Santo's footsteps echo angrily through the house, but they barely register through the ringing in my ears. When I blink, black spots pepper my vision. Exhaustion threatens to drop my body to the floor in a useless heap.
I can't imagine Santo is much different. I actually have no idea how he's standing; he looks like one big open wound. He slipped into unconsciousness in my arms for the latter half of the rocky ride home, but awoke with a vengeance when we landed. He seems to be riding out the residual effects of the drugs in his system.
The both of us trail blood as I follow his irate figure into the living room. My tears have become a silent accessory at this point. There's no logical way to process a thing like this, I know that, but this isn't what I could have expected.
"Santo, wait—"
"Seriously?" he grunts angrily, screeching to a sudden halt.
"What?"
He moves quickly—or as quickly as his body allows—bracing himself with a shaking arm against the couch as he bends down. When he stands, he's holding Nico's Xbox controller.
"I always fucking told him to put this thing where it belongs, in the goddamn cabinet. It's not that hard."
He sways dangerously and my concern peaks. "Santo, Samuel needs to look at our injur—"
"He's had to get a new one at least five times. Five. He leaves it on the floor, and someone steps on it. Leaves it on the fucking couch, and it's sat on. Un-fucking-believable."
I collapse shakily into an armchair, rubbing my eyes. "It's okay. We just got home. Just put it back later—"
"And what?" he snaps, stumbling to the cabinet and ripping it open. "Have someone fucking step on it again? That's the last thing any of us needs right now, to hurt our feet on this fucking thing."
He throws the controller into the cabinet, and it clatters loudly, some part of it clearly breaking. The batteries roll out onto the floor. Santo smacks his hand angrily into the door, stooping to pick them up. About halfway there, his body gives up on him, and he ends up sitting sprawled against the cabinet as he fumbles with the broken controller, trying to fit the batteries back in. His hands shake so hard that they keep falling and rolling away again.
He drops the whole thing, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. "Fuck."
With all the effort left in me, I manage to make it to his side without passing out. I get there right as a heavy, strangled sob seeps between the cracks of his fingers. Like he senses I'm there, he leans towards me, and I wrap myself around him as best as possible. It's careful and fumbling, both of our bodies . But he cries like someone who has never known how to before, each heaving sob triggering one of my own.
Nothing makes sense right now, but especially the fact that we all made it back to this house and Nico didn't.
The image of Massimo pulling out his phone on the front lawn and calling someone to deal with his body keeps replaying in my head. Tommaso stumbling around the side of the house to dry heave into a bush before collapsing into the dirt. Leah running to him, and Samuel just standing there in the middle of the yard with both hands on his head and tears running silently down his face.
Yes, there's nothing about this that makes sense, perhaps because death itself goes against everything we know how to understand. We can only try to hold each other through the worst of it.
+
The following weeks become one long, hazy day.
I wake up early most mornings, but even if I manage to slip out of the sheets before dawn, the bed is always already empty.
Santo knows that if he left when I was awake, I'd try to talk him out of it. He needs rest, both physically and mentally. He needs to let himself breathe. But breathing would require coming face to face with things that hurt too much.
So every morning, I shuffle my tired body downstairs. I make three cups of coffee. Then I bring them to Massimo's office, where the two brothers are hard at work locating their father. Antonio has disappeared without a trace. Every lead is a dead end, but every day they work towards a solution with new fervor and strength.
Santo's sleep-shadowed eyes gain a small spark of life in that first moment I slip through the door, carefully juggling three full mugs. His shoulders relax and his chest expands like he's breathing for the first time all morning. He pauses whatever he's doing, holding out an arm until I slip beneath it, and they don't start again until I'm positioned on his lap with my face buried in his warm chest. I fall back asleep to the deep rumbling of his voice.
Hours later, I blink back into consciousness, back in my bed. Santo always leaves a fresh glass of water and painkillers on the nightstand, despite the fact that my concussion is healed.
Sometimes, Santo stays in that office all day, even longer than Massimo. On those days, we brainstorm together. I act as a soundboard as he walks me through the information they have so far. We speculate together, not caring that our ideas are often outlandish and silly. When he gets too frustrated, I make him come to the hot tub with me, or go on a walk around the grounds. Sometimes, he follows me around the kitchen like a lost puppy while I make dinner, fetching ingredients and chopping things while I talk about everything and anything that's unrelated to his father and his family.
