Chapter Four SANTINO #2
Usually the room felt like control. Tonight it felt too small.
Marco stood slowly and walked toward the cabinet against the far wall, opening it without urgency. Crystal clinked softly. Ice shifted. Whiskey poured in a slow amber stream.
Normal sounds. Everything normal. Only my chest still felt tight. Only I could still smell apples. Only I could still remember furious dark eyes staring up at me.
He handed me the glass. I took it. Mostly because punching him still felt socially unacceptable.
"You have no idea who she is, do you?" he asked casually.
I smirked and leaned back in the chair. "You say that like you do."
Marco looked at me. Then looked toward the wall of screens. "I did some digging while you were busy sticking your tongue into forbidden fruit."
I slowly lowered the glass. "What the fuck did you just say?"
He shrugged. "What? I multitask."
“So efficient.”
Marco stared back. Completely serious. "It's Aurora Ventura."
The room went still. The music outside disappeared. The camera screens disappeared. The whiskey in my hand disappeared. Everything disappeared.
Aurora Ventura.
No. No fucking way. I stared at Marco. He pointed at me.
"That thing you're doing right now?" he said calmly. "The denial thing? That's not changing reality."
I stood up. Slowly. Because my body felt wrong. Heavy. Like someone had quietly replaced my bones with concrete while I wasn't paying attention.
"Ventura?" I repeated.
Marco nodded once. "Chiara Ventura's little sister."
No no no. My eyes lifted automatically toward the camera wall. Toward absolutely nothing. Because I wasn't really seeing the screens anymore. I was seeing dark hair. White heels. Big eyes glaring at me. Christ.
Then Marco fired the second bullet. "And she's getting married in a week."
I looked at him. My voice sounded distant. "To who?"
Please don't say it.
"Sergio,” Marco muttered.
Everything inside me stopped. The air in the room felt thick. Too thick. Like somebody had wrapped a hand around my throat and squeezed. Sergio.
Leo's shadow. Leo's right hand. Leo's fucking family. The Serpent was my cousin, and Sergio was the man standing beside him every goddamn time I'd seen him since… well, forever.
And four years disappeared. I wasn't in the surveillance room anymore. I wasn't thirty years old. I wasn't holding whiskey. I was twenty-six again. Kneeling on cold concrete. Blood everywhere. Too much blood.
Then the snakes. Jesus Christ. The fucking snakes.
I could still hear hissing if I thought about it hard enough.
Still remembered my knees hitting the ground beside Angelo.
Still remembered grabbing his shoulders.
Still remembered screaming his name. Still remembered realizing he wasn't answering me.
Four years of rage and violence and pretending I wasn't missing half my goddamn soul. And tonight, I'd kissed the enemy.
I laughed once. Short. Empty. The sound didn't even sound like me. Marco looked concerned. Which was saying something. Because Marco didn't look concerned unless buildings were actively burning down.
"Santino."
I looked toward the wall of screens. Toward the club floor. Toward the place where a girl with dark hair and furious eyes was probably still wandering around somewhere beneath me.
Probably still angry. Probably still confused. Probably still wondering why I'd walked away. Then I smiled. Slowly. Not because I was happy. Because I felt something much worse than happiness. Something dangerous. Not anger. Something colder than that. Something quieter.
The kind of feeling that didn't explode like rage or burn like jealousy. The kind that slid into your ribs and sat there patiently, almost calmly, while it sharpened knives in the dark.
After Angelo died, Marco had become disturbingly good at reading me.
Too good. Eight years beside me had turned him into some kind of unwilling expert on my personal disasters.
He knew every expression I made before violence.
Every silence before a bad decision. Every tiny shift in my face that usually ended with broken bones, blood on marble floors, or somebody screaming my name while running in the opposite direction.
And right now? He looked worried.
"Santino," he said carefully again. I didn't answer. Because I wasn't really in the surveillance room anymore.
I was staring at the wall of camera feeds while blue-white light flickered across black leather and steel around us.
Camera after camera shifted beneath the glow.
The dance floor. The bar. Hallways lined in gold and shadow.
Bodies moving beneath hanging lights. Women laughing with champagne glasses in hand.
Men leaning against walls pretending they weren't staring at women.
Normal life. The club kept breathing beneath us exactly the way it always had.
Bass rolled faintly through the floor beneath my shoes like a distant heartbeat.
Whiskey and smoke still hung in the room.
Ice slowly melted inside my untouched glass.
Everything was normal. Except I wasn't seeing any of it.
Because all I could see was her. Dark hair spilling over bare shoulders. Big eyes glaring at me. Tiny white heels. Pink lips pulled into offended little frowns.
Jesus Christ. The memory hit me so clearly I could practically hear her voice again. Marco stood. Very bad fucking sign. Marco only stood when sitting no longer felt sufficient for whatever catastrophe was currently unfolding. Usually that catastrophe was me.
"You agreed with me earlier?" he asked slowly.
I looked at him. "What?"
"When I said stay away from her,” he reminded me.
I looked back toward the camera screens. Then I laughed. Not because anything was funny. Because the entire thing felt completely fucking absurd. Out of every woman in this city, out of every club, I had somehow walked directly into that.
Marco's expression darkened. "Fuck. I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking."
I kept staring at the screens. "Yeah, I think you don’t."
"No." He pointed at me. "No, I know that face. The face where your brain starts replacing common sense with terrible ideas."
A slow smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. Marco looked personally offended.
"You've known her for like..." He looked at his watch dramatically. "An hour."
I said nothing. Marco narrowed his eyes. Still nothing. Then he dragged both hands down his face. "If you go anywhere near Aurora Ventura, you are not chasing a woman."