Chapter Ten AURORA #2
Then he looked toward the hallway leading deeper into the house. Toward Santino. Toward the room. Toward the grief. "He never did."
The idea was stupid. Catastrophically stupid. The kind of idea that usually ended with somebody yelling at me. Or shooting at me. Possibly both. Naturally, I committed to it.
By ten o'clock that night, I was standing barefoot in Santino's kitchen holding a chocolate cake and questioning every life choice that had led me here.
The house was asleep. Or pretending to be. I balanced the cake carefully while opening the refrigerator with my hip. Cold air spilled across my bare legs.
"Come on," I muttered. Somewhere in this ridiculous mansion there had to be candles. Rich people loved candles. Candles and emotional repression.
Eventually I found them. Three minutes later I was stealing a bottle of expensive whiskey and sneaking toward the elevator like a criminal. A very festive criminal.
The roof access door groaned open. Cold wind attacked my hair.
I set everything down beside a black outdoor sofa. Cake. Whiskey. Two glasses. Candles. The photographs I'd stolen from a drawer in the library. Not Angelo's room.
I wasn't stupid enough to touch anything in there. Just old family photos I'd found downstairs. Photos nobody seemed to look at anymore.
I stared at my setup. Then sighed. "Oh God."
This really was a terrible idea. Too late now.
I pulled out my phone.
ME: Emergency. On the roof.
Three dots appeared. I smiled. Of course. Even psychopaths answered emergency texts. Thirty seconds later the rooftop door opened. Santino stepped through. And stopped.
The wind caught his dark hair. The city lights painted silver across his face. For a moment he simply stared. At the cake. The candles. The whiskey. The photographs. Then his eyes landed on me.
Silence. Dangerous silence. Uh oh. I lifted one hand. "Hi."
His jaw tightened. "What is this?"
I cleared my throat. "Technically?"
His expression darkened. "Technically what, Aurora?"
I pointed at the cake. "A birthday party."
The silence somehow became worse. The wind howled across the rooftop. Far below, car horns echoed through the city. Santino didn't move. Didn't blink. Didn't speak. I understood why people found him terrifying.
Not because he shouted. Because he didn't.
His gaze dropped toward the cake. Toward the candles. Toward the photographs. Then back to me. "What did you do?"
The question came out dangerously quiet. I straightened. Defensively. "I wanted to celebrate yours and Angelo's birthday."
His entire body went rigid. Oops. "Get rid of it."
I blinked. "What?"
"The cake." His voice sharpened. "The photos. The whiskey."
His eyes locked onto mine. "Get rid of all of it."
The words hit harder than they should have. Because beneath the anger wasn't disgust. Pain. Raw pain. I crossed my arms. "No."
His stare could have frozen lava. The city wind whipped my hair across my face. I shoved it away. Then glared right back at him. Because if there was one thing I excelled at, it was making terrible decisions while standing in front of dangerous men.
"You don't get to be angry."
His eyebrows rose. Slowly. Dangerously. "I don't?"
"No." I pointed at the cake. ”You buy him one every year. Do you ever remember it’s your birthday, too?”
His jaw flexed. I kept going anyway. Because apparently self-preservation had abandoned me completely. "You sit alone. You visit his grave alone. You keep an entire room frozen in time."
The rooftop felt too quiet.
"You don't get to be angry because somebody doesn't want you to be lonely." The words slipped out before I could stop them. And I knew. That was it. That was the wound.
Not Angelo. Loneliness.
For a second something flickered across his face. Gone. Buried. Locked away. But I saw it. Then Santino laughed. One short laugh. Humorless. "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
I stared. He stared back. The city glittered around us. The cake sat untouched between us. The candles flickered. Finally I exhaled. Slowly.
"Like I told you… my mother died when I was young." His expression didn't change. I continued anyway. "At first everyone talked about her in secret, because my father forbade us from saying her name in the house."
The words came quietly now. Different. Less defensive. Less angry. "Stories. Memories. Photos. Things she used to say."
The wind tugged at my shirt. Then I looked away. Toward the skyline. "Then one day they stopped. They moved on."
I swallowed. "Everyone except me."
The words hurt more than I expected. Because they were true. I still remembered everything. The sound of her laugh. Her perfume. The way she used to braid my hair. The way she looked at us. The way she loved us. Everyone else had continued living. I never really had.
"I hated it." My throat tightened. "I hated feeling like she disappeared twice."
The rooftop remained silent. No traffic. No wind. No city. Just us.
"I think forgetting is worse."
I looked at him. Really looked at him. The grief. The exhaustion. The loneliness. Everything he'd spent years hiding behind smiles and devil masks and bad decisions. And he looked less like a villain. More like a wounded animal.
"I don't think Angelo would want this."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "This?"
I gestured vaguely. "Four years of birthdays alone."
"You didn't know him." The words came rough. Quiet. Painful.
"No." I admitted it. "I didn't."
His gaze dropped toward the photographs. Toward one picture in particular. Two teenage boys grinning at the camera. Identical. Whole.
"But you did." The words settled between us. Heavy. And for the first time all night, Santino looked away first. Long seconds passed. Then he moved. My breath caught. Not toward the door. Toward the sofa.
He sat. Slowly. Like it physically hurt. The lights stretched endlessly behind him.
I stared. He stared at the cake. Then reached for the whiskey. Poured himself a glass. Drank. Silence. Then another drink. Then another.
I sat beside him carefully. Not too close. Not too far.
For a while neither of us spoke. The candles burned. The city glowed. The whiskey disappeared. Finally I looked down at one of the photographs. Angelo stood on a yacht. Laughing. One arm around Santino's shoulders.
"What was he like?"
Santino froze. The question seemed to hit him harder than everything else combined. I waited. Long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.
"He was an asshole." I blinked.
"What?" The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely.
"He stole my first girlfriend." I stared. Then burst out laughing. Santino took another drink. "We were thirteen."
I laughed harder.
"He wasn't even interested in her." His voice had gone distant now. Softer. "He just thought it was funny."
The laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
A real one. Small. Broken. But real. And something inside my chest cracked.
Because I understood. Nobody asked about Angelo anymore.
Nobody asked who he was. Only how he died.
Only what happened. Only the tragedy. Not the person. Not the brother. Not the boy.
The person was disappearing. And Santino was the only one still fighting it.