mature enough to understand the political fallout from their mother’s murder but still young enough to think that anger could solve anything.

He threw himself into training with a single-minded determination that worried even his instructors.

He became even more impatient, argumentative, and desperate to prove he could defend the Castelli name, often volunteering for missions that were better suited for more seasoned men.

Matteo, on the other hand, tried to revert back to the boy he had been before the abduction, though it didn’t always work.

He laughed too loudly, complained about meals with a renewed passion, and insisted everyone stop treating him like he might shatter if someone spoke too harshly.

Lorenzo got why he did it, even if Matteo’s behavior was exhausting.

Matteo wanted his childhood back, and unlike Lorenzo, he hadn’t yet concluded that to survive in the world, he had to understand its worst aspects.

As for Lorenzo, he became more reserved.

He answered questions when necessary, attended family meetings without fuss, and stopped arguing with the servants who sometimes whispered about the unusual Castelli boy.

His injuries healed slowly, leaving pale scars on his chest and torso that he never bothered to hide even when he was disgusted by it, and whenever he caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, he remembered the cold floor beneath his knees, the wet sound of the knife cutting through his flesh, the hot blood pouring down his stomach, and his mother’s voice assuring him that he hadn’t done anything wrong even as she bled out in front of him.

He never shared details about the nightmares.

He’d wake up from them with his heart racing, hands clutching the sheets, sometimes reaching blindly toward the other side of the bed as if his mother might appear to comfort him that it was all over.

Afterward, he would sit by the window until dawn, waiting for the sky to brighten, because he found it impossible to bear the darkness, even knowing it hid nothing.

In the nightmares the room always smelled of blood and damp concrete. He could still feel the iron cuffs cutting into his wrists, still hear the wet slice of the blade opening another line across his chest, still see the older man twist the knife in his mother’s neck and the way her blue dress turned black with blood as she collapsed. Sometimes he woke up tasting copper and screaming her name.

Eventually, he turned his attention to his father’s organization.

At first, Frederick thought the boy was just looking for a distraction, so he let Lorenzo access more of basic reports, security briefings, and schedules of the men responsible for safeguarding the family properties.

He expected Lorenzo to lose interest, but the opposite happened; within months, his second son was picking up inconsistencies that older men had overlooked for years.

Lorenzo wanted to know how the kidnappers had found their way, why the driver hadn’t alerted the other guards before he died, and how several armed men had managed to isolate three Castelli family members before help arrived.

He studied maps until he could recall all the roads around their properties without needing to look, memorized the names of their security personnel, and questioned any decision that could have contributed to their vulnerability.

When one of his father’s men suggested the attack was just unfortunate, Lorenzo looked at him with such icy disbelief that the man promptly reconsidered his words.

"Unfortunate is when rain ruins a wedding," Lorenzo replied. "This was a failure of security."

The man wisely chose not to argue with a fourteen-year-old who had already learned to sound like a disappointed accountant.

Lorenzo didn’t believe the attack was unavoidable, and he refused to accept that his mother’s death was something that couldn’t be understood.

If the kidnappers had exploited a flaw, he’d find it. If someone had erred, he’d pinpoint that. If the organization had let his family down, he’d ensure it would never happen again.

He started to think that enough information could prevent surprises, enough authority could avert mistakes, and enough power could shield his loved ones from harm.

It was a sound philosophy on the surface, but it also led him to believe every tragedy was a problem he had failed to solve.

His relationship with his older brother Dante suffered as Lorenzo grew increasingly critical of his brother’s choices, particularly when Dante’s anger pushed him to act without considering the repercussions.

"You can’t keep questioning everything I do, Lorenzo!" Dante snapped one evening after Lorenzo criticized his plan to pursue a suspected informant.

"I can when your choices put others at risk."

"Shut up! You don’t grasp what it takes to lead."

"Then you should stop making choices that imply you don’t either."

Dante shoved back his chair so forcefully it scraped across the floor, his face flushing with anger as he glared at his younger brother.

"Do you think you’re the only one who lost her?!" he shot back. "Do you think you’re the only one who wishes they could’ve acted differently?!"

Lorenzo froze.

For a moment, Dante looked almost remorseful for speaking that way, but grief pulled him too far to pull back.

"If you hadn’t tried to negotiate with those men, maybe they wouldn’t have killed her! You kept provoking them, acting like you could outsmart everyone, and she died anyway! This is all your fault! You didn’t even cry at all during Mamma’s funeral!"

The words hit harder than any blows Lorenzo remembered from that night, shaping the doubt he had held inside since the funeral.

Maybe he should’ve responded differently.

Maybe he should’ve stayed quiet.

Maybe, if he had been smarter, braver, or just plain better, his mother would still be alive.

He stared at Dante for several seconds before gathering up the reports from the table.

"I hope you never realize how little difference that makes," he said softly.

Then he left the room, and neither apologized.

Matteo tried to mend their relationship in his own way, popping into Lorenzo’s study with food he claimed to have pilfered from the kitchen, though the cook had openly admitted it was her joy to give him extra servings because he was the only Castelli boy who remembered to thank her.

"You know," Matteo said one evening, setting a plate beside Lorenzo’s reports, "most people eat dinner to prevent starving to death."

"I’ve eaten."

"You’ve only had that disgusting coffee! That isn’t food!"

Lorenzo almost smiled.

It was a small victory, hardly noticeable, but Matteo caught it and beamed with pride the whole evening.

Lorenzo never told him those visits were a comfort because admitting that his younger brother could lessen the mansion’s emptiness would have required a conversation neither was ready for.

Months later, Frederick woke Lorenzo in the dead of night.

His father stood beside the bed, dressed in black, his expression so grave that Lorenzo shot upright, reaching for the weapon he had recently begun keeping close.

"Get dressed," Frederick commanded. "And come with me."

Lorenzo followed him through the mansion and down a staircase he’d never been allowed to use, eventually finding himself in a basement that reeked of damp stone and old metal.

Lorenzo recognized the kidnapper leader right away.