Only a Paper Moon

The warning the last time had been brief, but there had been one. That first tiny glimpse from the corner of her eye, the shattered croak of her name, they’d given her time to brave herself before she’d turned to face him. Shoring up the broken pieces of the heart Nemo had crushed the first time and Pat had finished with the twist of one immaculate Ferragamo heel. A mask slipped back into place just in time for it to start to fall again.

This time he’d given her none, even though she should’ve expected it. Giorgia pressed her lips together to stop trembling, but it did nothing for the pulse she felt hammering against her fingertips. It didn’t matter how many times he chose Emiliano over her they were still going to end up back here. The wolf tied to its moon from that very first shift, the one that came from that crushed heart, not the sickening crack of her bones.

She’d lost count of how many nights she had waited for Nemo to come to her. A teenaged girl, tear tracks burning furiously on cheeks that had seemed branded with them for weeks – a heavy hand with concealer and foundation hiding what her healing couldn’t from Emiliano – hope bubbling like a fresh spring in the rubble of her heart every time she had a sound out in the hallway late at night. It had taken months to train herself out of it, to realise that no matter how much she loved him, Nemo had allowed Emiliano to crush what he had felt for her.

Dio mio. For just a split second when he had touched her in the grocery store Giorgia had felt that spring start to bubble again. Him, Emiliano, Patrick, they had all tried to grind that part of her to dust, but it was still there.

Cold water splashed every nerve as the first question snapped out of him, like she had held her breath and leapt straight into the deep end. How long could she hold it for before she had to swim through that wavering vision of him and kick to the surface?

Tears rolled from those eyes that had once held such warmth and not the cold bite of temper that they did now. An echo of her own, the two of them standing, shaking, at either end of the table. Giorgia’s fingertips settled over her pulse like she could slow it by touch, the breathy gasp of her voice a vibration against her palm. ”I haven’t even spoken to him. I haven’t said a word about you to anybody. I…” Emiliano was probably waiting for her to snap and come home with her tail between her legs. Pat would spread his arms and flash that smile that she still wanted to claw from his face, welcoming her back as though she would be broken enough now to willingly live in that sham of a marriage.

The thought cut off with an almost audible snap as Nemo stepped forward, as sharp as the crack of the plate on the hardwood floor. He took a step towards her and Giorgia stepped back. Afraid of him and that violent slap of voice and magic for the first time in her life. ”Stop it! Stop!” The candles she’d planned to light before she ate – a ridiculous touch, like she needed it to be something more than just a bowl of pasta for one – thudding down to join the scattered remnants of ceramic and bread. Her vase! Giorgia shrieked, hating herself enough for the stumbling steps she took away from the one man she was still sure wouldn’t physically hurt her, that she moved towards him instead.

The debris on the floor – the shattered remnants of the flimsy new life she’d built here – crunched beneath her bare feet. A momentary sting as she stepped on a shard of ceramic, but Giorgia ignored it as she held her hands out between them. Not to ward him off, an attempt to stop the tornado tearing away her words before he really heard them. ”Come potrei seccidere l’altra metà di me stesso?” Her throat was raw with the question he probably wouldn’t understand enough of. There was no hiding the pain in her voice though.

What happened to her?

Giorgia swallowed convulsively, trying to ignore the sting of that slap. ”What happened to you?” she asked hoarsely. ”Did he tell you I was trying to ruin it all? Did he laugh about what they did? All I wanted was to keep you safe, to stop him or them from killing you.” Her voice rose as her heartrate started to settle closer to startled rabbit – so much for the wolf – drops of her blood scarlet on the floor as she took another step. Echoes of it on his skin as she looked, smeared and dried along the line of one of those awful scars.

Her hand rose a few inches, wanting to trace her fingers over those reddened lines. Him. Had she been wrong, had he… The pain was sharp in her throat, like one of those shards had lodged there. ”Were you watching me? At the station? Here?” Had he been watching the Buckleys, wanting to make the move she’d stepped in front of … for him. Why could he not understand this was all for him?

