Chapter 9 Tomas
Winter air cuts through the broken windows from yesterday’s battle, making the cabin feel like a tomb wrapped in ice.
It’s been hours since the fight ended, since we dragged Leo inside, but we haven’t dealt with the bodies yet.
Twenty Santos soldiers frozen in our yard, their blood mixing with snow.
All because Leonardo couldn’t control his temper, couldn’t walk away from a fight that wasn’t worth winning.
The copper scent of blood coats my throat with every breath. His, mine, theirs from the massacre. It's soaked so deep into the floorboards that we'll never get it out.
"You're going to tear your scabs before they can even form," Natalie says, voice steady despite the tension crackling through the air.
Leo laughs, sharp and bitter. The sound cuts off in a wince he tries to hide. "What do you care? One less Rosetti to hunt, right?"
Natalie moves forward with fresh bandages. "Your wound needs…"
"I said I'm fine." But he's swaying slightly, sweat beading his forehead despite the cold. The leg wound from yesterday is seeping through its bandage too.
"Sit," she orders, using the same voice that probably commanded courtrooms. "Let me fix this before you pass out and become completely useless."
Leonardo's laugh has teeth. "You hear that, Tomas? She thinks she can fix things. The woman who's been hunting us thinks she can just bandage our wounds and make everything better."
But he sits, probably because standing is getting harder. I watch him watch her, see the calculation in his eyes even through the pain haze. He's planning something. Testing boundaries.
"Your hands are soft," he says as she works, voice dropping to that dangerous register I remember from interrogations. "Never held a gun before yesterday, right? Never watched someone bleed out? But here you are, playing nurse to the enemy."
She doesn't flinch. "I'm trying to help."
"Help?" His voice drops further, and his hand twitches toward where his weapon would be if he could reach it. "You want to help? Leave. Walk out that door and never… fuck…" He has to stop as she pulls away the last bandage, revealing the ugly wound beneath.
"Leo," I warn. My hand moves to my gun. Old habit. The one that keeps you breathing.
"What? I'm just being honest. Something we used to value in this family." He tries to lean forward but can't quite manage it with both wounds limiting his movement. "She doesn't belong here, Tomas. She doesn't understand what we are."
"Maybe not," Natalie says, tipping a glass of fresh water over the wound to clean it. "But I understand enough."
"Do you? Do you understand that Tomas has killed more men than you've ever prosecuted? That he's washed blood off his hands in this very sink? That choosing you means betraying everything we've built?"
She meets his eyes directly. "I understand you're hurt and angry.
I understand you want someone to blame for how wrong everything went yesterday.
And I understand the difference between violence that is necessary and violence that is just plain cruel.
" Her voice stays calm, clinical. "Which one are you, Leonardo? "
The question stops him cold. For a moment, something flickers across his face. Surprise, maybe even respect. Then his expression hardens again, but I catch the way his jaw clenches against pain he won't admit to.
"You really want to know what I am?" He tries to lean forward but his body betrays him, leg wound making him gasp.
"I'm the one who pulled the trigger on Pinky Santos.
Three bullets, right in the heart, while he begged for his mother.
I'm the one who started this war. And I'm the one who's going to finish it, with or without my cousin's help. "
"You're the one who lost control," I say quietly. "And now you want me to choose between cleaning up your mess or keeping her safe."
"I want you to remember who you are!" Leo explodes, trying to stand. The movement tears something in his leg wound, fresh blood soaking through. "We're family, Tomas! Blood! You don't throw that away for some woman who stumbled into our world by accident!"
"Accident?" Natalie's hands still on the bandage she's applying to his shoulder. "I spent months tracking your family. I knew exactly where I was going when I drove up this mountain."
"And look where it got you." Leo's smile is cruel, but it wavers as his leg gives out, forcing him back into the chair.
"Covered in our blood, hiding from the law, pretending you belong here.
You think you know Tomas because he saved you from freezing?
Because he quoted some of his damn philosophy and fucked you by the fire? You don't know what he's capable of."
"She knows I told her the truth that first night," I say, remembering how I'd laid it all out. "That you wanted her dead immediately. That Dom found her investigation amusing."
