3. Roman
THREE
Roman
Standing in Vitali’s office at Eclipse while the meeting wraps up, my hand keeps twitching toward my phone. I want Lucas. I want to … I don’t know. I feel like I want to talk to him, but I’m not sure.
Something was wrong. He was upset, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Maybe I should have stayed with him and let Sasha do this. But the house was bothering me. Sometimes it’s just too big and too small at the same time. It’s too nice and too clean and too much part of a life that I can’t figure out how to fit inside of.
But it’s not much better here. I don’t belong in this sleek modern office like Vitali does.
My clothes—black slacks and a black button-up—look right but feel wrong.
They don’t fit anymore. Vitali, however, in his sharply tailored three-piece black suit, looks every bit as elegant and dangerous as he truly is. He looks perfect here.
Across the desk from Vitali, Benito Manzoni looks like a knock-off version of my brother. He’s not as handsome, not as stylish, not as smart. But he’s a good choice for an ally.
I can see that much, though I’m having trouble following the conversation. I’m tuning in and out as I stand to the side.
Before my capture, I used to be involved in these sorts of conversations. I would challenge people, rattle them. It was my role.
I still kind of do that, I guess. Just silently. Benito was startled by me when he first walked in. None of my scars show in these clothes, but I’m still big. And I guess my face is scary.
I tune back in when Benito and Vitali stand up.
Vitali walks around his desk, smooth as silk, and shakes Benito’s hand.
They walk across the office to the door.
Vitali opens it, letting in a burst of the club’s thumping bass and a glimpse of the crowded mezzanine’s low lighting.
As Benito vanishes into the dimness with his bodyguard, Quinn steps into the office and closes the door.
Vitali goes to the minibar and pours whiskey into two tumblers. I’ve refused enough times that he doesn’t ask if I want any. After four years of being imprisoned and sometimes drugged for fights, it’s hard for me to imagine the version of myself that used to get drunk all the time.
“So that went well?” Quinn asks as Vitali hands him a glass.
Vitali sips his whiskey. “Everything is contingent on eliminating the DiMaggios, but yes.”
Quinn asks, “Is he planning to help with that?”
“He doesn’t have the manpower and I don’t want him in the mix. He might side with Gavino.”
Quinn frowns. “If he’s that untrustworthy, why do business with him?”
“Everyone is that untrustworthy,” Vitali replies as he goes to sit on the couch. His tone is flippant, but I glimpse the cold steel in his eyes. Vitali isn’t over our uncle’s betrayal.
I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me as much. Our uncle secretly organized my initial capture and sale. But it’s not something I really think about. It seems kind of irrelevant. But it bothers the hell out of Vitali, even with our uncle now dead.
Instead of sitting on the couch with Vitali, Quinn remains halfway between the minibar and the door. “So can we go home?” he asks.
Vitali’s lips quirk. I can see that he wants to tease Quinn for his impatience and paranoia, but his eyes flick first to me. I don’t know what Vitali sees because I feel like I’m pretty neutral, but he says, “Yeah. We can go home.”
Vitali downs his whiskey and so does Quinn.
Vitali pushes up from the couch and returns to the minibar.
As Quinn washes the glasses and Vitali dries them, I realize that my neutral is actually very weird.
In captivity, it wasn’t weird. Between activities, I would be still.
But here, it’s strange that I haven’t moved or spoken. It’s unnatural. Un-human.
I suddenly want nothing more than to get away from here.
But to go where? Vaguely, to Lucas, but I don’t feel right at the house either.
There’s nowhere, really, to go.
For a second, I have a huge, overwhelming sense that I simply shouldn’t be here at all. It guts me, hollows me out, but I don’t have time to really think about the feeling before Vitali is nodding to me and it’s time to leave.
We walk out of the office and into the chaos of the nightclub, heading down from the mezzanine to the main level with its dance floor.
The sensory assault is so complete, with the techno beat and slashing lights and the sprawling crowd of people, that my brain switches gears.