Tagged: NEMO AGNELLI * Word Count: 899
Translation: How could I kill the other half of myself?

Power had crackled through the air like downed cables. Snapping viciously in a way she never would have expected from him. Once upon a time his magic had been a beautiful thing, blooming inside of him in a way that showed on his face, with that simple joy she was sure had been twisted into something fouler, if Emiliano hadn’t crushed it all together. It had shivered over her skin as she’d watched him wield it then, her fingers finding his when he was done, trailing over the knobs of knuckles he hadn’t grown into then, the long, delicate fingers that were capable of holding hers so tight, without hurting her. Now Giorgia could barely bring herself to look at them.

Years of Emiliano’s teaching – parenting – had changed everything. She’d sworn in those tear filled days after Nemo had walked away from her that it changed nothing. Her sisters hadn’t believed her, now Giorgia knew she had been wrong. Emiliano changed everything in the end, only revealing its new form at the end, when he wanted to start crushing you into yours.

The woman who’d looked into the mirror in the room at the Maison de la Luz she’d retreated to after she’d left the house she’d shared with the husband she’d thought she’d known hadn’t been the one she thought she’d been looking at for years. She hadn’t seen Emiliano’s touch moulding her, but through Pat he’d managed it. Shattered pieces left behind, even if the mirror had been hole. Had Nemo seen her at the grocery store? Or had he just seen the girl he’d known, the one she’d believed he’d loved. The wolf to his moon.

Did he see her now? Flinching away from that violence that spilled out, the words that tumbled angrily from his lips until his scarred face crumbled. His question told her maybe he did. She wasn’t the girl with the shattered heart, hoping for him to come back to her so they could still be together, the way they’d always wanted to be. She wasn’t the perfect wife, the woman who’d thought she was enough for someone to love her with everything they were.

Her hands hovered in the air, a plea, as she tried to make him understand. All she had ever wanted to do was protect him, but Emiliano had never allowed it to happen. His choke chain was too tight around Nemo’s throat for her to work her fingers under to free him. Giorgia pressed her lips together, trying to stop the tremor from running through her for just a moment as those dark eyes fixed on her.

Giorgia’s voice was as raw in her throat as the pain was in her chest. It burned as she let out a short laugh that brought the sting of tears back into her eyes. ”That’s the problem. You won’t betray him. It doesn’t –“ Another verbal slap to the face had her stopping, what colour had risen back into her cheeks draining away until she was as white as the broken plate scattered on the floor.

He had seen. The realisation came with that slap, the pain burning under her skin. For you. The words stuck in her throat as he caught at her hand. Would he squeeze it until she crumpled? Fingers popping until she screamed again, the touch that had once been so loving now steeped in nothing but pain. He knew about the Buckleys, had seen all that he needed to see to confirm those doubts in his head. She was here to betray him, to get her own back and make him suffer instead of saving him.

She flinched as his fingers flexed, shook as he dropped her hand. Still, Giorgia didn’t step back. Her hands curled at her sides, her chin still lifted like somehow she could drag those pieces of herself back together, to make herself seem whole until he left her crumpled there in the middle of all the destruction. ”I did it for you,” she croaked out, watching Nemo wince over the word dad. ”Maybe you should have told him, he would’ve told you to do this. To end his little problem. There would be nothing standing between you and the Buckleys then. Nobody to protect you.” Nobody to stop them from killing him.

The image of his body on a slab in the morgue had the ice solidifying in her chest, so cold that she wanted to fold around it. Tears filled her eyes again, just as cold, but none of it held the bite of his words. They spilled down her cheeks unchecked as she shook her head. ”I wanted him to go. I wanted them both to go, to make sure you lived. Do you think your father will shed a tear if you end up in a grave? Like he did for Georgie? I’m the one who would, the one who can’t bear the thought of losing you.” Her hands fluttered in the air again, like she could take his arms, but she was almost afraid to touch now. ”Let them go, please. I can’t get you away from Emiliano, but let me protect you?” He hadn’t at the grocery store, he’d left her there with the money she’d tried to push at him crumpled in her hand. Now it was her heart crumpling, Nemo’s fingers around it, squeezing all she’d believed out of it.

