"I'll meet you in fourteen minutes, no more, no less."
"What if I'm late? Or early?"
"I'm sure you'll really enjoy finding out, then." She pats him comically on his shoulder, smiling patronisingly, and turns quickly away towards the front doors of the very upmarket hotel in which the ball was being held.
"Anything else?"
She turns her head back round towards him, causing her bronze hair to splay out in a whirlwind. Castano seems to have forgotten what he had originally asked her now, and was blushing again, causing Rosa to shake her head disapprovingly. He really needs to get over this childish crush as soon as possible.
"I'm gonna do a fancy-pants accent so don't get too put off guard," she adjusts her dress slightly and checks the time on her phone. "And come on, get your shit together, Castano, it's showtime."
The ballroom is absolutely grand.
Lavish scarlet carpets lie on marbled tile, surrounding a hardwood floor space, obviously made for dancing. Adjacent to that dance floor is a raised platform for the classy musicians to perform with their violins and clarinets, all overlooked by a beautiful crystal chandelier, a iridescent dome, extremely large in diameter. Rosa takes in and establishes her surroundings before she strikes up a conversation with a group of clearly wealthy aristocrats, playing the perfect role of the bored wife of a wealthy businessman who "couldn't make it tonight, but who's complaining?".
Honestly, Castano couldn't have fucked up more if he tried. Twenty-six minutes after they said a temporary farewell, he turns up to the ball, grasps Rosa around the waist, and kisses her fiercely. The group she had been talking to make noises of surprise and of impress, and Rosa wonders if they would be more or less impressed if she murdered him right here and now.
"Hello, darling."
"Passerotta, I've missed you ever so much." Castano beams, and Rosalynn doesn't have to look too far into his smile to know that he really isn't acting at all. She only feebly smiles in response.
"Ladies, gentlemen, I do hope that you don't me taking my husband away for just one dance." They don't seem to care all that much, so she hauls him over to the dance floor, digging her freshly manicured fingernails into the skin of his wrist for good measure.
"It's things like that which will get us killed, passerotta." She arranges them into a Viennese waltz, surprised to see Castano doesn't seem new to it at all. They sway around the dance floor, smiling at each other as genuinely as they can humanly manage, just to keep up appearances, of course. Castano makes some sort of comment about her saying the wrong thing in Italian, but she simply ignores him. She's been getting really good at that lately.
"Did you find the guy?"
"Yes, and we're both about to get killed. If you don't do as I say," she says with a smile on her face, just so that the other guests become any more suspicious than they already are.
"How the heck did you find him?" Castano does the same smile-while-talking-about-very-dark-and-possibly-fatal-things and Rosa is taken slightly aback by how unsettling it is.
"Well because someone wears tight suits so that our guy could see fucking guns in 'tight suit guy's' pockets."
"Shit."
"That's right."
"How do you know it's the guy?"
"He's also wearing a very tight suit and I can see at least three guns in his suit jacket," she twirls under Castano's arm, causing her red dress to twirl around their feet at the same time. "He's also been furtively glancing at his phone which m-"
"Which means he's called reinforcements."
"Uh-huh, and we won't have enough time to call our own," she frowns. "We are royally fucked."
"Ros, I -"
"I don't want to hear it. Now, you are going to do exactly as I say or you'll never be able to do anything again. Our guy, to your...right, is going to shoot down the colossal chandelier above the dance floor when we are directly under it. If we are in the right position and don't move an inch and crouch as low as we can, we will survive it."
"How can you tell what he's gonna do? He could just shoot us in our heads and be done for the night."
"Well, if anything in Douglas' email is true, our guy is a bit of a showman. If he's gonna go down, he'll do it in style. Plus, he keeps eyeing us and the chandelier. He's gonna drop it."
"Will we both fit in it?"
"Yeah, it'll be fine if we just get a bit closer."
"Won't all the crystals shatter when we're under it?"
"Of course they will, idiot, but it won't be as bad if the heaviest chandelier your probably ever seen falls and hits us. Now stop your damn questions and stick to my plan for once." Rosa turns them then, sashaying around the dance floor and drawing the least amount of attention to them as possible, allowing them to simply blend in with the rest of the guests.
They swirl and twirl and spin towards the centre, Rosa keeping a close eye on the guy and the positioning of themselves in relation to the chandelier. As they near into the middle, Castano seems to finally twig how much danger he's actually in and tightens his hold on her, looking at her with a tight smile, but slightly pleading eyes. Rosa remembers then that he's used to Chicago where the most danger he would have ever been in would be if a gang arrest got sticky. She squeezes the hand she's holding to give some reassurance because if he doesn't keep it together, he won't be the only one dying.
"Castano, it'll be fine, you just have to do as I sa-"
Gunshot.
She releases his hand and moves it to his upper arm, tightening the hold and yanking them to a squatting position.
The chandelier floats towards them in slow motion. She sees Castano's eyes grow larger than the diameter of the chandelier itself and notices him biting his lip so hard that red liquid pools around his teeth. She hears screams as the innocent and unaware guests run under tables, hiding themselves from the unknown. More gunshots from the undercover opposing reinforcements as the chandelier closes the distance between it and them, landing only two centimetres from their heads and the top of the chandelier.
Rosa hears Castano take a shuddering breath and exhale in deep relief, just as the crystals begin to smash. Imploding diamonds surround them as the bottom of the chandelier meets the floor in a loud smash. Shards of iridescent crystal slice their exposed flesh, leaving Rosa with multiple deep incisions that leak crimson blood that run down her face and bare arms in droplets, resembling raindrops running down windows.
