I think that orders were meant to be disobeyed.
When you really think about it, there are a lot of things people tell you not to do. And there are one hundred million more reasons why to not listen. I mean, you can justify practically anything if you put a small amount of effort in it.
Don't steal.
But what if it's for a good cause? What if you're stealing to feed a starving family, and the establishment or person you steal from wouldn't be negatively impacted?
Don't hurt other people.
But what if they deserve it? What if they hurt you first, and that's justice?
Don't open the door if anyone knocks.
But... what if someone has been knocking for at least fifteen minutes, and it's a gentle knocking—not the aggressive banging of an intruder—which could signify that it's Santo and maybe he just lost his key?
The knocking is nonstop. I've been sitting still on the bed, wariness freezing me in place. But as the minutes pass, I start wondering. If maybe I should at least go check.
Sure, if it was him, Santo probably would've called out to me by now. But maybe he's trying. Maybe the doors are thick. Maybe... maybe he's bleeding out and doesn't have the strength to raise his voice.
I'm at the door seconds later. I'll just peek. I'll open it for a split second, only enough to see who it is. There's no peephole, so I'm resorted to relying on my lightning fast reflexes and unshakeable strength.
"Hello?" I call out weakly.
No response.
Well, here goes nothing.
"There you are, you little fuckin' bitch."
It's decidedly not Santo.
The man standing before me is much... wider. He's got a bristly beard and small, beady eyes that are set deep in a wide face. He looks like a rat. A strong, big rat.
"Oh, no you don't," he grins, bracing one hand against the door. I find with horrifying shame that, with only one hand, he can easily shove his way into the room and completely overpower any and all of my efforts.
I knew I wasn't particularly strong, but I didn't know I was this bad.
"I-I think you have the wrong room—"
"No, this is very right." He slams the door behind him, eyeing me amusedly as I scramble backwards, as far away from him as possible. "You're Santo's new plaything, are you not? Well, I'm an associate of another very bad man, one who would probably make a little girl like you shake in your boots. And I'm here to kill you."
"Way to lay all your cards out on the table. How disappointing."
He balks. "What?"
"I mean, you just told me everything. You're enemies with Santo, and you want to kill me to hurt him. I mean, God, first of all—is that all you men do? Go after each other's women to try and piss each other off? And secondly," I plow forward, interrupting the rat as he tries to speak, "I'm not even his woman! I'm literally nobody to him. If you killed me, the worst you'd do is annoy him by getting my blood everywhere. And even then, I mean, he'd just call the cleaning ladies—"
"Do you ever—shut the fuck up!"
I smirk, watching the man's face redden. He really does so easily turn the color closely resembling the ripest tomato. But I have to be careful not to piss him off too much. I have to keep him talking.
"Am I wrong? I definitely could be. I don't really know what's going on—"
"Of course you don't. You're clueless. The truth would have you passing out from terror in seconds," he scoffs arrogantly. "Let's just say, I've got orders from my boss. Let's just keep it at that."
I mentally roll my eyes. This man is so earth-shakingly stupid that he doesn't realize I know who his boss is, much less that I'm that boss's daughter.
Luciano's associates were always a special brand of stupid. From what I saw of them, anyway. And I'm in the throes of mentally weighing just how braindead this man is and how easily I might be able to distract him until Santo comes back, when I hear the subtle slide of the key in the door.
Relief makes me practically drop to the floor.
Santo sees me first. I witness the true speed of his reaction time as he senses the shadow of the rat standing off to the side with frightening instancy. His large body springs into action, stepping in front of me and whipping a gun from his waistband.
"Who the fuck are you?" he demands. His vision keeps swinging back to me, filled with questioning anger and incredulity at walking in to find me engaged in casual conversation with the human embodiment of a sewer rat.
The man growls, lunging towards Santo. And just like that, I witness the stupidest man on earth come to an equally stupid end. Santo's bullet goes stright through his forehead, and the ground practically shakes as his large body crumples to the ground. Dead.
I wish I could say this is the closest I've been to a murder.
"Nina. Talk to me. What the fuck happened?"
I look up from the body, noting that Santo has probably been calling my name for several seconds. His eyes are wild, gun still pulled. Like there's another threat in the room, like the guy might be coming back to life to terrorize us.