Tagged: NEMO AGNELLI * Word Count: 906

As a kid she’d curled up in bed when those vicious storms would roll over New Orleans. They’d had them at home, rain lifting that dusty smell up in the stone streets of Rome like a perfume. She was sure their mama hadn’t wanted them to but they would run in it, sandals slapping on the streets, heads thrown back to catch the rain in their mouths. In New Orleans if you’d tried that you’d likely have drowned. The storms would break viciously there, great deluges of rain that had Giorgia worrying that maybe this was like the bible. There would be a boat – an ark – out in the swamps, filling up with the animals and the handful of people worthy of escaping the flood. Surely Emiliano would be one of those to drown.

Balled up in her bed Giorgia would listen for the sound of the thunder to roll away. Counting in her head like it meant she would know when the storm had gone and she could slip back to sleep again. Her heart pounding in his chest as it did now when the count came to a stop too quickly. Closer. It was closer and surely she’d feel the sizzle of the lightning on her skin as someone up there punished Emiliano for all he was doing.

That crackle ran over her own skin now light that lightning, Nemo’s breathing just as ragged as hers as he released her hand. Was this her punishment, theirs, for they were doing? Nemo had never hurt her, not even when he’d blown everything across the apartment, things, not her, and yet if Emiliano asked him too, she wasn’t sure if he would finally say no. When Emiliano had dragged him out of her room he’d stopped resisting his father’s wishes, he’d walked and not looked back, hadn’t touched her again until the grocery store.

Giorgia’s lips trembled as she curled her fingers into fists, like that would keep the imprint of him on her skin now. Emiliano wouldn’t have asked outright, he’d have suggested, cajoled, given Nemo just enough hints about where the Buckleys were to have him running after them all. ”He wanted to protect you? If he did he would’ve ordered you to stay, you know he could’ve done.” Emiliano could’ve tightened those shackles but he hadn’t. He hadn’t sent anybody after Nemo or ordered him home and waited there at the door like a vicious master and his whipped puppy who thought he still loved him, no matter how many times that heavy hand came down.

”Me,” Giorgia managed hoarsely. ”He wouldn’t draw the line if I stood in his way long enough.” Her face twisted, her eyes letting free more tears to roll down her face in scalding lines. ”We’re both thorns in side. We weren’t his children, not the way Georgie was. Georgie is the one he wants you to avenge.” And the Buckleys were the ones who had failed there. They hadn’t stopped that bodega owner from shooting Georgie. While his son went cold in the ground Chase Buckley strolled free and Mikey was trapped behind bars, used for what he was until he’d slipped free. They were all in the firing line and who better to shoot the bullet than someone they’d all once trusted.

She had done the same when she’d left New Orleans. Stretching that choke chain until perhaps Emiliano could no longer get a grip on it to pull her back. That taste of freedom the two of them were supposed to have, that Emiliano had taken away. Giorgia pushed at him before she could pull herself back, the grief that had never healed welling up in that slap of her hand against his chest. ”Yes, I care, I always cared. At least if you go back to him you’re somewhere, you’re living. You’re breathing. We have …” A chance to make it all right someday, like they ever could with Emiliano looming over both of them. There was almost a finality to his words that told her that it would happen again. She would lose him either way – in a pine box, or he’d succeed and he would go back to New Orleans to curl beneath Emiliano’s thumb, not leaving again unless Emiliano ordered it.

It would cut her to the core, like it was doing now. She wanted to curl her hands into his shirt, to hold on to him until he let all that pain go. She wanted him to hold her, to hold him until the scars faded and the pain was all gone. Giorgia stood inches from him, her hand slipping from his chest to hang between them until he showed her his. The fresher scars there that had a small sound of pain keening out of her. ”Because you matter,” she whispered. ”Because I do believe in you … but … I can’t bear the thought of that gun at your head. Of him standing over you, of never having a chance to change all of this. Let me, let me stop him from ever being able to touch you again.” The plea was strained, hanging in the air until Nemo turned his hand over, offering it up to her.

