"Go on, say it. You think I'm a monster, you think I'm a horrible person."

That is what I wanted to say, but somewhere deep inside me I knew it wasn't true. I didn't understand why I couldn't shout those things at him when I so desperately wanted to.

Dominic reaches out to me and pulls me against him, wrapping his arms tightly around my body. And that's when I break. I start crying into his chest. I feel so angry and scared. Dominic tightens his hold on me further as he tries to soothe me. "I'm so sorry Ell. I wish I could make it all better, I wish I could go back and change it." He tells me in a hushed tone that is almost too quiet for me to hear. He rubs one of his hands up and down my back. "I can take you to see him, he won't be awake for a little while. The doctors are keeping him under sedation to allow his body to focus on getting out of the danger zone." I begin to cry harder at his words, but nod at the same time too. Dominic and I stand like this for a few more minutes as I continue to sob loudly into his chest. "Are you ok with going in your pyjamas?"

I nod slowly and pull myself away from him. I walk into the closet and grab my flats to slide on as well as pull on my chunky knit cardigan. 

Dominic is standing in the doorway to the closet when I turn around, he extends a hand out to me which I just glare at. He may have comforted me a few minutes earlier but I no longer want him touching me. I no longer want to feel his burning touch against me. It just feels wrong. All of this feels so very wrong. 

Dominic nods his head once at me as if understanding what I was thinking. He turns around and walks back into my room, heading for the door. I follow after him at a distance as we head down stairs and into the elevator. 

I stand in the far back corner of the elevator to him, my eyes glued to the floor as we ride down to the parking garage. 

Dominic walks a few paces in front of me as we walk to his sports car, memories flooding back of the last time I was in this car of when Dominic had first start to be nice to me and driven me home because apparently he seemed to noticed how much I did not like being at the club. I sigh at the memory, things had been so simple then and now everything's getting muddled up.

I got into the car silently, pulling my seatbelt on and drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

Dominic let out a sigh and I could feel his eyes on me, but I refused to even look in his direction. Without a word he started the car and pulled out of the parking garage and onto the streets of New York.

New York didn't look much different at four in the morning to any other time of the day. The streets were still busy as people were making their way home from bars or clubs, some people were going home from work, and some were going to work. New York was the same but I felt different.

Newly awoken to the truth of who I was living with, who my brother and his best friend are. It felt like a polar shift had gone on within me. It felt like I was a different person now but I didn't understand how or why. Why couldn't I be the same me as I was before? Why did I have to be the one who felt like a different person? Neither Max nor Dominic felt like different people to me, though I suppose it was because I knew there was something they weren't telling me. I'd been suspicious since I arrived here, of their jobs and their lifestyles. Maybe I didn't see them any differently as I did before because I knew the Max and Dominic I thought I knew wasn't real, a fantasy Max had concocted. But why?

Why did Max feel like he had to make up this great big lie about who they were and what they did? Why did he feel he had to hide the real him from me? Was he trying to protect me? Or was he ashamed?

I thought back to the day I'd first arrived here, when I had first taken in Max's appearance after all those years spent without him. I'd noticed he was more buff, that he had been working out regularly. I noticed the tattoos that were scattered across his arms, he called them his war trophies. War trophies, he had been fighting a war hadn't he, he still is. The war of the Mafia is what he had meant, rival gangs, competitors. He had been trying to tell me even then.

Why didn't I listen to him? I should have listened to him. I should have taken him literally rather than metaphorically. My brother has always been a literal person, he never was one for using metaphors to hide behind. I should have listened to him. But I didn't want to. I wanted him to remain the Maxwell I'd grown up with, the Maxwell who took care of me when I was sick, the Maxwell who use to take me out for ice cream everytime I got sad or scared. I wanted so desperately to cling onto the memories of who he once was than to accept this new him, the real him.

And now Max is hurt, he was shot. Dominic said the doctors are keeping him sedated in order to allow his body to focus on the healing process, that means that its bad. They wouldn't keep him sedated if it wasn't bad. I can't lose him, I can't lose the only real family I have left. This can't be how it ends for him, he's still so young, he can't go out like this. He can't go out without a fight.

I can't lose him before I get a chance to forgive him.