"He was an associate of Luciano's. He must've seen you leave, or just seen me when we came in. I don't know. He wanted to kill me to piss you off or something. I don't know. Men are stupid."
"Did he threaten you?"
"Well, he was going to kill me, so—"
Santo shoves a reckless hand through his hair, gesturing wildly with his gun. "You're way too fucking calm. He threatened you, didn't he? What did he say? It's nothing that can't be swiftly dealt with. He doesn't have anything to hold over you—anyone he's working with is already as dead as he is. I'll fucking handle it."
My brows are scrunched in confusion. "I wasn't threatened. Do you want me to be freaking out?"
He observes me for several seconds, and gradually his muscles uncoil, body settling out of fight or flight. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief when he sets the gun down and steps closer, coming between me and the body currently staining this floor in a way that probably will never come out.
"Did he touch you? Did he say anything else to you? Why the fuck did you let him in?"
"No. Just some stuff about how he was going to kill me. And because I thought it might be you, okay? Don't get pissed. I can't handle that right now."
Santo's eyes are searching as he peers down at my face. Then turns to look down at the body. Then back at me. Without taking his eyes from mine for a second, he whips out a phone and dials a number. "I need you up here immediately. There's been an incident."
"Who was that?"
"Nina, I need you to be very honest with me. Did that man do anything to hurt you? Did he touch you at all?"
"I already said he didn't. Would you bring him back to life and torture him if he had?" I wonder sarcastically, unsure why he's so focused on this line of questioning.
He huffs out a breath, jaw pulsing as his body heaves in hardly restrained emotion. His fingers twitch, like he wants to pick up the gun again.
"You know," I muse, "one could argue that you actually suck at your job. Because both times you were supposed to kill someone, they almost killed me first."
"Gesù Cristo. Just—sit down until Michael gets here. We need to clean this shit up, and you must be in fucking shock. That wasn't one of my targets."
I roll my eyes, letting him push me to sit on the bed. "My bad. The first time it was one of your targets and this time it was some random fucking guy. And I'm not in shock. I'm fine."
With him leaning over me like this, I notice the tantalizing scent of him. The sound of his soft breaths. And other things that are dangerous. Like the silver chain that nestles between his collarbones, glistening against his tanned skin. And that one stubborn lock of hair that always falls into his eyes whenever he moves.
And I wonder. Why isn't he leaning away?
He cocks his head, his gaze so probing that it settles right beneath my skin. After a few seconds, he backs up, shaking his head. But he's looking at me differently now, like I'm a puzzle he can't even begin to put together.
"Michael is here? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Wasn't necessary," he mutters, ripping the sheets off both beds. He lays them on the floor, squatting down in front of the body. Giving it an aggressive shove, he moves it to the sheet, the limbs thumping around emptily. The sight makes me sick but I can't look away as Santo unceremoniously tosses the arms and legs around until the man is in coffin position. "You weren't supposed to need him. He's hidden somewhere—"
"Why would you bring me here? To a hotel filled with Luciano's men? I know you like to hurt me, but could you at least not be so—so sneaky about it?"
Santo stops what he's doing, looking over his shoulder. I swallow dryly at the stretch of his shirt over his broad back, the dangerous gleam in his eye.
"Believe it or not, it's not preferable to me that you fall victim to your father or any of his men."
I bite my lip, knowing he's right. I'm his to fuck with, his to hurt, his to break. He's shown me nothing different.
"The fact that you opened the door, directly going against what I told you, will be addressed later. For now, Michael will be up shortly to deal with this. If you feel you can't handle it, go wait in the bathroom."
I don't.
I stay there, on the bed, as Santo and Michael wrap the corpse in sheets and blankets. I stay there as Michael drags it from the room, the weight of it dully scratching against the carpet. And I stay there as he comes back with rubber gloves and a myriad of cleaning supplies, scrubbing at the blood stain until it smells so strongly of sanitation that my head aches.
Santo is on the phone the whole time—pacing back and forth as he converses with Massimo. He's angry, then calm, then angry again. With each press of his boot into the carpet, he seems to become more unhinged. His hands are constantly gesturing, ring-stacked fingers tugging through his hair until it falls around his face chaotically. When he's not moving, he's pinning me with a stare so intense that I have to look away.
But I don't run away. I don't go to the bathroom. I can handle this.
Strangely, it seems that Santo can't.