Through her tears Giorgia met his gaze. Both of them standing there, cut to the bone by all of this. She felt stiff with it, like somehow she’d drained all energy from herself. Slowly, as he apologised for scaring her, Giorgia reached for his hand, her fingers stiff until she felt the warmth of his and then she was clinging hard to them. Her brows furrowed, the ache in her chest intensifying as she rose on her tiptoes to brush the fingers of her over hand over that scarred skin, the face she still knew every inch of below. ”You’re the one person I knew never would. It’s … it’s just a plate, it doesn’t matter. You thought I had turned against you, you didn’t know … you thought … you thought I would hurt you, would let them hurt you. I never would. I promise you.” The same promise they’d made once upon a time but Emiliano had shattered it for them, like that plate on the floor.

The thunder had rolled on for the moment, that still air sliding in behind. No violet whip of wind, no agony unleashed on her for all that she had tried to do. Slowly, Giorgia tried to draw him in, the hand that had been at his cheek sliding around his neck. Taller than he had been, but the same, beneath all the scars that had been cut into him, he was the same and they were caught right back up into the eye of that storm, waiting to see if it would turn on them again.

Tagged: NEMO AGNELLI * Word Count: 1141

For those years she had been trapped in the house with Emiliano, with him, she had desperately wanted Nemo to fight against the rules that had forced them apart. Like one day he would tire of the space between them and he would come for her. One day he would see. Giorgia knew that even now that day had not come. Nemo hadn’t heard of what had happened between her and Pat and had finally realised he couldn’t live without her, that she still loved him with a heart that hadn’t filled for her husband the way it had for Nemo. For years she had convinced herself that it had, wanted it too, but like she had in so many other ways Giorgia had been fooling herself.

Perhaps she was still now, believing that her resistance meant half as much to Emiliano as the Buckleys did. Any feeling for the children his brother had fathered, the son that wasn’t his in any way, insignificant compared to what seethed and boiled inside of him for the Buckleys. He was a man likely incapable of love, wanting nothing more than to destroy what he could not have. To prove his power by doing it.

To crush them.

If that was Emiliano’s plan then perhaps he would finally succeed in killing her without laying a single hand on her. Taking Nemo first, letting her believe she had replaced him when all along it had been with someone who was happy to be his puppet, in allowing Nemo to come back so close to her … only to continuing turning away from her for the Buckleys. Giorgia’s lower lip tried to quiver as she pressed them together. Was Nemo denying that he would hurt her? That Emiliano would? Or that Emiliano’s love hadn’t stretched to the poor orphan he had thrown open his home to?

Giorgia flinched with the punch in Nemo’s voice again, that strength in his defence of Emiliano misplaced so far that it hurt. Something deep down inside crumpled, like the tissues in her fists as she’d sobbed out her heartbreak, the wolf that had lost her moon. Even steeped in a lifetime of tears, it burned with a thirst, for him, for that defence to be in her name, not Emiliano’s. ”You don’t think that killing him won’t hurt her?” she asked hoarsely. ”It was Emiliano’s fault Georgie died. He could have let his sons live normal lives, he could’ve let all of us but it would never be enough for him.” Roxxi hadn’t been wrong to fight, no matter how many times she’d tried to hush her sister. Fate could go fuck itself, what had brought them to this point had been wrong on so many levels, Emiliano’s curse damning them all.

The laugh wanted to tear itself free of her but Giorgia was shaking her head, looking up Nemo through the shimmering screen of tears as he said she hadn’t done anything half as bad. Neither of them had done anything to deserve this. Not her, not Roxxi, not the man who now bore all that damage on the surface, shattered and scarred for his father’s crimes. It was too easy to imagine another net of scars covering these, carved deep in his attempts to pay Chase back for what he had done, what she could not imagine him doing.

She imagined herself picking up the phone, warning Roxxi what – who – was coming for her and Chase. That would send him running faster than her talk with Mikey had, surely. It also increased the chances that the Buckleys would … That sick feeling crawled higher up her throat, leaving herself choking on it as she shoved at Nemo, slapped her hand against a chest that had broadened since he had been that skinny boy holding her close.