For all that I worry about Santo, Massimo is worse. He's often gone, and nobody knows where he goes. All we know is that he comes back, even if he's gone longer each time. The search is becoming hopeless. We all know it, but nobody wants to say it.
Tommaso is even more of a wildcard in the weeks following Nico's death. He lashes out at everyone around him; every explosion ends in tears, something breaking, or him numbing himself with his substance of choice. Sometimes a combination of all three.
Lately, he's stopped hiding it. I clean up white powder from practically every surface, pick up empty or broken bottles left in random places so the others don't have to deal with it.
Grief doesn't follow any linear schedule. It conforms to no other experience humans can encounter, because it's really just the love you want to give to a person who can no longer receive it. And where does that love go when its object is gone? It's coming to terms with the fact that one day, you will have remembered that person for longer than you knew them. It's having to wake up every morning and realize the loss all over again, waiting desperately and brokenly for the day that it doesn't sting as much when it settles.
The brothers are each grieving in their own ways, but at some point, that grieving will either bring them closer together or further apart.
The breaking point comes with Santo and Tommaso's big fight.
The problem is that both their defaults are anger. Both are naturally on the offensive. I think we were all waiting for the tension to break, silently dreading it, knowing it would result in anger that tears through the skin solely with the intent to hurt.
I'm stepping out of the shower one morning when I hear raised voices from all the way downstairs. Slipping on clothes in record time, I follow the noise, my wet hair dripping down my back.
They're on either side of the counter, screaming at each other from opposite ends. Leah, who's been practically living with us since that day, stands anxiously off to the side.
"You're the one who made him think he should be involved in things!" Tommaso's face is red, his movements uncoordinated. He hasn't been sober in weeks, but this is the worst I've seen him. "You brought him places he shouldn't have gone and gave him all those ideas. He knew too much about the business and he convinced us you'd let him come that day. He was sixteen, Santo! You should've waited."
Santo dodges the bottle Tommaso lobs at him, and it shatters harmlessly against the floor. He goes to grab another one, and Santo rounds the counter savagely.
"You didn't shoot him," he snarls, face twisted up in agony. "On the lawn, when we were fighting him, and Nico came in to help. You had a hundred chances to fucking shoot him but you didn't! Why? You should've pulled the fucking trigger."
The second bottle goes tumbling from Tommaso's hands as he sags into his older brother. His body jerks with the force of his cries, and the sight brings tears tumbling down my cheeks. He starts to sink to the floor, but Santo wraps his arms around him and then they're both holding each other in a desperate, new kind of way.
Keeping each other standing against grief from the most unexpected and unfair kind of loss, anger that wants to lay the blame at each other's feet, and despair at the thought of anything happening to the brothers they have left.
Tommaso and Santo are angry. At the world, at everyone—but it's easier to be angry at someone who will always fight back. After that, Leah and I leave them in the kitchen, letting them talk. Whatever the conversation consists of, in the following days, I see a change. Less fighting, quiet understanding, shared tears, and a tenderness that was never there before.
+
Before we know it, a month has passed. It feels like ten times longer due to the pure effort it takes to get through each day, but it's one month closer to healing and that's all we could ask for.
The day Santo gives up on finding his father is when everything changes. His long days strategizing in Massimo's office are finally over. He tells me as much one morning, bursting into the kitchen as I'm frying some eggs.
"I'm not letting him control me for another fucking second," he declares, eyes blazing with determination. "Fuck him. He's not taking anything else from me."
I go up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and he keeps me there with an arm banded around my waist. "Good. I'm proud of you."
For all we know, Antonio is still watching us, but that's not likely. Now that he no longer has Luciano—a trusted ally on the inside—he's in quite a delicate situation, forced to lay low. But as it turns out, he has much bigger problems to worry about than that. He certainly can't risk trying anything anytime soon, not in the wake of the disbanding of Serpentine.
Fifty murderous vigilantes find out that they've been controlled and manipulated for the last several months by a psychopath who was supposed to be dead, and the results aren't going to be pretty for said psychopath.