He grabs our things, snapping at me to follow him. We go to another room—one someone hasn't died in—and he's gone before I can even draw in enough breath to ask him what's next. I stare at Michael in the echo of the slammed door, and he gives me an apologetic look.
"Mr. Romano has some business to take care of. I'll be right outside, miss. Do you need anything else?"
I shake my head, and he moves to leave.
"Michael? Why do you still work for him?"
The beefy bodyguard frowns in confusion. "What exactly do you mean?"
"He took away the money for your daughter's treatment. He treated you poorly. He treats everyone poorly. Do you... I mean, is he forcing you to be here?"
Michael chuckles. He's amused. "No, I work here by choice, miss."
"Nina, please."
"I work here by choice, Nina," he acquiesces. "I've been with the Romano family for quite some time. This is what I do and what I'm good at."
"Following the orders of an angry, homicidal maniac?" I don't mean the words as an insult to him, and by the amused tilt to his lips, he seems to understand.
"Mr. Romano didn't take away the funding for my daughter's treatment. He wanted you to think he did."
"He—what? Why?"
"It's not in my job description to know why Mr. Romano does the things he does," Michael shrugs. "It's not my business either. But Nina, I think it is yours."
+
Something is wrong.
That is made apparent when I turn over and blink at the glaring red numbers of the clock. 4:43 a.m., and Santo is taking a shower. His bed is empty, and the water has been going for a while.
It's a loud shower. Every minute or so, something will drop or crash from the bathroom, and it's making me unsettled. Santo doesn't strike me as a clumsy person.
Finally, the water stops. There's just the faint drip drip drip of the faucet, the sliding of the shower curtain, and then—and then the loudest, most alarming crash.
I jolt upright into a sitting position, my eyes wide in the darkness. Listening.
There's silence.
Against my better judgment, I'm up and softly rapping on the door in seconds. "Hello? What the hell was that?"
More silence.
I don't know what possesses me to do it, but I put my hand on the doorknob. And twist.
It's unlocked.
Santo has his back to me, and he's bracing himself against the sink, hunching over it. His back is tensed, broad and rippling with muscle that shifts smoothly under silky honey skin. The serpent tattoo rests in midnight ink between built shoulder blades, undulating in water drops that trickle down his spine and disappear into the towel wrapped tightly around his cut hips.
The shower curtain is detached and laying haphazardly in the bath.
"It was loose," Santo rasps, not turning to look at me. I notice in a moment of horrifying clarity that he's looking at me through the mirror, eyes obstructed by a curtain of midnight hair that falls abysmally over an angular face sunken between two muscled, mesomorphic arms. He is spilled molasses, burnt caramel in the sun. His skin so distracting under the sleek glisten of humidity.
"What are you doing?" Why is my throat dry?
"Cleaning up. Can't get in bed all bloody, sciocca ragazza." His voice is unmistakably slurred, tripping over the words in a glazed, syrupy manner.
"Are you... drunk?"
"Would it make you uncomfortable?"
I balk at the question, shifting my feet on the cold tile. "Uh, no? Unless you're a bad drunk."
"Not sure what kind of drunk I am," Santo shrugs. "I don't drink. My father was an alcoholic. Lui era un pessimo ubriaco. Peccato. Mi ha reso triste, ma non credo di essare quello che sta va facendo male. Mi chiedo se avrei potuto aiutare Sim—"
"Santo? Santo. I can't understand you. Why don't you just—go lay down?"
His large body has begun to sway, hands gripping the sink so tightly that there's a small tremor to them. My role here is undefined, and I don't want to handle him the wrong way during what seems to be some kind of mental break.
I don't know if I should even be handling him at all. If I were smart, I'd close this door and go back to bed. Better yet, I'd get Michael and let him deal with it.
But I don't.
"I don't need to lay down. I've been drunk before. Why are you even here?"
I cross my arms, wanting to shrink back at the harshness of his voice. "You were loud. You woke me up."
He slams his fist into the sink and I jump. "God forbid! God fucking forbid everything doesn't work out just the perfect way you want it."
"You're lashing out and it isn't making sense," I whisper.
He whirls on me, and I shrink back a few steps. His eyes track the movement and he laughs harshly. "There are a lot of fucking things that don't make sense and I can assure you—that isn't one of them."
