ELIANO #11
"Eliano, let’s wait a few days and talk about this again. We’ll think it through properly. That’s your method, right? Think first, then act."
I look at him, raising my eyebrows.
"You seem very calm. We just narrowly escaped death again. Aren’t you angry? I brought this on us, my past, my fucked up family."
He shrugs with a hint of amusement.
"Well, they say you can get used to anything. But you had no choice and no control over it. I understood the threat from the start. Why would I be angry at you? You picked the Alpha Slayer. I picked an ex-mafioso. We gambled, but call me na?ve, I still believe we’ll somehow find a way out, Eliano.
" He lifts his hand, his fingers brushing my face. "I just know it’s going to be okay! It’s just the last bump in our journey. "
My gaze shifts across his face. Some chaotic thoughts run through me, along with a sense of relief.
"I appreciate what you've said, Salt, but it ends here. I won't sit around like a duck and wait for his next move." I pause, then add dryly, "I need to deal with my damn family once and for all."
"Someone from your damn family texted you and warned you. Try to look at it this way."
"Hey, what are you two doing back there?"
A voice calls out behind us.
I recognize the alpha. He lives in unit eighteen. Apparently, he was alerted by our voices.
"Our unit… it just exploded," I say, and Salt and I get to our feet, straightening up.
"Oh shit, it was yours? And you survived? I was sure you were done for. What was it, debris from a plane falling down or something?"
"We don’t know," Salt says, giving me a pointed look. "We’ll find out everything from the firefighters."
We pass him and head out onto the main promenade. I glance at Salt and ask quietly,
"How did you know what to say back there?"
He snorts with laughter.
"I’ve watched a ton of mafia shows. It’s a bad idea to talk openly about internal mafia feuds," he says with a crooked smile.
By then, a group of program participants has gathered around us. Everyone is stunned that we’re alive, because they can all see our unit still burning, flames licking at what’s left of it while the betas struggle to put the fire out.
Surrounded by people talking over one another, we make our way back to the main building, where every light is on and the entire staff is up, running back and forth.
Gomez appears almost immediately and adds to the chaos, firing off questions left and right.
One of the guards responds. It turns out the surveillance system didn’t fail completely, because the drones patrolling the sky above the island noticed something incoming.
That was the alarm that went off first. However, none of the observation drones were exactly equipped to shoot targets down, which makes sense.
Shouts start breaking out, people asking exactly what it was, whether it was debris, a falling satellite, or a deliberate attack.
I was raised in the mafia, though, and I know that if I want to take Rocco down, I don’t need the FBI sniffing around.
At one point Gomez addresses me, but I calm him down and explain that we had left the unit for a walk and that we were unharmed. We just saw something crash into our unit, an object that fell from the sky.
I can see the shock in him.
He advises us to go to the small hospital room, the same one we stayed in after we were shot before, and wait there until morning.
So, we go. A nurse looks us over, checking for injuries, but we wave him off pretty quickly.
Once he leaves, we curl up together on the bed, holding each other. We barely talk. Salt seems strangely at peace with the situation, though maybe it only feels strange to me, because inside my head everything is chaos.
I don’t even know if sleep comes at all that night. I lie there in a kind of stunned haze, brooding over Rocco. My thoughts drift back to my childhood. Out of all my brothers, he was the one I felt the least connected to. There was always something empty about him. Hollow.
People used to say he took after our father’s brother, Uncle Tito.
Ruthless. Ice-cold. The kind of man people feared before they even knew why.
Everyone was convinced Rocco would grow into a great capo, but to me, he just seemed like a psychopath.
I never bought into the idea that cruelty makes a good leader.
If anything, I always saw Ennio or Luca in that role instead.
Ah, damn. In theory, I walked away from that life. But I guess that saying is true: You can take a man out of the mafia, but that doesn’t mean the mafia lets go of him.
And clearly… it hasn’t.
Time to stop pretending otherwise and deal with it.
So, I spend all those hours awake, sometimes staring at Salt as he sleeps, sometimes fighting bouts of hyperventilation. The only conclusion I keep coming back to is that I have to be his protector, no matter my principles.
