"Hey. Hey. Psst."
I swat Tommaso away, my phone glued to my ear. Rage I've been trying to keep from consuming me broils in a constant state of upheaval in my gut. "Well, try harder. This is what I pay you to do. This man is a sexual predator. Likely with a long history of involvement in the creation and distribution of child pornography. Fucking find him and get me his address."
My associate starts spluttering on the other end, but I hang up disgustedly. Tommaso is looking at me owlishly.
"Who are we talking about? Who do we need to go kill?"
I roll my eyes. "There's no we. And I can't kill him yet, I don't have his location. Now what's your problem and why are you harassing me?"
Tommaso's face becomes serious, as if he's just remembered why he was being a nuisance for the last fifteen minutes.
"Well, I was in the library," he begins, and I frown. "It was a one-time fucking thing. Nina was in there and I needed to ask her something."
"What the hell did you need to ask her?"
He smirks. "If she wants to fuck. Anyway—I'm kidding! Fuck off!" He backs up, hands held in front of him as I round the counter with the intention of throttling the fucker.
"If you're kidding, what were you asking her?"
"That's not the point," Tommaso mutters, looking away. My eyes could be deceiving me, or my brother could be almost blushing right now.
"What the fuck?" New emotion burns my chest, filling me with an itching heat. There's no way he would have... no. It's not like him. My brother hasn't ever shown signs of actually liking a girl.
He watches me for a few seconds and his eyes widen. "Oh, no—Jesus, dude. I was in there asking her if she could make cinnamon rolls again. I really liked those fucking things," he mutters, clearing his throat. "But the point of what I wanted to talk to you about is this."
He holds up a book, tattered and creased with age and use.
My heart scrapes to a halt in my chest.
"Where did you get that?"
He frowns at my icy tone. "Um, Nina was reading it. I saw there was all this writing in it, and then I realized... I recognize the handwriting. Is this... was it his? Was it our fa—"
I yank the book from him, crumpling the brittle pages but not giving a fuck. He shouldn't be touching that, much less reading it.
"Hey! What the fuck?" he snaps, but I'm already striding from the room. I bypass the library and head straight up to my room. After a few moments of thought, I slip the book under my bed, knowing nobody will be looking under there.
I stand there for a moment, then kneel and grab it again. For some reason, I decide to crack it open to a random page. My eyes immediately snag on a quote underlined a hundred times over.
It's a kind of dizzying comfort to contemplate the open abyss when, at the bottom of that abyss, lies nothingness.
Fuck.
I snap it shut, shoving it back where it belongs. As far away from me as possible. But it's too late and the memories are already resurfacing.
The one thing my father left me is this book. A tattered thing, worn by countless reads and marked up with his thoughts. Although, I suppose that's a lie because he didn't leave it to me knowingly. When he died, I took it. My mother never knew, and she went fucking insane looking for that thing. I never told her. It was—is—the only thing that tells me about the man he was.
I don't hold onto it for sentimentality. For the longest time, I did so purely because it drove my mother insane. She cried, screamed, tore herself apart wondering where it had gone. It was the one act of revenge I could take for my whole fucking childhood. And it turns out the story itself feels eerily familiar.
The Brothers Karamazov follows the story of three brothers and the circumstances leading up to their father's murder—including the subsequent arrest of one of the brothers for the crime.
I held onto the book. I read it, inevitably searched for answers in its pages and my father's annotations. And when I didn't find any, I settled in what dizzying comfort I could. I settled in the nothingness.
It's something that has always made Tommaso upset with me, perhaps why our relationship consists more of arguments and clashing tempers than anything else. I accepted the deaths of our parents and I no longer search for answers in empty memories and meaningless mementos of a time that feels like it belongs to entirely different people in a completely different world.
Tommaso has no recollection of them, being too young when they passed, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't get that I don't feel the need to mourn the life we should have had.
