Fitz tried to weigh the situation, to figure out which pain was the most intense—knowing his sister’s remains were in the box, or seeing his mother Minnie’s heart broken in a million pieces.
“Noooo! Noooo! Noooo! This is so unfair! It’s not fair!” she screamed.
It hurt Fitz to his core to see his mother in shambles the way she had been ever since the news of Annalise’s death was delivered to her five days before. He would have given anything for it to be him, not his sweet, energetic butterfly of a sister. He only wanted to get to the bottom of it. There was no doubt he needed answers so that someone would pay for this.
Annalise’s boyfriend, Johnny “The Viper,” tapped his feet continuously. He stared wide-eyed at the casket. His eyes never moved. She was his everything. The two had been together since the minute he laid eyes on her. At first he was a straight square, but once he found out about the family business, he had jumped through hoops to get Fitz to give him a job. He had made a lot of money for Fitz and had gladly given most of his profits to Annalise, but now the poor guy was lost. Fitz surmised that he was also high as gas off the cocaine. After they’d left the funeral and headed to the burial grounds, Johnny had washed an eight ball down with a few shots of vodka in the back of the limo.
Annalise’s twin, Caesar, couldn’t stand to look at the casket, nor could he stop the tears from rolling uncontrollably down his face. It was something about that twin connection between the two that was always deeper than he could ever understand. Fitz, who was all about appearances, wished his brother would at least attempt to hold it together. In his eyes, the trembling of Caesar’s lip was a sign of weakness—something that he always felt was his brother’s flaw.
“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” the pastor intoned to the standing-room-only crowd of impeccably dressed mourners, as they said their final good-byes and watched the casket being lowered into a freshly dug grave. Minnie, Annalise’s mother, screamed to the heavens, crying for the loss of her youngest child. “Why her, God? Why?” she wailed. “Annalise was a good girl—a sweet girl. They could’ve killed anyone but her. They could’ve killed me. My Annalise was still just a baby, so full of life.”
Several family members tried to console Minnie, but they couldn’t contain her as she ran to the casket and tried to throw herself over it, not being able to bear the pain of seeing her only daughter being put into the dirt.
“I can’t let her go! I just can’t! Please, God! Please, just take me!” she begged. “Take me!”
Caesar went to his mother’s side and embraced her with a hug as he fought to control his own tears, but her grief was too fresh to surrender its grip on her heart. The pain was too acute, and she still cried a river.
“Mommy, please,” Fitz said to his mother. He was about to go to her side, but he felt helpless. His father saw it on his face. That’s when Señor Manuella took his hand. Fitz leaned down to hear what his father had to say.
“Son.” Señor Manuella spoke slowly, so his thick Spanish accent wouldn’t be as hard to understand. “When pain is embedded this deep in one’s soul, it can only be tempered by time, and even that’s no guarantee. Everyone deals with grief in their own way.”
The truth of the matter was, witnessing his mother’s grief was killing Fitz on the inside, because there was nothing at this moment he could do to fix it. He nodded to his father.
“Yes, father, I understand.” He turned to his mother’s sister, Aunt Nadia, and some members of his security team, and said, “Please, please get her into the car and take her home. I will be there soon.”
Meanwhile, the array of folks, along with the high-profile celebrities, socialites, and business affiliates, came to shake hands and give their condolences, and then they started to leave.
Fitz wanted to speak with his brother before he went ghost. He told one of his bodyguards, “Please, make sure my mother gets to the car safely.” He wanted no one around when he spoke.
“Anything else?” Jacob was Fitz’s most senior confidant.
“For now, just keep an eye on her.” Fitz moved over to his brother, who had not left the grave yet. He was still standing there as the men began to fill the grave with the dirt. He continued to cry. Fitz pleaded, “Hey, Caesar, come on, man. Besides, I need to talk to you.”
Caesar stopped, turned to walk away, and proceeded to finally make eye contact with his brother. Taking a deep breath, he gave his brother a sour, dry, “What up?”
Examining Caesar’s eyes, Fitz said, “That emotion you’re holding onto seems more like guilt than grief to me.”
“Fuck you, Fitz!” he said with malice, hating that his brother would say that. “You so fucked up.” He shook his head at his older brother.
Caesar tried to walk away, but Fitz wasn’t having it. He put his hand on Caesar’s arm. “Not so fast, playboy.”
Sometimes it was hard for Fitz to even believe that he and Caesar shared the