It’s ironic, in a way, that I criticized Salt for his plan to kill Tanner, for not wanting to handle it legally, and now what? Now it’s me who has to step outside the law, because I know that eliminating Rocco through legal means borders on impossible.
Kinda poetic justice.
◆◆◆
But my plans to leave as quickly as I can and deal with my brother have to be put on hold.
In the morning, the police arrive.
They ask very direct questions. It is almost a full interrogation.
I know exactly how to behave around the police, because there are mafia connections there too, and who knows if I’m not talking to someone who answers directly to Rocco.
So I say cautiously that I have no idea who could be behind the attack. The police don’t let it go that easily. One of them asks whether it could have been someone from my family, deliberately emphasizing my last name every fucking time.
"Mister Ferro," he repeats, stressing it again without any real need.
I answer with feigned indifference. "I know as much as you do. If it was someone from my family, then you have more resources than I do to find that out."
"We’re trying to help you, but if you’re not honest with us…"
"I have no idea what my brother did, or rather what he supposedly did. We went out for a walk, and something hit our unit. Maybe it was an accident."
The officers study me with skepticism, but they can’t pull anything more out of me, and eventually they give up.
For now, Salt and I remain housed in the main building, in one of the hospital rooms. We’re advised not to interact with the other program participants, so that, as Gomez delicately puts it, we don’t expose them to danger, until everything is cleared.
Unfortunately, this situation leads to seven more applications to leave the program being submitted the very next day. People aren’t exactly eager to live somewhere that gets bombed by drones. Go figure.
Well, I guess I brought this program some truly terrible luck.
The next day, Salt and I sit by the window, watching a few alphas tossing a ball around on the field near the rec building, going over every possible scenario.
Salt has reluctantly accepted what I have to do, but he’s not at peace with it—at all. I can see it eating at him. He keeps biting his fingers, probably swallowing half his nail polish in the process. He hasn’t done that in a while.
After a long stretch of silence, he finally says, "Eliano, I hate that you’d have to break your own principles.
That’s not who you are. You never wanted to go down this road.
Vigilante, punisher… that’s more my territory.
I never had a problem killing those bastards.
They were rapists who kidnapped and abused omegas.
But your own brother? Maybe you should think about this again. "
"Salt," I say quietly, "the only thing stopping me is the thought of leaving you alone. That’s it. I need to make sure you’re safe first. This mission might take a hell of a long time, and that would mean leaving you alone on the island, exposed not only to alphas like Steph but to more attempts from Rocco. That’s not acceptable.
I’m still trying to figure out what to—"
Suddenly, a beta knocks on the door, and after Salt’s invitation, he walks into our room.
"There’s a call for you, sir. Please come to the conversation room."
Suspecting it might be the police again, I follow him right away.
Salt stays in the room.
We head to the administrative building, and I step into one of the small call booths.
My mind is anything but calm. I’m already running through a list of scenarios, but I come up empty.
The island has a very strict policy, no outsiders allowed, so hiring someone to act as Salt’s protector wouldn’t be easy.
Especially since I’d probably have to arrange it behind Gomez’s back again, through Blue, and I’d really rather avoid asking for another favor.
This dilemma is killing me. I’m stuck here, and someone has to deal with Rocco.
Like I said, I need a miracle.
Ideally, I’d find someone willing to take the job, but who would that even be?
I sit down in front of the screen, not expecting anything unusual.
The beta initiates the call.
The pale square of the incoming notification slowly fades to transparent, and a familiar shape takes form on the screen.
My brother’s sharp face.
"Hi, Eliano."
"Fuck!"
I flinch so hard the chair creaks in protest. Even though I try to control it, I can’t stop my hands from clenching, so I quickly lower them beneath the table, out of his sight.
It takes a near-superhuman effort not to jump up and storm out of the room, not just out of fear, but out of the rage tangled up with it.
Damn, how I hate that bastard.
"I have to commend you, little brother," Rocco says, dragging out the syllables in his usual way. His Sicilian accent is even more noticeable than mine. "You handled yourself with the police like a true mafioso. You know when to keep your mouth shut."
I stay silent. What am I supposed to say to him? Our shared blood means very little to him, so he has no right to call me brother.