Chapter 9 #2
I turned to him, and he was already looking at me, waiting to see what I’d do next. I crawled over, straddled his hips, and leaned down, letting my hair fall around his face. He reached up, hands on my back, and for a moment, neither of us said anything. There was nothing left to say.
I kissed him, softer this time, and he let me lead, let me set the pace. When we fucked again, it was slower, more deliberate, but no less desperate. We left marks on each other, reminders that we were still alive, still in control of something, even if only for a night.
After, we lay tangled in the sweat-damp sheets, the staccato echo of sirens still drifting in through the ruined window.
I traced the line of his scar, following it down to the place where it disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.
He watched me, eyes heavy-lidded, and said, “You ever think you’d end up here? ”
I shook my head. “Not in a million years.”
He smiled, and for the first time, it was genuine, without the edge or the calculation. “You should see the look on your face.”
I thought about my grandfather, about the way he used to say that the Bellini women were the most dangerous creatures alive because they never knew when to quit.
I thought about the men who’d tried to kill me, and the men I’d sentenced to die in prison, and the long line of women who’d told me I was impossible to love.
Then I looked at Seneca and knew that for the first time, none of that mattered.
He reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and said, “You’re bleeding.”
I wiped at my mouth, tasting iron. “Not as much as you are.”
He shrugged. “I like scars. They remind me who I am.”
I lay down beside him, head on his shoulder, arm across his chest. We stayed like that, listening to the world outside trying to make sense of what had happened. Inside, nothing needed explaining.
***
I woke sometime around three in the morning, or maybe I never slept at all.
The world outside was dead quiet, not even a wind rattling the holes in my windows.
I lay on my side, facing Seneca’s back, watching the rise and fall of his ribcage.
His skin was sheened with sweat, hair stuck to his scalp, the curve of his spine marked by a parade of old scars.
Some were white and faded, some a still-angry pink.
I traced the bullet wound on his left shoulder, the flesh dimpled in, and let my finger circle it until I felt him tense.
He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He just said, “That one’s from Kunar Province. Whole village emptied out, just us and the echoes.” His voice was a croak, rough from the smoke and what we’d done to each other. He was still suffering from whatever he’d experienced over there.
I pressed my thumb into the hollow of the scar, gentle. “Hurts?”
“Not anymore,” he said.
I let my hand drift to the ink above his heart.
I tried to make sense of the stories under his skin, but there were too many.
I thought of the men who’d left them, of the things he’d done to earn every mark, and I wondered which of us was worse: the one who did violence, or the one who judged it from behind a bench.
“My grandfather would have had you killed just for touching me,” I said, so soft it almost didn’t clear my throat.
Seneca rolled onto his back, looked up at the ceiling. “Is he still alive?”
I shook my head. “No. Dead two days now. I got the call from my father. Didn’t cry. Not for a second.”
He turned his head and watched me, the way you watch something you think might explode.
“Russo Bellini,” I said, and when I did, I felt the old pride and the old shame burn through my voice. “He ran Yonkers for twenty years. Did you know they called him the Hearst?”
Seneca grinned, just a flicker. “That’s better than ‘The Sadist.’”
I found myself smiling too, even as the ache in my throat grew sharper. “He had rules. Even for murder. You always left the wives alone, you never burned down a church, and if you had to kill a man, you did it face to face. No bombs. No poison. He said only cowards used poison.”
“Sounds like a real humanitarian,” Seneca said, but there was no sarcasm, just understanding.
“He raised me like a son,” I continued. “Taught me to fight dirty, to spot a tail at six years old, to hide money where even the Feds couldn’t find it.
We had family dinners every Sunday. Always a new face at the table.
I thought he just had a lot of friends.” I paused, picking at a loose thread in the sheet.
“Didn’t realize until I was twelve that half of them were killers. ”
Seneca shifted, propped himself on an elbow, his body curving around mine. I felt his leg wedge between my knees, warm and solid. “And you ran away to be a judge.”
I nodded, unable to meet his eyes. “I thought if I could just…decide things for myself, I could be free of it. Turns out the law is just another family, with its own rules and its own way of making people disappear.”
He reached out, brushing the hair from my face. His fingers were rough, but his touch was careful. “I never had family. Not like that.”
I looked up, surprised. “What about your brother?”
Seneca cut me off, his jaw going hard. “My brother’s a junkie. I keep him alive because nobody else will. My father was a bastard, beat my mom when I was sixteen. I put a bullet in his head before he could do it to us. Court called it self-defense, but I know better.”
I closed my hand over his, holding it to my cheek. “You never told anyone that, did you?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t need to.”
We stayed like that, unmoving, breathing the same air. My heart raced with every confession, as if each one was a test of how much truth I could survive.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I sentence men harder because they remind me of my father. Or my grandfather. Or all the uncles who taught me how to break bones with a phone book.”
He laughed, a short huff of air, and then his mouth found my shoulder. He kissed the bruise he’d left earlier, then let his lips rest there. “You’re not like them.”
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to be something new, something unscripted. But the Bellini name was a curse you never really outgrew.
“You ever wish you’d done something else?” I asked, voice muffled in the curve of his neck.
He shrugged. “When I was in the sandbox, I wanted to be dead. After that, I just wanted a reason to wake up. The club gave me that. The men are my brothers. We had each others' back. ”
I ran my hand down his chest, feeling the thick thump of his heart, the way it sped up under my palm. “And now?”
He looked at me, eyes gone soft and unguarded. “Now I want to see what happens next.”
I let the silence stretch, comfortable for the first time in months. I studied the way our bodies fit together, how the sweat had dried on our skin, how the scent of sex and smoke and blood had mingled until there was no telling where he ended and I began.
I squeezed his hand, then laced our fingers together. “You know this is insane.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I could destroy you.”
He smiled, not afraid. “Or you could save me.”
I wanted to believe in saving. I wanted to believe in anything. But the world outside was waiting, and the only thing I knew for sure was that neither of us could go back.
He pulled me closer, wrapping his arms around my back, and I let myself be held. For a long while, we said nothing, just breathed each other in, sharing the quiet the way most people shared secrets.
“My name is Catherine,” I said, finally, like it was a confession.
“I know,” he replied.
We drifted, together and alone, fingers tight, hearts thudding, the ghosts of our families hovering somewhere just beyond the reach of dawn.