Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

50 | Nina & Santo

"Any other questions completely relevant to the life-threatening task at hand?" Dry sarcasm replaces the raw emotion in his voice.

I shake my head, rolling my lips into my mouth.

A couple minutes pass.

"Hey, Santo?" I whisper.

"Yes, Nina?" he whispers back indulgently.

"I love you," I say.

His breath hitches. Then the door right in front of me is whipped open.

+

Santo

Luciano stands tall in front of her, his face drawn in surprise that quickly transitions to irritation. He reaches for her angrily, like he has the right to touch her.

"What the fuck are you—"

His words end in a sickening crunch, dissolving beneath my fist.

He's not touching her ever again.

He reels back, stumbling into the wall, and I'm on him in less than a second before he can shout and raise a warning. Nina slips away to find a weapon in our near vicinity, and my fists obliterate his consciousness in one go, motivated as I am to return to her side and make sure she stays safe.

The light leaves his eyes, and I lug his slumped body onto the top stair of our prison, resisting the urge to slam the door on his fucking neck. I root around in his pockets, retrieving a key I figured would be there.

My head swims with the exertion. I don't have the time or energy to kill him as quickly and quietly as I'd need to, so I have to settle on locking the motherfucker in the basement.

It's the one thing Nina seemed adamant about. Do not kill Luciano. I reluctantly agreed that we need to focus on incapacitating the Genovese boss, and killing my father. The first cannot come at the expense of the second, not when Antonio is the wildest of wild cards.

But if I accidentally give him a little shove that sends his unconscious body clunking down the stairs...

Well, no one ever said I'm a saint.

Keeping an eye out for my father, I go looking for Nina. Whatever we do, it needs to be clean. It's the two of us versus however many men are in this house, so we can't be alerting anyone to what we're up to. Clean and quiet. Nina kept repeating the words to me, as if I'm not capable of it.

And, to be fair, it's never been my method. But I can do it.

I round the corner to see a large guard with a burly forearm pressing Nina's neck into the wall. I immediately see fucking red and start towards them, fully intending on extracting his trachea from his fucking body and wrapping it around his puny balls. And that's only because I'm feeling weaker than usual.

He grunts in surprise as I come up behind him, hooking my elbow around his thick neck. He rears back against my grip and I wince as one of his elbows jut into my bruised ribs. But his split attention means he lets up slightly on Nina's neck. She keeps trying to dismantle his chokehold just like I taught her, but he's simply too fucking big.

I tighten my forearm around his neck, tugging him back into my sore body. My entire torso fucking screams in pain, but I breathe through it, muffling his shouts with my other hand the best I can. It takes several long seconds to cut off enough of his airflow that he finally, finally releases her.

She collapses to the floor, drawing in gasping breaths, and soon I feel the man go limp in my arms, unconscious for now. I resist the urge to snap off every single one of his fingers for touching my woman, and crouch next to her.