I frown, my eyes trailing inevitably up his powerful body. From his hands—busted and swollen, as if he decided to repeatedly punch a cement wall—to his long torso, which I can see is littered with fresh bruises that intersperse the older, faded ones.
He flinches as if I've burned him. And I feel like I have, like he's burned me too. He's standing before me begrudgingly, like he doesn't want me to look at him, but I look anyway. And he's so glorious that it almost pains me.
"What are those bruises from?"
Dangerous amusement plays at his dark features. "I took a walk to the Seattle Police Department. Picked some fights."
"You went to the police?"
He hums, leaning back against the sink again. His body doesn't seem able to support him for too long. The towel slips dangerously low, revealing hipbones and velveteen skin. Skin I've touched before.
"Confessed to a bunch of shit. Squealed like a fucking pig. Let them get their hits in. It's not every day one of the 'big fish' just waltz right in and start snitching under their arrogant, brute noses. Then they found out their Chief is on my payroll, and it got a little awkward. Don't blame 'em. They think they're doing good for this city. They're too green to realize that it's impossible for anything to just be good. I kill bad people. It's good they're dead. But I kill them," he shrugs, "in the ways I know will hurt them the most. In ways that humiliate them, destroy their last shred of humanity in those final precious moments of their life. When they know their innocent child or sheltered wife knows everything they've done, when the truth is revealed no matter who it hurts. When their family has to watch them piss and shit their pants as they bleed out. That's not good, is it?"
"They just started beating you up? Right there in the station?" For some reason, out of everything he's said, this is what sticks first.
"No, certo che no, sciocco. They took me to one of their little interrogation rooms first."
"That's..." I can't wrap my head around it, police officers beating up a civilian. "Isn't that, like, severely illegal?"
"So is assaulting a police officer. I assaulted fifteen."
My jaw drops. "What?"
"Sei innocente, innocente tesoro," he murmurs. "The world doesn't work the way you'd like to believe."
Apparently not. Because I'd like to believe that Santo wouldn't saunter into the local police station, purposefully angering the officers who have no doubt been after him and his family for years, provoking them to assault him, and then waltzing back out again. Free as a bird. Not only is it insane, it seems self destructive.
"You wanted them to hit you."
His head hangs for a second, and when he looks back up there's that twisted smile on his face. "I wanted them to do much worse. Move."
It takes me a moment to realize what he's saying, and I'm late in stepping out of his way. Suddenly, he's close. So close. His breaths are more labored than usual and his freshly showered scent tingles every single one of my senses as he stands before me. I'm rooted in place as he lifts a large, battered hand, tugging his thumb from the corner of my lips into my hairline. His skin is rough and hot.
"What are you doing?" I breathe. Barely.
"Messing you up a little. You're too perfect," he whispers.
I turn to the mirror once he's gone. There's a smudge of blood running across my jaw, and my heart kicks into high gear.
When I burst back into the room, Santo is tugging sweatpants up his sculpted hips, and my insides are a fluttery, chaotic mess.
"What do you want with me?" I burst out, high pitched and shrill. "What are your plans with me?"
He winces as he bends down to pick up his towel, moving stiffly. "I want you to lower your voice. My buzz is fading and I'm tired."
"Omertà," I state, and he freezes. "That's why I'm here, isn't it? You have to keep the business safe from outsiders, so that's why I can't leave. Because I might tell someone. What I'm wondering is why you brought me there in the first place if it goes against your little code."
He keeps his lips sealed shut, hanging his towel carefully. His apparent calm ignites my own frustration.
"What are you doing? You take a vow of silence to protect against outsiders, then kidnap an outsider and force them into your home. Your life. You go to the police and tell them everything. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of Omertà? You remind me how much you can hurt me, and then you protect me. You're full of contradictions and it's driving me crazy!"
"Don't question my devotion to my family," he snarls, suddenly all tensed muscles and sharp edges. "They are the reason I do everything I do."
"Admit it—you like hurting people. That's why you do this. Not for your family."
"I like to torture people," he says, like he's telling me he likes ice cream, "I do it because those people have crossed me, my family, disrespected us. I do it because they deserve it." He starts coming towards me in slow, measured steps, and I have nowhere to go. "I do it because it's what we do in this business. If you're involved in the things we are, Nina, you have to enjoy it. It's either that, or you shut yourself off from it. Block it all out. And I would've loved to do that. Would have loved to feel none of it, to not have it all settle somewhere deep inside me. The only problem," he growls, large body caging me in against the wall, "is that you lose parts of yourself. You forget how to feel anything. So yeah, I chose a different poison. I did what I had to do."
