25. — you’re mine, homicide. #4
A gurgle sounded from the body sprawled out just feet away.
Salvatore took a hesitant step forward, and then another, and another until he came to stand next to Giorgio.
The man wasn’t quite dead yet. Kneeling alongside the desk, he met the flickering gaze of a monster who could no longer be one to him, or anyone else.
“H-he wouldn’t be w-who he is w-without m-me,” Giorgio stuttered, the words heavily slurred from the gaping hole in the side of his face and the damage to his mouth.
Salvatore raised the gun and shot Giorgio again, silencing him before he could say more words that meant absolutely nothing.
The sounds outside the office finally stopped. Only for a low wail to begin shortly after. Salvatore pulled out his phone to find a single text from Carina.
An emoji. A dove.
Birds fly. His would until it was safe to land.
Salvatore found Nico just a couple of steps beyond the office in the hallway, next to a battered body that couldn’t be recognized.
The bloodstains went from the floor to the ceiling in bright, spattering stripes that made him do a double take at the scene.
The more grotesque thing—as his face could no longer be called such a thing—was the concaved bones and matter that used to make up Marco’s head.
It made quite the painting on the floor.
Knees pulled up to his chest, Nico stared at his brother. Bloodstained himself. Hands coated red and shaking. The statue, bloody, just ahead of him.
He cried.
And cried and cried.
The sobs came when Salvatore sat down next to him, back against the wall. “Sped that plan along for me, didn’t you?”
Nico said nothing. Just like in the office.
“Hey,” he murmured to the kid.
Down the hall, Matty stood with his back to them, watching the door.
Bloodied hands met his face as the sobs intensified. Then, Nico’s words came, repeated, broken, and heartbreaking.
“He’d do it. He’d do it. He’d do it.”
Matty breathed deeply down the hall, turning slightly but avoiding looking directly at the mess. “Should I, uh, check the house?”
“Clean it out. The upstairs is soundproofed, right?”
“Mostly,” the enforcer agreed. “Second floor could’ve heard that, though.”
He knew who was down there. It didn’t bother him.
“Get a move on, then,” he ordered Matty. “Clean it out, and then we burn it down.”
“Burn—”
Salvatore cocked an eyebrow, quieting the man. “This whole level is a fucking tinderbox. The rest will go, too.”
“There’s staff, Sal.”
“They’ll leave fast. Do you need me to say it again?”
“No, boss. I, uh, I got it.”
Matty turned back to the door and opened it.
Salvatore threw an arm around Nico once the man left and pulled him into a hug. He held him like that, close to him like a father should, like Nico needed, and let him cry as much as he wanted.
Mere minutes later, a figure darkened the end of the hallway. The same spot where Matty watched earlier but left the door open as he left.
Salvatore went to raise his gun, but the familiar curves of a woman hugging a silk robe stopped him. Vanna.
In bare feet, she surveyed the damage, silently.
Salvatore broke the silence first. “It would be wise of you to pack a bag and take Carmen with you.”
“This changes nothing,” Vanna replied, “Carmen is still mine.”
“We know.”
“And I love her, still,” the woman added in a whisper. “Everyday.”
She didn’t mean Carmen that time, but they all knew how much Vanna loved that little girl, too. Enough that she fucked a monster to sleep every night and then crawled into her daughter’s bed to stay until daylight, so she always knew where both were, every hour of each day.
Those deals with the devil? They never stopped paying.
“She knows,” Salvatore returned eventually.
Vanna swallowed thickly, eyeing the body on the floor and then the macabre painting Nico had made throughout the hallway. “And my husband...?”
“Don’t go in there, okay?”
She nodded once.
“You should pack a bag,” Salvatore repeated. “Now.”
“Where should I go?” she asked.
“Wherever you want.”
Once the woman left, Matty returned shortly after.
He stood in the doorway long enough for Salvatore to listen to him explain that the house had cleared of guests, the remaining staff from the party had started cleaning up and would also leave soon, and no one seemed to be any wiser to the situation upstairs.
His original plan would have worked.
This was fine, too.
Salvatore lifted the gun again, pointing it at Matty.
The enforcer blinked, hand twitching like it might reach for the piece at his side. Only then did Nico seem to realize something else had started happening around him.
“Sal, don’t,” Nico mumbled. “He helped—”
“If he’ll do it to his boss, he would do it to me.”
He pulled the trigger for a third time.
Nico promptly vomited.
Salvatore peeled open Nico’s hand to find a deep scratch heavily bleeding. Probably from the struggle. “I should cut your palm, and make you swear on a saint like your father did to me. That’s how you make a man who deserves it.”
“Life made me,” Nico whispered brokenly.
“Maybe life played a part,” Salvatore agreed, but then he told Nico the same thing Giorgio did him all those years ago. “But I own you now, kid. You’re mine.”