Page 30 of Fall Before Her Throne

“You love her.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him flinch, but he didn’t respond.

“Max, come on,” I pushed. “You have always loved her.”

“I loved her…the only way I knew how as a child. She was my sister, my partner, my closest friend, the only real companion I had before you. My earliest memories are of us together, inseparable. Giggling when we were happy, comforting each other when we were sad. I loved her like she was a piece of my heart outside my body—” He swallowed, gulping down the next words he was going to say. “I went too far. Somewhere, the line between protecting her and getting my revenge got too blurry. I got angry. Furious. Rage turns everything in your eyesight red; it makes enemies out of everything and everyone.”

“Why haven’t you told her this?” I asked.

“What difference does it make?” He turned to face me. “It changes nothing.”

“Max, it changes everything.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“It changes everything for me,” I said. “It means I can find a way to forgive you.”

A month ago, I would have said no fucking way. I hadn’t forgotten about all the fucked up shit he’d done to me, and there was still a lot of ground to cover before he made things right…but the possibility was there. There was a path forward if he walked it.

His eyes searched mine. He looked more bare, more open, than I’d seen him in years—probably since the night of his father’s funeral. That was when he had pulled away from us, after he’d learned that Luciano had killed Massimo. Since then, he’d been a shade of the boy he was. Now the man before me was complex and conflicted, but understandable for the first time in ten years.

My friend was coming back to life.

“Even if you can forgive me…I don’t think I can forgive myself.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. “That’s the real problem, then.”

He faced the ceiling again. “Besides, you both found a new home. You’re happy here. All of you together. That was all I ever wanted.” His voice dropped low and turned heavy. “I never expected to live through this anyway. I just wanted to make my father proud.”

Your father would be pretty fucking disappointed in you, Max. I spat those words at him when he tried to make excuses for his behavior. I didn’t need to say them again to see he was thinking the same thing. It was salt in the wound.

“What you all have here…” he whispered, almost too quietly for me to hear. “I don’t understand how it works.”

“It’s not as complicated as it looks,” I said. “We love her, and I think we’re learning how to love each other, and that’s the glue that keeps us together.”

“But…” A small tint of pink bloomed on his cheeks. He swallowed, coughed discreetly into his fist for a second. “It seems so crowded.”

I snorted, picturing all of us piled up on the massive bed in the penthouse. Cuddled up next to one another, wrapped up in each other. “It can be. But we make room.”

I left the second part of that unsaid.

That we might have room for one more.

If he could find his way to fit with the rest of us.

“How do you not kill each other?”

I laughed. “Oh, we’ve tried. Remember when you tortured me and fucked up my knee?”

He blanched, and his small smile fell. “Yeah.”

I waved a hand to clear the sudden awkwardness. “When I was recovering, Ryuji and I got into a fight and the fucker kicked it on purpose. Just to fuck it up. So I laid him out and knocked him flat on his back.”

His mouth hung open. “What the actual fuck, Cas? What was the fight about?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Leona?”