When she opens the door, it's clear that she's been crying. The sight of her eyes, reddened and puffy, hits me in the center of my chest and I'm pushing into her room without a word, forcing her to step back.
My knuckles sting from the aggression with which I pounded on her door, and I drag them through my hair. Shock registers on her face from my sudden and violent entrance. Probably not how I want to set the tone for this conversation.
As the seconds tick by, it's clear she's not going to say anything, and I'll have to be the first one to talk. I try to scrape the words together, to gather the pieces into something that resembles sense. But inside me, there's a small boat pitching back and forth on an angry sea, and I don't know how to anchor it.
Frustration boils over and I'm turning towards the door. To leave, to hit it, I'm really not fucking sure.
But a light touch on my elbow stops me and I whip around, Nina's small hand stretched out tentatively, her face expressionless.
"You shouldn't be with me," I say on a harsh exhale, and her face pales.
I curse, yanking my hands through my hair again. Off to a great start.
"I should send you away, set you up somewhere safe, anywhere you want. Anywhere that would make you happy. Give you the life you always wanted before I dragged you deeper into all this."
Her face isn't betraying anything. "Nina, I made you cry, fucked you, and didn't notice when you stopped fucking breathing. That's a problem." I used her in a way that completely disgusts me. That should disgust her.
"I wasn't a victim. I wanted you to fuck me, and the temperature of the hot tub wasn't your fault," she says stubbornly.
"You don't get it. There's something inside me that's wrong," I force out. "I don't know how to be right for you. I might treat you alright for a little bit but this shit is always going to happen. I'm always going to hurt you."
She averts her eyes to the ground, her frame looking so small in this room. This room with my big anger choking the air and wrapping around her. Everything about me overpowers her. Her smallness makes me want to hold her, but the reality is that I'd just fucking crush her.
"Most things in my life are likely to hurt you, Nina, myself being the biggest one. It makes me panic. In that room with Mantus... I fucking panicked. I have to keep you safe. But I don't..." I falter. How would I keep her safe from myself?
I wouldn't, and that's the problem.
Her eyes focus on me with a little more emotion, a little less of that blank stare. That's good. Fuck. I need to keep going. The words are like knives as they crawl out of my mouth.
"I grew up knowing... exactly who I am. That there's no changing it, even if I wanted to. It's never bothered me before but now it does and I don't know what to do with that. Do you get how fucking confusing that is?" A knot in my chest begins loosening, so I don't stop. "I can't change anything I've done."
"Do you want to?"
Airy panic makes my chest fizzle with nerves at her question. "No."
And isn't that the problem?
"Okay," she says easily, casually, like she's not holding my whole world poised between her small fingers. "So don't. Now, who gave you that idea of yourself that you can't stop holding onto?"
Her calm directness hits its mark, and I fight the urge to trace her soft cheek with my rough fingers and push back those stubborn flyaways, fold her lips gently between mine and breathe her in because that's the only way I can see myself getting enough air into my lungs. Even as the violent thing in me rears its head, as if to remind me, as if I could ever forget.
You are not my son.
Antonio, I... I don't want him. Please. I can't do it. Every time I go into the room he just looks at me with those... those eyes. Please get rid of him, please.
He's not right. I always knew this would happen with one of them. It felt different when I was pregnant with him. Oh, I can't , I can't do this.
Just put him outside. Do something. There's... there's that lake down the road. Get rid of him there, nobody would find him, God, please!
You are not my son. Whatever you are, get the fuck away from me.
Big trembles, seismic and quivering, work their way up limbs that suddenly do not feel like my own. Through blurry vision I can barely see Nina's figure coming closer, pick up her soft voice sharpened in concern. I don't know how I'm still standing, but maybe I'm not. I feel weightless, floating, like churning dust in the wake of a storm with no place to go.
"I can't," I gasp, as the world comes back to me in a sudden, loud burst, and I can't see her with my eyes screwed shut but I can feel her, anchoring me with her hands grasping my wrists tightly, even though her fingers can't wrap all the way around, like she knows she needs to stop me from tearing myself apart.
Her forehead nudges against my chin, and I feel her straining on her tiptoes to press up into me, warmly, gradually, until enough seconds pass that I can breathe again.