I smell the whiskey on his breath and the heat of him, pressing me into the wall, makes me wilt. I'm trapped. I might collapse.
"I don't torture people like you," he continues, and I've never been more aware of how quickly he could snuff my life out if he wanted to. "You're guilty of nothing. Except for not knowing how to fucking defend yourself. You fit in this life, and I don't think you see that. You take everything in stride. You're not fazed by a grown man shot dead in front of you and you treat Nico kinder than he's ever been treated. You make fucking baked goods and leave them in the fucking fridge!"
I'm heaving, barely able to draw in full breaths, and he's the same. Face flushed and taught, chest stuttering.
"You shouldn't be here. Yet you are. It's wrong and it's right and fuck, do you think I know what I want with you? I don't know what to do." His jaw clicks from how hard he's tensing it, and I get the sense that he's never admitted that before. "And it's doing my fucking head in. Because I don't think I hurt people without a reason."
"You," I gasp, "you don't think?"
He presses even closer, impossibly. Each heavy exhale pushes my shoulder blades harder into the wall from how hard he's breathing. My legs tremble and my bones buzz with so many emotions, all knotted up like a ball of yarn that makes it impossible to decipher one from the other.
"Why does someone like you, someone I know is a monster," I push out the word into the humid air between us and watch him drink it up like a poison he's addicted to dying from, "ever need a reason to hurt anyone?"
He doesn't answer, his face undergoing several emotions before it settles back on anger. I push down the niggling doubt, the reminder that I don't know the full picture—because that shouldn't matter. There's no mistaking Santo for what he is, a cold-blooded killer. A man devoid of softness and good intentions.
And I watch in utter disbelief as exhaustion creeps into every corner of his features and his voice comes out in rough, guttural tones of emotion.
"You have no fucking clue what you're in the middle of, Nina," and for a moment I can see the torture plain and clear, waging wars behind his eyes.
"Well, I was never given a choice, was I?"
My breath gets caught in my throat as he pitches forward, catching himself with a forearm braced against the wall at the last second. It brings him that much closer to me, his large and shuddering frame practically encasing mine. The feeling of such a powerful, unbreakable man nearly falling to his knees in front of me rips through me. The look he gives me is deadly even as he can barely hold himself up, eyes gleaming through inky strands of hair.
And I think in that moment that no form of torture, no force of man or God, could wipe that gleam from his eyes. That stubborn, angry streak. He'd die fighting, if he ever even died. He seems immortal to me then, even ragged and run through.
"I wish you weren't so fearless in the face of it," he breathes raggedly, and it fills my body with a warmth I've never quite experienced before.
Fearless? Me?
"Tell me what to do," he slurs, and I'm reminded he's not sober. His head rolls, forehead bumping against mine, and I'm struck by how lost he looks.
I drag my gaze down his front, practically glued to mine, but all I see is muscle and tattoos so I meet his eyes again. "Don't go looking for trouble that gets you beat up in police stations," I say on a shaky exhale.
A scoff jostles his chest. "I only do that when I fuck something up. And I fucked up with you. Twice."
"What do you mean?"
"You almost died. Twice."
"You saved me. Twice."
What am I doing what am I doing what am I—
The moment is broken. Violence gleams in his eyes and I get the sense that suddenly, he's just barely restraining from taking the room down with his anger. He springs back from me like he's been shot from a cannon, stumbling back. His torso flutters and his hands knot in his hair.
"I took you," he mutters hoarsely, almost like I'm not there, "I took you because that's what I do. I take so I won't lose."
"Lose what? What would you lose?"
"Everything. Anything. It doesn't matter. Get the fuck out before I do something I regret."
I don't think twice before bolting towards the door. I don't turn around to look at him until I've ripped open the door and am outside, about to shut him off from me. And I wish I didn't turn around, because what I see hits me like a punch to the gut.
He's sitting on the bed, hunched over with his head down. And his hands are tearing so viciously at his hair that his breaths have turned into pained gasps, every muscle tensed to the point of pain.
But I don't wait around to see him break. With a slam of the door, I'm gone.