Santo's been keeping in contact with the Sons, and some of them are on the warpath, looking for Antonio. Santo fields calls every week from one to ten of them claiming they've found and killed him. After the first couple weeks of investigating and finding that the victim was either a random junkie, a civilian, or another mafioso in hiding, Santo stopped entertaining them.
"Are you okay with the outcome?" I ask, flipping the eggs before they start burning.
"I'm learning to be. The way I see it, he only has one option. To stay condemned to a life of complete solitude and paranoia until he's found. Because one of the Sons will find him. I just... I'm so exhausted of trying to make that be me. It's draining me, tesoro." He sighs tiredly, visibly shaking off his exhaustion and letting a smirk pull at his lips. "Besides, fifty of the most powerful, dangerous men with connections spanning North America and Europe are looking for the same fucking guy? He knows he's on borrowed time. And until the end comes, he's going to be completely alone, looking over his shoulder every three seconds. Let him fucking suffer. I hope they don't find him for a long time."
There's no heat behind his eyes, nothing that cries out for blood or vengeance brought by his own hands. He's moving on from the carnage his parents introduced to his life, and it looks good on him.
"Let him suffer indeed," I mumble. "But I can't help but wish I could've punched his balls a little harder when I had the chance. Or, I don't know, jabbed my fingers harder in his eyeballs. You know, I had a dream the other week that I shot him in the dick."
Santo snorts in laughter, coming up behind me. He gently wraps his fingers around my wrist, stopping me from stabbing the eggs with the spatula. I blush, not realizing I'd been doing that.
"La mia ragazza combattente. You have any violent dreams about me lately?"
I turn, smirking up at him. "Your fighter girl, hm? Would you like me to have violent dreams about you?"
Surprise colors his face, and I poke his chest. "Yeah, I know what you just said. All this time you could've been talking shit and I wouldn't have known. It's time I learned some Italian."
He tugs me away from the hot stove with a hand spread over my ass, his thumb notched over my hipbone. "And who have you been letting teach you Italian?"
"It's a gamble between Tommaso and the Spacca Napoli delivery guy."
He narrows his eyes, and I bite back a laugh as he hoists me up on top of the counter, stepping between my open thighs. At this height, I'm finally on his level, and I swallow back a gasp at the feeling of him, wrapping my legs around his waist.
"Jesus fuck," a voice snaps from behind us. "I knew I smelled something burning. Good to know it's just both of your souls, in hell, for trying to fuck on the same surface that I prepare my food."
"Fuck. Help me not to murder him," Santo breathes to himself, closing his eyes.
"You don't prepare your food," I shoot back. "You literally order every single meal in."
"And I still look this fucking good, sweetheart," Tommaso winks, strolling towards us.
He squeezes right behind Santo with a hand on his shoulder, taking unnecessarily long to pass by. Santo tenses. When Tommaso casually hooks his chin over his brother's shoulder to grin at me, Santo shoves him back. I roll my lips in to keep from laughing.
"Woah," Tommaso holds up his hands. "Excuse me, big guy. Sorry. Need a snack." He grabs a bag of chips, opening it with a pop. Then he leans casually against the counter, crunching loudly. I look past the redness of his eyes and the gaunt look to his face, even though sadness tugs in my chest at the sight.
I know he's still using more than he should be. It's just not a topic I broach with him. I try to be a person he can talk to if he wants, a shoulder he can cry on or vent to. More often than not, he just wants someone to annoy. So I let him to that, and I annoy him right back. Santo already gets on his ass daily about all the drugs and alcohol.
"I seem to remember someone telling me to keep my sexual activities to my own wing of the house," Tommaso muses. "Nina, do you remember that? Because I do. In fact, I also remember th—"
"Do you ever shut up? You should try shutting up," Santo interrupts. "Also, get the fuck out?"
"No," Tommaso declares. "I'm hungry. I'm getting a snack. Maybe don't fuck in one of the main rooms of the house. Just a thought."
Heat bears down on my cheeks. "We weren't going to fuck. We just—shut up. Stop that!" I break into reluctant laughter at the shit-eating grin absolutely eclipsing Tommaso's face.