"I'm sorry I asked that. It's okay. We'll talk about it when you're ready."
I nod, awareness beginning to zip back into my limbs, and I gather in a fortifying breath, unable to do anything except move on.
"I really did want to torture you, after that first time in the cell. For weeks after that." Her eyes widen, but she doesn't step back from me. "It would have been fucking easier to do that than to try and have you fit into any other area of my life. I could've done it. I don't think you realize that, Nina." My eyes pour into hers, begging her to understand. "I could have tortured you so much easier than I could have ever cared about you, but I think I ended up torturing you anyway. And I'm so, so sorry."
My chest heaves, all words suddenly evading me. I feel depleted. Unsure if that was enough.
"Do you care about me?"
My brows furrow at her quiet question, but she doesn't give me time to answer.
"How would you feel if I died?"
"Why the fuck are you asking that?" Breathless, aching. It's everything I've been working against, obsessing over, and the way she utters the words with such ease feels fucking wrong.
"Answer it, Santo."
Anger spikes through me. "How would I feel? I... I don't think I would feel after that, Nina. I've never sat with someone at three in the morning talking about shit that doesn't matter. I've never tried so hard to keep someone around. Or craved the sound of their voice when I'm fucking crushing someone's skull with my bare hands."
Instead of disgust, wonder begins opening up her face.
"I've never seen their blood in that of everyone I kill and nearly buckled with the fucking possibility. I've never had just the sound of someone's breathing bring me to a place of rest because it fucking reminds me they're alive, and if they weren't, I think I wouldn't be able to live anymore."
Her breath stutters, and tears begin coursing down her cheeks. My gaze flits wildly over the moisture, hating that she's crying again because of me.
"Santo," she almost sobs, and I'm teetering on the fucking edge of the highest cliff. "How can you not see that with everything you've just said, you've cared about me more than anyone in my life?"
My chest aches, because that's it. That's the problem. I'm not the standard, not in any version of this. I'm below the standard, and pretty much any other fucker could do worlds better. But I can't bring myself to say the words.
"I don't believe you," she continues. "I don't believe that it would have been easier to torture me. You couldn't. I think you didn't know what to do with me, so you turned to what you knew. How could I blame you for that? You've never hurt me until you looked at me like I didn't belong."
"You didn't belong there," I rasp, "in the middle of the hell of what I do every time I leave the house. You don't belong there with all the ugliness."
Another step, and she's only a foot away. "You said I could choose. And I choose here. You. Your world and—and whatever it brings. Because you light up the darkness of this world for me, Santo. I have a choice and you can't take that away from me. I choose you. I love you."
Just like that, my world tilts on its axis.
Just a touch, a slight shifting of a mere few degrees. But with it, everything uproots, tearing up from the ground painfully, groaning and creaking and moving before it settles again, twining those roots into new soil. It's excruciating. For a second, it's the most painful thing I've ever felt. Everything changing like that. But the settling... that feels new. It feels more substantial than nothingness, like the blooming of life and existence where there was once dry, cracked earth.
I breathe, and it feels like rebirth.
I love you.
The cracked earth splits open for those words, words so unfamiliar to me. For green plants and soft flowers, new life snaking up through the empty spaces and filling them with a sensation akin to what I imagine sunlight would feel like if it were to shine on your soul.
"You—" I break off, realizing I'm towering above her, my body seeking hers like a dying animal bends to seek the purest drop of water. "Can you—" my brow furrows, mouth moving without sense as I stutter like an idiot. "Why—why does it feel like that?"
Heartbreak shines in her face. "I don't know. Maybe that's how it feels when someone cares about another person the way I care about you."
I frown, my lips trying to form words that don't exist. Her eyes soften.
"When you love someone, really love them, you do so without stipulations. Without conditions or exceptions. I love you without exception, Santo. I love you without needing to hear it back. I just love you."
She keeps fucking saying it.
For the first time, I feel acutely like something will bring me to my knees. And it's not a punch or a gunshot or a fucking knife in the gut. It's... this woman. Standing before me so small but so large. Saying words that make no sense.