There's no point in mourning something that never existed in the first place. I would never mourn the love of a parent when I've never experienced it. I don't want to spend my life lamenting over what should have been—that's not how I run business and it's not how I run my life. No, instead I live in whatever way I am able. There are no rules. The nothingness says so.
I do mundane things every day. Eating dinner with my brothers, attending meetings and fucking going outside, interacting with strangers who have no idea who I am—all when every single cell in my body is screaming at me to resort to what I'm used to. Violence. Passion, but the bloody kind. Sometimes I don't even make sense to myself—I'm a bizarre blend of patient, able to mold myself to any situation, but dangerous, ready to erupt at any given moment.
But that's all part of the fucking fun. Or, at least it used to be. Lately it feels like everything I've held as true about myself doesn't make sense anymore. Like I'm a puzzle, all my pieces fit meticulously together, but someone's just come and ripped me apart, detaching all the pieces. And now all I'm left with is a pile of all the fragmented parts of myself with no idea how to begin to put myself back together.
For the first time, I'm surrounded by the loud presence of someone whose very essence is the antonym to violence and insanity. The antonym to me. It rubs me the wrong way, everything about Nina being surrounded by everything that is... me. My family. This house, even.
Because Nina Genovese is loud. She's in my house, and when she's not occupying my space, the remnants of her are. A hair tie left on the countertop. A container of sticky cinnamon rolls in the fridge. That sweet, fruity scent she leaves in the room after she's gone.
And fuck, the heat in her eyes when I pressed my thigh between her legs...
I have actively been repressing all memories of that moment, although the recollection of her body and the way it squirmed as soon as I touched her is never far from the front of my mind. Fucking hell. If I think about it for a second too long, I'll go find her, break down the door to the stupid library I installed and filled with books thinking nobody would end up using it, and prop her trembling body up against the shelves with only my face between her thighs.
So much for repressing anything.
I've been on the warpath lately, all because of her. I no longer drive around like a vigilante to end the lives of all the human scum Simo can find whenever the slightest urge twitches my fingers. I have a new obsession, a new target. And this one might just be my most important one yet. It consumes me every waking and sleeping hour.
She's driven me to this. It feels different than it ever has before, and I can't figure out why.
The last time I was like this was when Simo and I had first come to Chicago with our younger brothers in tow. Raising your brothers when you're a child yourself is no small feat. Combine that with the fact that we had just been recently orphaned, and it's safe to say I needed an outlet.
I was wrong, I'm never going to run out of ways to administer torture. I find that my creativity knows no bounds.
After Nina told me about her uncle and I got her safely in bed, I drove to the nearest prison and asked to be taken to where they keep the child molesters. It was merely an excuse to indulge in my urges for a night, too good to pass up. I have friends in high places, and the prison wardens on my payroll were more than happy to turn a blind eye to the fact that several of their prisoners were found dead in their cells the next morning.
My fury at realizing that Nina was gone, and then finding out she'd been dumped at the train station like yesterday's trash was unexpected, but I've already been on edge lately. I don't remember much of that evening besides yelling at Simo, then hurtling through the crowd at the station, a prayer that I wasn't too late on my lips.
And I don't fucking pray. It's too ironic.
Seeing her there, helpless and shrinking away from that incel touching her emptied my head of all thoughts except one: get to her. And make it fast, before someone else breathing in her direction makes me even more homicidal.
If it had been anyone else who had sent her away, they'd be six feet under by now. With Simo and I, there's an understanding that passes between us. He'd carve out his heart for me, and I for him. In this world, my brothers are all I've got, and I don't take that bond lightly. Nothing can come between it.
And yet, every time Tommaso looks at Nina's tits or makes some innocuous comment, I feel like knocking him clean out. There's something about her that stands out in stark contrast against all other women, as if somebody is shining a spotlight on her and everybody else is left in the dark.