"Uh-huh. Hey, I meant to tell you guys. I went on Ancestry and traced back both our family origins, and it turns out you guys are related. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news."
I rub my hand down Santo's back, feeling his tensed muscles. Tommaso feeds Pistachio a chip, and my jaw drops. "Hey! Don't give him that shit. He'll get addicted to human food and then he'll get fat."
I already know that Tommaso feeds my dog that shit when I'm not around, but I choose not to mention it. A woman in this household has to be careful picking her battles.
Tommaso feeds him another chip, and Santo growls under his breath. I latch my legs tighter around his waist as he moves to go accost his brother.
"Have fun fucking your cousin seven times removed," Tommaso chirps, taking his chips and my dog with him as he leaves the room.
"He's being more annoying than usual," Santo says. "I can't fucking deal with him sometimes."
I smile, knowing he loves his brother even in his most annoying moments. "That's how he deals with it, you know. The humor is—"
"Masking his pain, whatever," Santo grumbles petulantly. He goes to the stove, taking my charred eggs off the burner, and I watch him with a warm feeling in my chest. "It's just a shame he has to be so fucking annoying in the process."
The lightness I feel knowing that Santo is further down the path towards healing now that he's stopped shouldering the distracting weight of vengeance is slightly scary. Because I know that now, the other shoe will drop as soon as he realizes that he has to deal with his grief head on.
The next day, I find him alone in the gym. But instead of working out, he's standing in front of the punching bag with silent tears rolling down his cheeks.
"I failed him," he says, dark liquid eyes pinning me from across the room. "I fucking failed him."
"You raised him," I say softly, holding his hands gently in mine. "You gave him everything he wanted and needed. The only thing he'd complain about is probably the fact that Tommaso never let him win anything," I jest softly. "Never anything about the way you loved and provided for him."
He nods, bowing his head until his chin hooks over my head. He brings me into him, and I try and communicate through my embrace the healing I want him to experience. For the rest of the day, he's somber and quiet. He goes to bed early, needing some time alone.
It's one step forward and five steps back sometimes, but that's okay. As long as he doesn't stop going forward. As long as he knows that I'm here to help him when the going forward becomes too difficult.
Sure enough, the very next day, he wakes up with eyes darkened by grief but something promising taking root in his features. I'm browsing the books of the library when he pokes his head in, face lighting up when he sees me.
I give him my attention, observing the reluctant way he walks towards me with his hands behind his back. He seems almost... nervous.
"Will you come somewhere with me?" he blurts quickly. He winces afterwards, like he rehearsed this before and it wasn't supposed to go that way.
"Yeah," I swallow a laugh. "Everything okay?"
It's not until we're in the car that he puts a hand on my leg, squeezing my knee with his other hand on the wheel. His eyes stay fixed on the road. "We're going to my tattoo guy."
"Oh. What are you going to get?" I rake my eyes over his body, wondering where he'll get it, too. Practically everything is covered.
"Nothing," he says a bit breathlessly. "I want something removed. I want this removed." He jerks his head at my lap, spreading his hand for me to look.
The eyes.
Those damned eyes.
I never asked him about that tattoo, but I don't think I had to. It was his way of punishing himself, of hanging onto his past and trying to embrace the worst parts of it. He didn't ever think he could choose to prove his mother wrong. That's harder. It requires a stripping of the self, from who you always thought you were, and a frightening journey of discovering who you are when you're not letting your pain cut you open.
He's discovering who he is more and more every day, the version of himself that doesn't run into his mother's arms for the punishment he was always convinced he deserved.
It's all new for both of us—this softer, more unsure side of him. His sharp edges are whittled down, like he's scared I won't like the new parts of himself he chooses to show me.
I bring his wrist to my lips, pressing a kiss over the tattoo. I kiss the now almost completely faded 'S' that's scarring over, watching a light shiver run down his body. His smile is small, but that warmth in his gaze tells me more than words ever could.
---
This is longer than I initially meant it to be because I felt the need to add some more lighthearted scenes lmao oops. I wanted to add a sufficient mixture of good and bad moments and show how quickly and randomly grief can hit.
I think we have one more POV for Santo and Nina each, and then the epilogue! Screaming!
- G