Now he was pulling away from her, cringing from her touch, her pain. Both of them trying to pull away from the violence that had never been between them before Emiliano had twisted everything. ”No. I didn’t mean that. Even if you’re there we have a chance. You can still pull away from him, it doesn’t have to be what he wants. We can finally have what we should have…” She wouldn’t let him? Giorgia’s brows knitted, confusion swirling as thick as the nausea in her stomach. Couldn’t he see that she was trying to make the space so he could? Without being behind bars the way Mikey had, or buried in a grave because he had to make Chase pay for what had been all Emiliano’s fault.

It was Nemo’s choice though, and while Emiliano lived, he would never make it. He would not break the chain and be with her. Emiliano wouldn’t allow it. She could see that clearly despite her tears. His spirit was between them again, a chasm Giorgia didn’t think either one of them was capable of crossing, no matter how badly they wanted it. They were fated to this, cursed and she would watch as her moon fell from the sky. ”And if you fail,” Giorgia whispered, letting the words hang in the air. ”I won’t be able to live with myself … for not protecting you, for not stopping him.” Live for me. The plea was trapped in her throat. For him to choose her, them.

None of this matter. She would walk, they could run, far from here and the Buckleys and Roxxi and Emiliano. They could leave it all behind if he had the strength. Apologies didn’t mean either one of them had it, not unless they were together.

There was no healing this, the scars she felt under her fingertips, not in the way she would want for him, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t see who he had been beneath. It could be all that she could see when she looked at him. The girl she’d been was still there beneath her own skin – the one that Patrick had left his own marks on, that she had removed Nemo’s mark from. Giorgia felt her rise up and press against her from the inside as she curled herself against him. Nemo didn’t pull away, just curled back, his arms holding her close as his body was wrapped with those sobs. His hand splayed against her ribs, settling where he had been and she sobbed at the feel of it. Erasing him had been one of the worst mistakes of her life.

Swaying there with him, in the middle of all the destruction they had caused, she wished she could turn back the clock. To cling on to the shredded belief that they would never have this again. She could have waited a lifetime if she had known, saved herself the devastation of believing there was a way past the pain. Giorgia’s fingers curled into the back of his neck, her other hand settling at his ribs, feeling the flat plain of muscle and bone lifting with each breath. ”Chase?” she asked hoarsely, confused. She turned her head slightly, just enough to see one cheekbone, not enough. God, no. ”Don’t go, you don’t have to, not tonight. Please…. We can forget about them for tonight. We can shut them out. Just for tonight. Nemo, non andare. Amiamo solo per una notte.” He wouldn’t stop looking for Buckley, she could see that, but she could also see what she had always wanted, right there in her palms. Giorgia’s tears broke afresh as she pressed her lips to the ragged line of one of those scars that cut clear through both of them.

Tagged: NEMO AGNELLI * Word Count: 1269
Translation: Don't go. Let us love just for one night.

The storm of his emotions had not hurt her as they had lashed through her apartment. They spilled around her, would hopefully continue to, despite the grit of his teeth as she tried to stand between him and Emiliano. A storm at her back she would shield him from even if it cut her down – Emiliano would not hesitate the way Nemo had, not even if it meant killing his fatted calf and losing one of his assets in the district attorney’s office.

Giorgia hated comparing herself to her sister, but she could see Roxana trying to do the same for Chase. A line of defence against her own family. Emiliano would hesitate even less over her. His wife’s grief over the loss of her daughters not a blip on the radar of a heart as black as the rest of him. No matter how Nemo spoke of it being right to kill Chase Buckley, Giorgia couldn’t believe that his heart had ended up the same way. He felt for her, he ached for what had been done to himself, that meant that there was something still of her moon there behind the scars that twisted now. Echoes of the way his heart had twisted when Emiliano had peeled her fingers from it.