"Don't love me." It's like I'm out of my body, looking down at the both of us when I say the words. "It's not..."
How do I tell her that love isn't compatible with me?
Based on the sensation still rocketing through every single one of my nerve endings, it feels real. Being loved. That... what a fucking conundrum. I can feel the synapses in my brain snapping trying to make sense of it, being faced by it for the first time. It feels fucking real. The most real thing I've ever felt.
It enters my body, fills me up, coagulates and stays at a standstill. It doesn't leave me in flowing words, it sticks like cement. I can't love her back. And that would mean I can't ever give her what she deserves. That would mean—
"Come back to me."
Needing to feel her, my hands shoot out to grab both her wrists, like she did to me earlier, but then I just hold her there. Unsure of what's okay to do. So out of my element it's not fucking funny.
"As for... whatever happened at the concert," she continues, and I relax at the way she seems okay at plowing past my incompetence. "I respect the fact that you have secrets I can't know. I can't respect the way you treated me though. I meant it when I said I—"
"I know." The sound of my hoarse voice is foreign to my ears.
She doesn't have time to even close her mouth before I'm scooping her up, forcing her legs to wind around my waist and her arms to wrap around my neck. The feel of her fully in my arms is divine, and I sink us both into the bed, propping my back against the headboard and drawing her as close to me as possible.
"Amorina, my love, I know. It was unfair of me to put you in that position. I won't do it again." It feels suddenly like the easiest thing to say, to mean. All that matters is keeping her, isn't it? "I want to tell you about Serpentine. I don't know how. Tell me how."
Her eyes widen, mouth moving soundlessly. I'm breathing heavily, and it feels like there's been a thrumming throughout my entire body for so long that every one of my limbs aches in exhaustion. But I push through it.
"Why... why do you want to tell me? I don't want it to be just because we fought about it—"
"What if it is?" My voice is so loud compared to hers. "Us fighting was so far beyond wrong, Nina. That's not happening again. I want to tell you. Let me tell you."
She frames my cheek in a soft palm, worry sharpening her gaze. "Okay. I still want you to tell me. I do. Would it... would it help for me to ask questions and you answer?"
"No," I huff out in frustration. With her in my arms and so close to me that I can taste her with each inhale, the words are approaching fast. Crawling up my esophagus like vomit. It'll be a wonder if I'll be able to keep my mouth fucking shut after today, apparently.
"Serpentine is a sort of secret society. It was started twenty years ago by a coalition of powerful families throughout the country. One son from each family, each generation, is a part of the society. If I were to have a son, he would replace me when he turns eighteen. We're called the Sons of Serpentine." I pause, mouth dry, but Nina is still looking at me tenderly. Still touching my face.
"You have to pass an... extensive initiation process to be deemed fit for the society. I can't tell anyone, even my brothers, about what I went through to be initiated. Every male in each family is initiated at six years old, and the one who passes with the most success—and survives until eighteen—is made part of the society then."
Like every time I think of my initiation, my blood seems to turn to lead all throughout my body. Each Son undergoes a different initiation, crafted personally by their father. The memory of mine is stored somewhere deep inside me, somewhere dark and lethal that I pull from only when necessary.
"Massimo and I were initiated, and I passed. He didn't. I... I did really well. Better than anyone else has. So good that Tommaso and Nico didn't have to go through the process."
Thirsty ad sanguinem, et terra fatiscit, et Filius Serpentine. The words pass through my head, even now with Nina next to me, her presence that makes me so much lighter, so much more myself. The darkness is inescapable, something that people try to simplify. But you can't. You can't dip your foot in a pool and say that you haven't gotten wet.
Thirsty for blood, I crumble earth; the Sons of Serpentine.
"There are only fifty members." I'm rambling, and I never fucking ramble. "They and their families are the only ones who can know what the society does. And still... there are details that, if I told you or my brothers, they would have me strung up and gutted before morning for it."
The first sign of discomfort passes across Nina's face, and she shifts in my lap. I cover her hand with mine to keep her touch on my face.
"We meet once a month. On the sixth. I do, essentially, what Mantus said—sacrifice those who deserve it. Throughout the month, we dredge up the scum of society. We locate them, track them, and we take them. Then we torture them. Do... other things to them before we kill them. Things only we in the society can know."