I don't know what it is. I don't get hung up on women. My brothers and I have access to whatever and whoever we want, and I've never looked twice at anyone or sought out any company that was for more than a night. I tell myself that having her here ensures that she won't get in the way while we deal with Luciano and that flaccid son of his, but there's more to it.
I just don't know if I'm ready to acknowledge it yet.
But fuck, even Nico sees it. That something that lights her up. I've seen the way he looks at her sometimes, how he seeks out her company when she's making a batch of her ridiculous desserts. There's something so gentle and nurturing about Nina, something that draws you in if you're not careful. Nico never had a female influence in his life, something I've always felt guilty about. Simo and I always tried to do what we could, but we could never give him the things a mother could. The things even a sister could. There's a softness to my youngest brother despite the world he's so entrenched in, and I think Nina helps him come to terms with that part of him.
Fucking hell. I shake away all thoughts of Nico and the way we grew up, realizing the time. I should be in Simo's office right now discussing plans with him, Samuel, and a few of our guys. Luciano has yet to make another move, but it's only a matter of time.
He's blatant about what he's doing. Bringing his dirty business closer and closer to our city, knowing the precedence Simo has set. That if anyone were to move women in our city, that would be the last fucking thing they did.
"Lovely of you to join us," Simo says dryly as I slip into his office mid conversation.
I nod, trying to focus on what Samuel is saying. And I last fifteen minutes before I notice Nico out of the corner of my eye. He's tiptoed by the doors three times. He thinks I don't notice, but something is bothering the kid and he's scared to bring it up because of everything that's been going on. He'll keep walking on eggshells around us until I draw the damn thing out of him.
"Excuse me," I mutter, ignoring Simo's pissed off look and slipping outside. Nico turns to me with wide eyes, shoulders slumping at the expression on my face.
"Come," I tilt my head towards one of the nearby rooms, and we step into another office. "Tell me what's going on. You've been acting weird today."
He hesitates, and I struggle to make my tone softer. "I know there's a lot going on, but that doesn't mean you can't talk to me."
He sighs. "I feel useless, Santo. I know I'm young, but everybody else gets to be involved in meetings and know what's going on. Tommo keeps teasing me about not knowing anything, and it just feels shitty. I want to help. I want to protect you guys, this family..."
He trails off, a dejected look on his face, and understanding softens me. I haven't been thinking about how this must be affecting him.
"You're right." His head pops up in surprise. "We haven't been involving you, and you deserve to be kept in the loop. You're a smart kid, Nico. We could use you, okay?"
He's grinning excitedly before I've finished speaking. "So, what can I do? How can I help?"
I think for a minute. "I want you to come with me on my next errand. I'm going to Des Moines for a meeting with an associate to discuss the Genovese issue. I'm also thinking about upping training for everybody. Nina doesn't know how to fight, and I want you to help me teach her. She likes you, for whatever reason," I jest.
His eyes light up. There's a pinching in my chest, and I rub my fist over the area.
Heartburn?
Probably.
"I can do that! Thanks, Santo," he grins. I pull him into a side hug, reminding myself to be more mindful of this kind of thing in the future. When I was Nico's age, I was trying to raise my two younger brothers with the help of my older brother. It was anything but easy, and I feel responsible for Nico in a profound way. We're all he's ever had.
"Hey."
Nico turns, halfway out the door.
"Don't listen to Tommaso about anything. He's a dickhead."
My little brother laughs. "Can I tell him you said that?"
"Do it and see what happens," I threaten, amusement tugging at my lips.
I watch him bound away excitedly, probably to do exactly that. Then I return to the office to discuss what to do about the man whose daughter has weaseled her way into my life and isn't showing signs of leaving anytime soon.
But maybe that's because I have an iron tight grip on her and I'm refusing to let go.
+
I'm at the punching bag again that night. I slipped away straight after dinner, and I don't register the ache in my limbs that signals how long I've been at it until I look up and realize the moon is out.
I shake out my sore muscles, pushing back the sweaty hair that keeps falling into my eyes. Adrenaline courses through me, and I know tonight is probably going to be another sleepless night.