Castano is slightly more lucky, but he's left with a large fractured piece extruding from the skin just below his eye. He reaches to pull it out, but Rosa slaps his hand away.
"You don't know how deep it is. You could be pulling the plug on such a deep wound that you bleed so hard and faint."
"Okay fine," he lowers his hand and gets out one of the guns from his pockets and hands it to Rosa. "How long do we have?"
"About a minute and forty five seconds until they come to check if we're dead, but we want to get out of it before they're too close."
"Can't they see through the chandelier?"
"Probably, but we aren't moving very much," she raises the skirt of her dress high enough to retrieve two of the knives attached to her garter putting one in each hand after she temporarily slots the gun into the top of her dress. "Okay. Let's do this. Do not shoot out guy unless you have to. His cronies are fair game, though. You know the rules: shoot if you are shot at, but leave our guy out. We need to question him to find out what he knows."
"Who is he?"
"Name doesn't matter. All you need to know is that him and his comrades have been planning a large-scale national attack for the last few weeks and we need to stop it."
"Okay. You ready to lift this?"
"Sure, Castano. You ready to have your first gun fight in New York?"
He nods and they stand, raising the chandelier with their backs. As the henchmen run towards the rising chandelier, they shoot their feet, immobilising them. With one badly cut arm, Rosa pushes up, causing the chandelier to fall over Castano's head and off of them completely. They stand up to full height and begin.
She launches one knife into one guy's head just before he's able to shoot her, and then spins to meet a guy who had been creeping up behind her, slitting his throat very promptly. Pulling out the gun from her dress, she evaluates her options. However, every time she aims at a new guy, he's already been shot down by Castano.
Damn. I guess they were right about the amazing marksman thing.
She decides Castano can handle the cronies, and she turns around to track down their guy, just when she's tackled to the floor by the exact man she's after.
Immediately, there's a knife to his throat and a gun to her head.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It would be very easy to kill him right here and now, but that's not the way she operates. She likes to save the nation and all that crap, but if she can kill the bare minimum of people while doing it, then she's even happier.
Castano seems to be different. He appears to not hesitate in taking out anyone he deems a threat. She supposes that can have definite advantages and definite disadvantages.
An advantage would be that Castano shoots their guy and saves her life.
A disadvantage would be that Castano shoots their guy and saves her life.
Well, it wouldn't really be 'saving my life', I could definitely get out of this on my own. It would just take longer and might leave a few scars, which I've already acquired.
Okay, maybe Douglas had a point in bringing him here after all.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Castano nearing, his gun pointed at their guy's head, but then he stills and re-aims.
Okay, Castano, show me what you can really do. Impress me.
The bullet tears through their guys' free hand, prompting him to leap back, giving Rosalynn the prime opportunity to knock the gun out of the guy's other hand and pin him onto his back.
She turns to look at Castano and smirks. He returns it with a nod.
An hour later, they sit at the edge of the road outside of the hotel they tore apart. The ring leader, complete with his wounded hand had already been taken to hospital and was now on route to be taken to a holding cell. They'll question him tomorrow in headquarters. She loves interrogating. Douglas rarely lets her do it for that exact reason.
She hisses as a paramedic wipes her cuts with some cleaning fluid. She and Castano outright refused to be taken to hospital, Castano shrugging it off by saying 'eh, they're just scratches'. Funnily enough, however, an inch-long piece of crystal had been pulled out of his face and he didn't even wince, even when the gash was being stitched. They didn't leave sitting on the concrete.
"You were right." Castano interrupts her inner monologue, loosening his tie and running a hand through his hair which was stuck together with sweat.
"Hmmm?" Rosa was usually right, but it did feel nice to hear someone say it.
"That was more hardcore than Chicago."
"And that wasn't even a bad case."
"God." He laughs a breathy laugh and throws his head back, looking up at the sky, sprinkled with stars.
"I didn't know you spoke Italian."
"Well, you never asked, but if you had you would have found out I'm entirely fluent in it."
"You learn that at school?"
"Nah, they spent the whole time trying to push Spanish on me. My mom's Italian."
"Not your dad?"
"No, he was from Minnesota," he smiles slightly, and Rosa doesn't have to ask to know he's dead. "You want more of my life story?"
"No, I think we're okay."
"Tell me something about you," he looks over and waves at the paramedic as she finally leaves them. "It's like a little exchange."
"Fine, but we are not making a habit of this," shaking her head, she pulls off her heels and puts them in her lap. "I can do sign language."
"Me too!"
"Ugh, do I have to give you another one now?"
"Yeah," he laughs again, and she's struck by the fact that his voice is smoother then velvet. "Tell me, what did you wanna be when you were growing up?"
"An astronomer ." She half-lies. She did want to be an astronomer. She just wanted to be a tap dancer more.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I know all the constellations and shit like that," she looks away from him again, suddenly embarrassed. "It's really lame, I know."
"No! I think it's awesome."
They don't speak for a while after that, only breaking the silence when Castano gets bored or perhaps cannot stand the awkwardness much longer.
"So, what do we do now?"
Rosalynn smirks.
"We wait."
~
Hello again lovely readers!!
Quite an action-packed chapter for you there!! I decided not to bring lovely Brandon in just yet as the word count was rather high as it was for what I usually do.
So I decided that because we are now back onto an after the fire chapter, I'm gonna use Brandon's point of view for this next cycle.
Until next time and don't forget to comment and vote!
The song of the chapter is 'Jackie and Wilson' by Hozier.