Leo's eyes flash. "And yet she stayed. That's the definition of stupid."
"I know he's capable of choosing," Natalie says, her voice sharpening. "Something you seem incapable of understanding."
Leo's phone buzzes. He checks it one-handed, the other pressed to his bleeding leg now, and his face transforms with something like triumph while he types a quick reply.
"Dom's coming," he says. "Tonight. He's bringing solutions for our little problem here."
The threat is clear. Dom doesn't bring solutions, he brings endings. Clean, final, absolute. The kind that leave no witnesses.
"He doesn't know she's here," I say.
"He does now." Leo holds up his phone. "Just told him. Also told him she knows about the family business. Can't have lawyers walking around with our secrets, can we?"
The betrayal hits hard. My chest actually aches. My own cousin, signing her death warrant. Natalie goes still beside him, understanding the implications. In our world, outsiders who know too much don't get to walk away.
"You son of a bitch."
"I'm trying to save you!" Leo roars, and the effort makes both wounds protest, blood seeping faster. "She's going to destroy everything! Can't you see that? She's already got you wrapped around her little finger. What's next? You testifying against us? Turning state's witness for love?"
"I would never…"
"You already are!" He spins toward Natalie, too fast. His leg buckles but he pushes through, grabbing her wrist with desperate strength, yanking her close.
The medical supplies scatter across the floor.
I can see his fingers digging in, the bruise already forming under his grip, dark purple blooming on her pale skin.
"Leo, let her go."
"You want to know what we do to problems?" His grip tightens despite his wounds making him shake, and I see Natalie wince, trying not to show pain. "We make them disappear. No body, no crime. Just another missing person who got too close to the truth."
My gun is against his temple before the thought completes. Cold metal pressed to his fevered skin.
"Let. Her. Go."
The cabin goes absolutely still. Leo freezes, Natalie between us, her wrist still trapped in his grip. This is the line we never cross. Family doesn't aim at family. It's the first rule, the only rule that matters.
"You're aiming a gun at my head." Leo's voice is soft, disbelieving. Blood from his shoulder drips onto Natalie's arm. "Your own cousin."
"You're hurting her. I can see the bruises forming."
"I'm trying to show you what she's costing us!" His voice cracks completely. He knows what this means. What I'm willing to do. "You'd kill me for her?"
My finger moves from the trigger guard to the trigger itself. The safety is already off. One pound of pressure. That's all it would take. I've killed for less.
"Tomas," Natalie says softly, and I can hear pain in her voice from his grip.
"Quiet," I tell her, keeping my eyes on Leo. "Leo, you have three seconds to let go of her wrist."
"You're really going to do this? Betray everything for…"
"Two seconds."
His grip loosens slightly, but he doesn't let go. Testing me. Seeing how far I'll go. We've played this game since we were children, pushing boundaries, seeing who blinks first.
"One second."
"She knows family business," he says desperately, fresh blood from both wounds now mixing on the floor. "She can't live with that knowledge. You know the rules. If someone outside the family knows our operations, they're either made family or made dead. Those are the only options."
"Then I'll make her family."
"How? You going to marry her? Make it official?"
"Let go of my wife."
The word explodes from me without thought, without plan. Wife. Not girlfriend, not woman, not even mine. Wife.
Leo's hand drops from her wrist like it's been burned. He stares at me, then at her, then back at me. The gun is still pressed to his temple, but I might as well have shot him. The betrayal on his face is complete.
"Your wife," he repeats, his injuries making his voice thick. "You're calling her your wife."
"Yes."
"You've known her five days."
"Yes."
"You're insane."
"Maybe." I don't lower the gun. "But she's under my protection. Permanently."
Natalie steps back from both of us, cradling her bruised wrist. The marks are dark purple already, Leo's fingerprints painted on her skin like evidence. The sight makes me want to pull the trigger anyway.
"You would have done it," Leo says, wonder mixing with grief in his voice. "You would have killed me."
"I still might."
He laughs, but it's broken, wet with more than blood. "You're dead to me," Leo says quietly, and I can hear his heart breaking in the words. "Dead to the family. When Dom finds out you pulled a gun on me, chose her over blood…" He trails off, shaking his head. "There's no coming back from this."