The photos Samuel showed me earlier—once I started actually paying attention— flash through my mind. Luciano's latest victim, found behind a dumpster in Jefferson City. A nameless middle-aged woman with dark hair. A Jane Doe with fourteen stab wounds, a broken spine, and enough cuts and bruises to cover half of her body in red and purple. Pretty standard, except for one thing: the 'S' carved on the inside of her wrist.
And that little detail, that's what made her death a message to us from Luciano. A message to me, more specifically. He knows about Serpentine and what we do. Everybody in our world has a vague idea—it's not quite a secret. Luciano is laughing at us, I'm sure, but that's not what's thrown me into this headspace.
It's the woman.
She's not someone I know, but she reminds me of somebody I'd rather not remember.
And that, in turn, has pissed me off. Because it means that Luciano has gotten under my skin. It means that he is a more formidable opponent than we initially gave him credit for.
"What if he kills a member of Serpentine next?" I'd voiced at the end of our meeting, once everybody else had left. Seeing him make a mockery of Serpentine, carving the digit on that random woman's skin, had made me wonder how far he would go down that road.
"Nobody has killed a member of Serpentine for two decades," Simo had pointed out. "I'm not sure he's that kind of stupid."
I'd bet he's every kind of stupid, but that's just my humble opinion.
I smirk wryly as I see the time. 2:15. I'm sure if Nina saw me here, she'd have something to say about it.
I tense as I notice a figure in the doorway, and a bubble of amusement pops in my chest. Jesus. As if I've summoned her, Nina stands there, her face looking sleepy but her eyes bright and awake. A blush crawls over her cheeks as I raise a brow, rubbing a hand over my jaw to hide my smirk.
"Nobody else is awake," she speaks in a jumble, hands twisting in front of her. "And I think I heard something, and I know it's probably nothing, but I got paranoid. I get paranoid a lot. And I knew you'd probably be down here so I just... well, you're probably not as bad as the intruder I've made up in my mind. So, you know."
I don't know.
A sigh makes its way from the deepest part of my chest, because the one thing I do know is what I'm about to do. I'm about to go check that there aren't any monsters under her bed, and then I'm going to take a shower and resist the hot, itchy urge to take my dick in my hands while I picture her pretty pink lips wrapping around it.
Her eyes get wider as I approach, like she thinks I'm about to choke her out or something, and a breath whooshes from her as I pass. "You gonna come show me where this alleged noise is coming from?" I call without looking back, and I take ten paces before I hear her hurrying to keep up, shaking my head. This girl is like a kitten, skittish and timid at times, and unnecessarily sassy otherwise.
A small squeak reaches my ears before I feel her soft body colliding into the back of mine, her hand grabbing onto whatever's within reach to keep her balance... which happens to be my ass.
A breath pushes past my lips as I reach behind my body to steady her, and her hand is still on my ass.
"If you wanted to cop a feel, you could've just asked."
Her gasp is almost comical, and she rips her hand away. Her eyes are wide, avoiding eye contact like she's getting paid to do it. We walk the rest of the way with her in front, me keeping an eye on her fuzzy socks that are clearly more of a hazard than anything else.
A frown knits my brows as she leads me through the kitchen and to one of the side doors. "You went outside?"
"I came to the kitchen for some tea, and I heard the noise from over here," she whispers, as we come to a stop at the door. I try to ignore the way she hides half behind me as I place my hand on the knob and disable the alarm.
This girl trusts me right now for some mind-boggling, backwards reason.
Suddenly, we both hear a distinct rustling from right outside. Her eyes go wide, and I push her to the side, away from the window, pressing the door open in the same motion, my muscles tensed and ready.
A thin, high-pitched whine filters through the night air.
Before I can snap at her to stay back, Nina slips past my body, kneeling on the cobblestone and reaching her hands into the bushes. I'm half a second from yanking her back inside and asking her just what the hell she thinks she's doing, when she stands up with a wriggling mass of black in her hands.