I stop thinking about myself within this space and just track the space itself.
There are too many people for me to monitor everyone, so I simply observe the general movements, alert for any jarring elements. The habit comes easy. It was always like this heading to the fighting ring, cutting through the churning sea of spectators.
The similarity crosses wires in my brain. I lose where I am in time. I’m sort of aware of it happening, but it’s so easy to believe. It’s familiar, even comfortable, almost a relief. There are no questions here, no doubts. There’s no sense of being out of place. I know what I am in this context.
So I’m not surprised when the sea of spectators parts for me. It always does. They want to watch me fight, they want to watch me kill, but they don’t want to touch me—and they shouldn’t.
My handlers guide me to the door. My mind glitches slightly at that because we shouldn’t be leaving before the fight. But I walk out with them anyway.
I halt at the sight of the parking lot. The door thumps shut behind me, cutting off the noise, cutting off the past.
“Roman?”
I blink. Vitali is a few paces ahead, looking back. Quinn has stopped too and is scanning the dark lot.
Vitali and Quinn. Not my handlers. My hand goes to my throat, but there’s only skin, no collar.
“You good?” Vitali asks.
I nod, and we walk to the car. We’ve just gotten in when Vitali’s phone buzzes.
“Yeah, Joe,” Vitali answers from the front passenger seat, then, “Shit.” Quinn freezes with his hand at the ignition. “We’re on our way.” Vitali ends the call and reports, “Joe’s crew got made watching Arete. The DiMaggios are pursuing.”
“Fuck,” Quinn mutters as he starts the engine. Vitali shares Joe’s fast-moving phone location to the car’s navigation system .
As Quinn drives, he and Vitali argue. As head of the family, Vitali should stay out of these things, but he never does. Quinn shouldn’t waste his breath.
We end up in a part of town where no one is likely to call the cops.
It’s old brick buildings and dark alleys, and we find Joe’s truck abandoned with a flat tire.
The shredded rubber says it was run on the rim for a while.
Bullet holes pockmark the truck’s rear quarter panel, but there are no bodies and no DiMaggios.
Joe’s truck is blocking the alley entrance, so the DiMaggios must have circled around somewhere else.
“No,” Quinn says as we slow to a stop. “Fuck no.”
Vitali argues, “We have four men in there somewhere, and I’m not letting the fucking DiMaggios take them out. I need Joe. I need all my men, now more than ever.”
“Vitali—”
“Quinn,” my brother cuts in sharply.
I open my door because I know Vitali will win this eventually, and I’d rather get ahead of them. They both scramble out of the car, whisper-shouting at me, but I’m already halfway across the street.
I squeeze around Joe’s truck and head down the alley. Vitali would make a plan and that might be smarter, but I prefer to simply react. You can’t anticipate everything, and it’s your instincts that save you, if anything’s going to.
As I walk into the darkness and grime of the alley, as I stop thinking, I feel a weight lift from me.
Part of me knows that it’s dangerous. I got confused for a second in the club, and that kind of thing happens pretty often.
Hell, it happened this morning. But this shit here could be worse.
There will be violence, and I know what that might do to my head.
The problem is, I want it to.
I’m starving for violence, for the freedom of it. I need it.
I hear Vitali and Quinn behind me, so I move faster to keep ahead. At an intersection of alleys, I hear someone running somewhere to my right. I head that way, hunting.
I’m used to fighting in the open, one on one, but I find this predatory mode easy to slip into.
There’s an SUV ahead, presumably the DiMaggios’, but it seems to be empty. The reason for that becomes apparent when a noise-suppressed gunshot draws me to a juncture and I spot only three people. Joe’s crew split up to force the DiMaggios out of their vehicle.
The fight is two on one, and I can’t identify them in the dark. I stalk their way, quiet enough that they don’t notice me. One man takes cover behind a dumpster, firing from behind it.
I get to the other side of the dumpster and shove it into him.
