024. Unanswered Questions [1]

MISHA

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I don't think she ever talked so much in all those years since I've known her, since she was freaking born. She used to be calm and composed and indifferent when I messed with her when we were kids, but now she's being the complete opposite of that. Zia Anna, papa, and nonni keep saying she was mischievous, but I've never caught any glimpse of that mischievousness.

She seems to be even angrier at me than she's ever been, and it's driving me mad, because it's like she's doing her best to purposely be a bitch this time. She was just being herself, but now that's she's fucking trying? It makes me want to scream and fight her.

And I can't not provoke her, because there's something on the ways she's easily getting mad and showing how mad she is, that makes me addicted. Maybe it's because, before when we lived around each other as kids, she was just rudely cold, she didn't paid attention to us, to me. But not now.

Now every time our eyes met, she glares back at me, not with indifference, but with burning anger, fury, wrath. It's an emotion that's alive, and a part of me, for some reason, can't get enough of it. I can't get enough of it. Even with Emma in my arms, when I gave her a little kiss in front of the others, I found my eyes being drawn to Zoe Maud, to check how angry I was making her, and by how she got visually uncomfortable and left after alcohol, I know it was a lot.

All the control she used to have over her emotions is slipping away, and it's never been easier to read her anger, her annoyance.

But after her little act when she chose the songs to Emma and Rosa, I'm starting to think that, somehow, she learned that Emma is far from straight and it's actually secretly dating Rosa. If she knows, it'll be fucking annoying for me, since it'll mean she knows I'm living a one-sided love. However, if she does know, it'll make total sense her reactions.

Her scornful retorts about me dating Emma, about her being with me, and how she's shading her on her own way, for lying like this. Or how she provoked the girls, asking how zia Anna would react if she said she was bisexual or a lesbian, which made me honestly choke on my pomegranate juice. Not because she made it clear that she knows we are lying, but because of the possibility of her asking that for herself.

The idea of her also being into girls instead made me feel something really fucking weird that I can't even name it, it wasn't quite anger, but it was close.

That is, until my little brother mocked her and cleared it up.

When I thought she would freak out with zia's question about her papa, which I believe all of us thought would happen, she surprised me by looking okay with it and not only answering, as she gave an elaborated answer. It was definitely more than she talked to the famiglia in eight years, and by how papa and zia Anna shoulders relaxed, I could tell they were relieved.

Maybe she wanted to talk about it.

Now I get why I spotted her running around her building everyday when I woke at 8, back in MIT, as I bought the apartment in the same level as hers and in the front of hers, in a way to keep an eye on her like papa and zia Anna made me promise I would. Even when she was grieving and avoiding all of us, she still ran around the square. Now I understand that it was her way of keeping a tradition she started with zio Chris.

In fact, the whole training she mentioned, I did it with papa. From my 14, little after she left to the MIT, until my 17 years, I trained in the morning and at night with papa. And he told me that he got the habit from training daily with zio Christoffel, and that zio Chris had an insane training routine, that he did everyday since they met in college millennials ago.

Which made total sense since zio Chris was as tall as papa and ripped, and papa is 1.98m tall, I'm even taller than him. I adored zio Chris, when he picked me just so we could go out the two of us, it was one of my favorite moments as a kid, and it was even better because Zoe Maud used to get jealous about it. No wonder he was her hero, he really looked like a hero that popped out of fiction, with a body even more ripped than Henry Cavil's.

It's thanks to his influence that papa still trains until today, and as he's 2 years older than zia Anna, and was zio Chris's age, he's 54 years old. 54 years old and ripped, it's not exaggeration to say that papa's big. With a fancy suit on he looks like the very embodiment of male power, he and zio Chris were my models since childhood on this, while mama was my model as a person.

I'm still 22, but I'm doing a pretty good job. My body is my temple.

So, to know that Mia's also undergoing zio Chris's training since she was 12? That's some insane shit. I mean, yeah, it's showing. Mia has defined arms, shoulders, her legs are long and curvy but toned, her butt is amazing, and she's thick in all the right places, but she still took the curves, her waist is infuriatingly tiny in my eyes, and her breasts are naturally wonders.

None of her sisters have those curves, a body that defined, a waist that tiny, or such breasts, they are taller than her and slimmer, which they got from their papa's side for sure, since zia Anna may not be as attractive as her youngest daughter, but Zoe Maud got that curves and the thickness here and there from her.

Nonna Giulia proves that too, she's 75 but she's fit and looks 55, while zia Anna looks 32 instead of 52.

Emma and Julia have a more mature look to them, while Zoe Maud shines with the youthful glow she got from her mama and her nonna.

But just a hot body doesn't make a good person. Sure, I'm never going to say it out loud, she's hot, really hot, very hot indeed, but her personality blows that away. When she opens her pretty pouty lips, and sarcasm comes out, it's the end.

She's as infuriating as she is hot. It'll die with me, regardless.

Now Emma shines with her sweet personality, while her younger sister is pure venom dripping from her fangs. Gothic little misunderstood bitch. I'm pretty sure she knows how much of a bitch she is.

If there is something that Zoe Maud Von Barnhardt Santorini is, is self-aware. Both of how much of a one-of-akind prodigy she is, as of her down sides, and there's a bunch of them.

Even so, I get that she is worse than before now, because she's hurting.

It's as the saying goes, hurt people, hurt other people. But it doesn't give her a free pass to be a bitch to us. And though I low-key like how she's giving me attention even if it's anger, because of how I was bitter with her as kid, she is targeting me for nothing.

I'm sure I never did anything against her.

Definitely not enough for her to hate me.

It also makes sense how she managed to be so agile and quick, even if blinded by rage and grief, to pick the gun down when the fucker threw zio Chris's dying body at her, and she shot him. She didn't look like it was her first time doing it, and I don't doubt one bit that if the horror and grief hadn't consumed her, she would have been able and with the guts to kill the guy right there. She did target his heart, after all.

That was quite the sight.

Had it ended in any other out come, with zio alive, I would have complimented her on it, even if she cursed me for it.