I look closer. It's a puppy. A tiny thing, its eyes just barely opened.
"Oh my God," she gushes, and I swear her eyes grow at least two times in size as she stares down at this puppy like she's holding a little piece of heaven.
"Get inside," I grumble, pulling her in by the loose neck of her t-shirt. It's too cold to be outside without a jacket, the goosebumps rising on her arms and legs making me frown.
"How did he get out there? Wait it's a—yeah, he's a boy. Oh my God, he's so fucking adorable. Can I keep him?"
She doesn't stop rambling and cooing at the damn puppy as I steer her with a hand on the small of her back until we're back in the kitchen. I extricate the puppy from her grasp, ignoring her horrified gasp, wrapping it in a towel I pluck from one of the drawers. The thing is shivering, and it nuzzles into the cotton.
Nina has gone silent, and I look up to see her standing there with a fist over her mouth.
I roll my eyes, handing her the creature back. It's so small, it fits into one of my palms. The second it's back in her arms, she starts cooing again. I'm at a loss for words. Is this how women normally react to small animals? I'd swear she was speaking gibberish, but I also am ninety-eight percent sure I just heard the words "cute little fluffy baby boy" come out of her mouth.
Fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting at the kitchen table with Nina while she dips her pinky into a bowl of warm milk and lets the puppy lick it off. She said she's doing this to get the thing to drink from the bowl, but it looks perfectly content slurping the milk from her finger.
She made me hold it while she spent seven minutes googling what to feed it. The fucking thing peed on me, and she's still giggling about that while I sit here in a pee-soaked shirt.
"How do you think he got there? He looks so young." They're the first words in the last quarter hour she hasn't said in that ridiculous high-pitched coo.
"Samuel's wife has a dog that gave birth in the back of his truck." It was a long story but could be simplified down to the fact that Samuel was whipped enough to bring the dog with him to our meeting, because his wife was going out and worried the dog wouldn't be okay alone. He'd made it a bed complete with pillows and blankets and had opened the trunk to six squirming puppies a couple hours later. One of them must have wriggled away. "The puppy must've only been out there for a few hours. Any longer and I don't think it would've survived."
Nina looks horrified. "Do you think Samuel will want Pistachio back?"
I blink. "Pistachio?"
"That's his name. His eyes are this murky green, just like pistachios, so it fits."
"Nina, that dog is going to grow to be over one-hundred twenty pounds."
She frowns. "Really? He's so tiny."
"That's because it's a puppy," I explain slowly. "It's a Cane Corso. An Italian breed of Mastiff. That thing's head is going to reach your rib cage when it's fully grown."
She gazes down at the squirming dog—who can definitely drink from the bowl at this point but seems to enjoy being coddled by Nina—with so much love that I have to clear my throat to dislodge something there.
"Samuel won't want it back," I mutter, "he has five more puppies to deal with. We just need to make sure we care for it adequately if it won't be with its mother."
She does a little shimmy in happiness, turning those bright eyes to me. "And his wife? She won't care either?"
I clear my throat again. "No."
"So I can keep him?" She's practically bouncing, a hopeful grin squishing her cheeks.
I swallow back a sigh and nod once, and she's squealing, nuzzling the dog with her nose and kissing its forehead like it's a human baby she just gave birth to. It's ridiculous how the scene fills my chest with that uncomfortable feeling that has me rubbing it to try and alleviate the ache. It's probably that damn heartburn. It's doubly ridiculous that if she'd asked me to saw off my own arm, I think I would've done it. As long as she had that look on her face, the way her eyes lit up and her face collapsed in pure happiness. Because of something I said.
Fuck me.
I don't realize I'm glaring at a random spot on the floor until I feel a light touch on my arm. Nina rips her hand back as I snap my head to look at her. She looks wary, but that soon fades into innocent curiosity the longer I look at her.