He yelps, and the other two are startled enough to stall their fight.
Two heads whip my way. I manage to see which one is Joe, so I go after the other.
I rush him, grabbing him around the middle and slinging him against the wall.
He’s so unprepared for it that he barely resists.
He scrambles up, but he doesn’t have a chance. I hit him in the ribs and feel them break. I hit him in the face and he goes down. It’s so unsatisfying that I pick him up and sling him across the alley into the opposite wall.
Shots fire. I wheel around, but the guy I slammed with the dumpster is already on the ground and Joe is lowering his gun.
There’s nothing more for me here, so I stalk back the way I came.
I growl when I see men at the end of the alley, but it’s Vitali and Quinn.
They stand back and let me pass. My mind glitches because that’s what my handlers used to do: stand back as long as I was going the way they wanted.
It’s easier for them to let me move my own feet.
So I keep going.
The next fight is easy to find. I hear shouts, shots, and footsteps. Before I turn the corner into that alley, someone says behind me, “ Roman .”
When I don’t respond, they grab my arm. I yank free and wheel on them, snarling. My handlers know better than to touch me.
But it’s Vitali. I do see him. I do know it’s him, but only on a certain level. He’s overlaid with others. But I still stop myself from attacking him.
He says, “I need you to stay back. Joe, Quinn, and I are going ahead of you.”
That’s not acceptable, so I turn away and get moving before any of them can step around me .
“Goddamn it,” Vitali mutters behind me. “At least use your fucking gun.”
My mind glitches again. I forgot I had a gun. Sometimes there are knives or other weapons in the fights but never guns. With a gun, I could shoot anyone, even my handlers.
I pull it from the holster at the small of my back and move to the corner, peering into the alley. It’s too dark to make out all the shapes, so I just walk in. The others are silent behind me, but I can feel their presence.
Surprise is valuable, so none of us fire, not until we’re seen. Someone shouts and spins my way, gun raised. I shoot him.
Then it’s chaos. The fight divides, half of it sweeping toward me. I rush to meet it as shots fire everywhere. Pain flashes across my left forearm. I shoot someone else before the fight gets too close for guns.
I slam into someone, but he goes down so fucking easily.
I spin to meet another. This one is bigger, so I get to hit him twice before he goes down too.
I still hear shots and shouts, but none of it seems relevant.
It’s just background noise as I snap someone’s neck.
I toss the body away, frustrated. I need a real fight.
It’s the only time I’m truly free. It’s the only time when all the fucking pressure inside me releases.
But I don’t get that. They’ve given me all these weak opponents, and it’s over too quickly.
Bodies litter the ground. The men who are still standing draw back.
Spectators. Handlers. They don’t engage with me.
One of them shouts my name. It pings strangely in my brain, unpleasantly, as I turn toward him.
I go stalking his way. No one shocks me. No one shoots me.
They should. I might kill him. I’ve killed handlers before.
Another tries to get in front of him but is pushed away. I grab the one who shouted my name by his throat. He doesn’t fight me. He just looks at me with my brother’s face.
Part of me wants to break his neck because I don’t want to see my brother’s face. I don’t want that reality. I want to stay in the reality where I belong. The simple one. The one that makes sense to me—the one where I make sense.
But I let him go.
I walk past him. I walk away. The arguing behind me fades as I move through the dark alleys until I reach the street. I just keep going.
Soon, there are footsteps behind me. Those stop eventually, replaced by headlights.
I lose track of time. I have no idea where I am or how long I’ve been walking. I don’t like it. I feel untethered. I want …
I want back in my cell.
I know that’s not the reality I’m in right now, but I don’t care. I understand myself within that reality. I don’t understand myself here, walking down a street in Boston with Vitali and Quinn trailing me in the car .
Eventually, I become too aware of them and where I actually am. I stop. I close my eyes for a second, wishing everything would go away.
The car rolls forward until the rear door is right beside me. The car stays there, idling. I open the door and get in.