"I know."
My chest feels hollow. Empty. Like someone scooped out everything that used to matter.
"Do you? Do you really understand what you're giving up? The family, the protection, the power, all of it gone. For what? For her?"
I finally lower the gun, but keep it in my hand. Ready.
"Yes."
The simple certainty in my voice makes him step back, forgetting his injuries for a moment before the pain reminds him.
He sees it now. How far I've already gone, how much further I'm willing to go.
The cousin he knew, the one who always put family first, is gone.
In his place stands someone who would burn the world for the woman behind me.
"You're lost," he says, pressing his hand to his shoulder where the bandage is soaked through, his leg barely holding him.
Leonardo's face goes white, then red. His hand moves toward where his weapon would be, then stops. Even now, even with everything broken between us, he won't draw on me. The family code runs too deep in him, even as I shatter it.
"This isn't over," he says, limping toward his things, each step leaving a small blood trail from his leg wound. "And when Dom comes to clean up this mess, when you're both bleeding out, you'll wish you'd chosen differently."
He pauses at the door, has to lean heavily against the frame, his leg barely supporting him.
Morning light catches his face, and for a moment I see the boy I grew up with.
The one who took beatings meant for me. The one who taught me to shoot.
The one who helped me bury my father. My throat closes up.
"Your wife," he says again, tasting the word like poison. "You really think that means something? You think claiming her with words will protect her from what's coming?"
"It means everything."
He shakes his head, wincing as the movement pulls at his shoulder. His grip on the door handle is white-knuckled, the only thing keeping him upright besides will. "You're going to get her killed, Tomas. And yourself. For what? For love? Since when do we get to choose love?"
"Since now."
Natalie moves closer to me, and I feel her presence like armor. Her hand finds mine, fingers interlacing despite the gun oil and blood that still stains my skin. The touch is deliberate, public, a claim of her own.
Leo watches this, and something dies in his eyes. The last hope, maybe. The final thread of brotherhood severed. He takes one painful step through the door. "Tell your wife she did what the Santoses couldn't. She destroyed Tomas Rosetti."
The door closes behind him with a finality that echoes through the cabin.
Through the window, I watch him limp to his car, every movement broadcasting the pain from his shoulder and leg wounds.
He doesn't look back. Doesn't wave. Just gets in with obvious difficulty and drives away, leaving tire tracks in the blood-stained snow beside the frozen bodies we still haven't dealt with.
The silence that follows is deafening.
My hands shake as I set down the gun. Not from fear. From loss. From the grief of watching my cousin walk away forever. My chest aches like someone reached in and tore something vital out.
Natalie's fingers are still laced with mine. I can feel her pulse through our joined hands, rapid but steady. When I finally look at her, she's studying the bruises on her wrist. Leo's fingerprints marked in purple and blue, already darkening to black at the edges.
"I should put ice on this," she says quietly.
"Natalie…"
"You called me your wife." She looks up at me, eyes unreadable. "Did you mean it?"
The question hangs between us. I could take it back. Could call it a heat-of-the-moment thing, a tactical choice to protect her. Could minimize what just happened, what I just destroyed.
"Yes," I say instead. "I meant it."
"You broke everything for me. Your family, your cousin, your code."
"I'd break it again."
"Why?"
I pull her against me, careful of her bruised wrist. My gun is still warm in my other hand, always between us and whatever's coming. But when I set it on the table, the grief hits full force. Leonardo is gone. My cousin, my brother in everything but blood, gone because I chose her.
"Because you are my all, even if it costs everything."
"That's not love," she says. "That's obsession."
"Same thing."
She studies my face like she's looking for something. Whatever she finds makes her shoulders straighten, chin lift. She reaches up, thumbs brushing over my cheeks, and I realize I'm crying. Silent tears for the brother I just lost.
"Then I choose you too," she says. "Whatever comes. Whoever comes. I choose you."
The words should make me feel victorious. Instead, they terrify me. Because Leo was right about one thing. I've just signed her death warrant. And mine.
But when she stretches up to kiss me, tasting like salt, I know I'd sign it again. A thousand times. In blood if necessary.