"So, what's your reason for not sleeping? I told you mine."
I watch her absentmindedly petting Pistachio, her face glaringly innocent and open as she watches me in the silence that stretches out between us.
"There's a lot going on. Sleep isn't really a priority," I end up muttering, annoyed at how I can't seem to take my eyes off of her.
"Oh," she mumbles, shifting and clearing her throat. "About that... what's going on? With Luciano?"
"Do you actually want to know?" She looks like the words were dragged from her against her will.
Her shoulders slump. "No. I don't... I don't want to know what he's doing, how close he is, what he's planning. I..." she trails off, sucking in a big breath and zipping her mouth shut.
Heat spreads through my chest. "You won't ever see him again."
Her mouth pops open, and I drag my tongue along my bottom lip at the plumpness of it. "How do you know?"
I shrug, smiling darkly. "He's certainly trying to cause some trouble, but we're not planning on letting him get too far with it." I don't tell her that I plan on disconnecting Luciano's head from the rest of his body the next time I see him.
She bites her lip and looks back down at Pistachio, seeming to mull over my words. Then she nods, and when she looks back up at me, I'm knocked back by the trust emanating from her eyes.
"Is that why you don't sleep? Because you're planning out all the ways you're going to commit murder and, like, torture people?"
A surprised breath of amusement huffs out of me, and she smiles softly. "Is that how you think I spend my time?"
She shrugs.
"I received some unsettling news today." I have no fucking idea why I'm telling her this. Why don't I shut my mouth? "It reminded me of somebody."
"Who?"
The question surprises me. You'd think she wouldn't want to be so direct, but she just is—in this casual, gentle way. She's always got so many questions and I've become accustomed to them in an unexpected way. And that must be why I open my goddamn mouth again.
"My mother."
Her eyes soften. There's some kind of deep understanding there. "I'm so sorry, Santo."
I frown. "Why?"
"Well, because—I mean, you seem sad over your mother—"
"I'm not sad," I interrupt.
"Oh, okay," she nods, and lets a few beats of silence pass. "If you were though, I'd get it. Family is—"
"I don't have family. I have my brothers, my business partners, and people I need to eliminate."
While my mother was obviously once a part of the group of people one could call my family, I don't see her as that. I see her as dead. And as for my brothers—they're my family, but not in the mushy, heart-eyed way she's likely thinking.
Silence meets my words.
Nina starts giggling, and I almost rub my eyes to make sure what I'm seeing is real. "You're so dramatic," she says between giggles.
I stare at her until her amusement subsides, but it's still dancing across her features, the only sound between us Pistachio's whimpery snores as the dog sleeps against Nina's chest.
I shake my head in amusement, leaning back and running a hand through my hair.
"What?" Nina narrows her eyes, like she thinks I'm laughing at her.
"I've spent the whole day going over plans to make sure everything doesn't go to shit, and now I'm sitting here with you as you nurse a puppy."
I immediately want to take back the words. They're too honest somehow, and I don't know how they slipped past the barrier that normally prevents me from saying too much, even to my brothers. That regret presses harder against my chest as I see the uncomfortable look on her face, and how she tries to hide it with a shaky smile.
I rub my thumb over my lip, pure disbelief coursing through me. For the last half hour, I haven't thought once about the business, Serpentine, or anything else that normally plagues my days and nights. I'm not sure when I started treating Nina like she's somebody I can trust, but it was clearly at some point along the way to her becoming the one person I don't mind ending my day with.
I don't sit at kitchen tables having pointless late-night discussions. I don't take care of small, helpless puppies, and I sure as hell don't let anybody get close enough to see whatever's painting the hellscapes inside my head.
---
Long ass chapter! Santo's POVs will be more regular now as we start seeing more about what's going on with his backstory and other things that were hinted at this chapter... Also I'm realizing just how slow burn this shit is but I PROMISE it's going to pay off lmfao.
Please remember to vote and comment if you liked it!
- G