Would the scars fade if hers were allowed there again? Emiliano’s grip on him gone, the circumstances that had cut them both in different ways left behind? She didn’t know, but she wanted the chance to, one day at least. Shoving at him like she could punch right through the shield of that bony chest that had once cradled her head perfectly, Giorgia tried to break that heart out so that he could see it as she did. It could’ve gone badly, left that lash of violence rolling out again, but he just cringed from her instead, leaving her looking up at him with hope a sheen in her eyes. Once upon a time she’d wished that those brief months she’d been able to show him she loved him wouldn’t be all they would have, now, even as he seemed confused by her words, Giorgia knew it wouldn’t be.

Eventually Emiliano’s empire would crumble under the weight of his own arrogance, or time would catch up with him, and Death’s blade would take that scheming head from his shoulders. Even if the hand that reached for Nemo’s was lined and spotted, she would hold on tight and they would have their time. Not with another’s ring on her finger, she was done trying to erase the scars on her heart with the imitation of love from anybody else.

Per favore, amore mio. The words stuck in Giorgia’s head, a plea that maybe he wouldn’t hear, as he didn’t seem to have heard half her others. They twisted in his ears, until he saw only the refusal to let him do as he wished, not the love that tried to stay his hand for them.

With Nemo’s arms wrapping around her Giorgia could almost believe that he had heard those words anyway, that they would go. Roxxi and the Buckleys could have this town, it wouldn’t matter then. Her head rested against his chest, finding that place that had always been hers. It had never been the same with Patrick, the tenderness not there, although she’d been too focused on the ring on her finger and what that meant to take much notice. No matter how many years, or how hard Emiliano had tried to erase it, with Nemo it was still there. Giorgia breathed him in, his dark hair brushed against her fingertips and she could feel every one of his inhalations, the bow of his ribs firm against her hand.

Lifting her head into the crook of his throat, Giorgia felt as Nemo’s head kissed against hers lightly. As long as they stayed here, everyone else would remain outside, unable to get in the way he had. Her brow furrowed as he didn’t ask her question, almost like this had rendered him mute. Her voice almost broke as her plea whispered against her skin, maybe as indecipherable, despite the words she’d once tried to teach him with a teenager’s patience. Her heart stuttered as he moved finally, as if this might be it, the end of hope. No. Not yet.

Jade eyes slid shut as he rested his brow against hers, just inhaling lightly. He meant … someone else, something else, but that didn’t matter now, did it? ”Good, I don’t know if I could …” Let him go when it might be the last time, just as it had been before, although Emiliano was not here to drag him out of her arms now. She swayed in his hold, the tears rolling down her cheeks still, fat drops of heartbreak bleeding away, pressed into his skin with the kisses she had laid upon the scars. ”Patrick?” Giorgia echoed. She wanted to laugh, but all she managed was a sharp inhalation before that hand on his ribs tried to draw him closer. ”No, this isn’t his place.” This was no his wife. She had shattered that tie the moment she had seen Emiliano’s fingerprints all over it, another woman’s all over him.

The pain that had torn at her heart was muted now, the wounds shallowed compared to the ones carved in her, like the scars she could barely see. Nemo’s lips almost touched hers, so close to where they had once been. Giorgia made a small sound in her throat, a fresh tear breaking free as he whispered in the words he had to have learned for her. Her eyes opened slowly, her hand sliding to his cheek, guiding until she could look up into his eyes. ”I love you,” she said hoarsely before she slipped back into that language that seemed theirs alone. Patrick had never bothered to learn, reminding her that this was America, they spoke English here. ”Non ho mai dimenticato, non ho mai smesso di amarti. Non lo farò mai. Come?” She took a slow step back, meaning to walk back through the destruction of a night long abandoned, but Giorgia paused again, her hand leaving his ribs to brace herself against his shoulder. Rising on her toes, she pressed her lips to his, pouring out everything that rushed up from that volcano she’d thought long dead into a kiss that had been more than a decade in the making.

Tagged: NEMO AGNELLI * Word Count: 1078
Translation: Please, my love./I never forgot, I never stopped loving you. I never will.