A lot of it traces back to Satanic ritual. The founders of the society found this entertaining and fitting to latch onto, but I can't help but feel like it has to be more than a gimmick. There is something awful about what I do, who I am, that cannot be reduced and simplified to a gimmick.
"This managing of souls," I rasp, clearing my throat, "allows us to keep a finger on the pulse of the underworld. It gives me and my family power that we must be selective in wielding."
"Is that why you have the 'S' engraved on your wrist?"
I nod, and her fingers find the scar, tracing it with a feather touch. "It's reopened every month and each Son's blood is spilled at the door before the rituals start."
She's frowning, but it's a focused frown. She's trying to understand.
"Luciano essentially threatened to kill one of the Sons," I continue. "You don't understand how reckless that is. It's concerning. That's why we're being so careful. Gathering our own little army of people like Angelo Scaloni and Mantus who want to see Luciano gone."
She tilts her head. "How big would that be, if he killed one of you? Has it been done before?"
"It would be... huge. At the society's genesis, there were a few members killed. They were murdered by their vindictive brothers who felt they deserved to be a Son instead. That's the only time. And it was still technically internal."
"How... how could Luciano do it then?"
"That's not the point." A humorless smirk cocks my lips. "The point is that he might be a rat, but he's not suicidal. He has to have something up his sleeve, and it's unnerving. But we're taking all the necessary steps to be prepared. He won't win this."
She nods, her face scrunched adorably as she processes. I tense, preparing for a question that will lead to an answer she'll regret hearing. I've just told her I routinely do much worse than torture and kill; her questions are inevitable.
"Those men at the concert... the ones who came up to you when you sent me to the bar..."
"Also Sons," I confirm, relief at her harmless question loosening my chest. It'll be temporary relief, I'm sure.
"Why can't Serpentine just come together and... eliminate Luciano?" A blush colors her cheeks as she assumes her question naïve.
I tuck a strand of hair affectionately behind her ear. "Because, cuore mio, we don't wield the power of the society in that way. We don't use it as a weapon for people that one—or even fifty—of us don't like. There are Sons who have offered to join the fight against Luciano, but they know it's not something I can allow. It's not why the society was established. Vengeance is one man's joy, not the society's battle cry. Serpentine regulates, watches, controls. We don't go on the warpath. It would draw too much attention, become too big. We'd lose power."
What I don't tell her is that Luciano will be mine. What I don't tell her is that I plan on killing her father by detaching his head from his neck after hours of torture. What I don't tell her is so much.
Her features twist in discomfort, and she fiddles with her hands, not meeting my eyes. I grasp onto her tightly, steeling myself.
"How do you feel after coming back from one of these meetings? After torturing, killing, whatever else you do?"
Shock brings a small smile to my face, and I wipe it away with my palm, watching her eyes track the movement.
She's asking how I feel.
"Numb but placated. For a few days I'm in my head, I suppose, but it's never a bad thing. I used to enjoy it, the way everything felt like it was underwater for a few days. It made life more interesting to deal with for that time."
"Used to?"
"Yeah," I murmur, untangling her hands and bringing one to my lips. Her breaths quicken as I press my mouth to each finger before I continue speaking. "Once you came along, it started feeling different. Less foggy. The violence is still there, but the disorientation afterwards is replaced with..."
I trail off, thinking.
Her lips quirk. "Peace?"
I yank her closer. "The closest thing to it."
She kisses me, and my hands tangle into her mane of hair, pressing her into me with enough strength to bruise both our lips. She groans softly, and I force myself to pull back.
"Do you have any more questions?"
My chest feels lighter than it has for longer than I can remember, even in the midst of all the fucking exhaustion. The disorientation of this day has faded into a warm impression of what I think is contentment, the closest thing to it. And the last thing I thought I'd feel after coming face to face with the things I have.
There are more things to consider and work through, but not now. Now, I need to feel her, reassure myself that she's still here, that the nightmare of the last few days hasn't damaged us in ways we don't know yet.
Nina seems to share similar sentiments. "Yes, but I'll ask them another time. Thank you for opening up to me. For now... I want to try something."