Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

10 | Nina

For the first few days after that odd breakfast, I hide. I'm paranoid that if Santo or Massimo see me, they'll change their mind about not hurting me. I try to reassure myself about the situation, but it's impossible. I have no reason to trust any of them.

I just have to try.

So, one morning, I decide to go on my first run with Santo. At the end of the day, I'm nothing if not stubborn, and I do miss pissing him off. I can tell he's not expecting me to show up by the blazing look he rakes over my body as I approach. But I'm adamant on jumping on any chance to get out and off the property, so I lift my chin in defiance. After a few seconds, something passes over his face, and he jerks his head towards the door.

We jog through the city, and his looming presence beside me brings us looks from strangers—ranging from intrigued, to scared, to jealous.

I know that Santo slows his pace for me and normally I would challenge that, but I can't bring myself to care. It's the least he can do after kidnapping me. Also, I'm not stupid and I know I could never keep up with the pace he probably sets for himself when I'm not here.

Despite the daunting presence beside me, the run gives me time to think, and I return to the mansion with my head clearer than it's been since I arrived here.

The next couple weeks pass quickly. Before I know it, it's been a month since I was kidnapped by Santo, one month since everything as I knew it was uprooted by the man who looks like he has the devil in his eyes, hair, and the ink that trails all over his body.

My days consist of runs in the morning with Santo, afternoons in the library, and evenings often watching the Romanos eat and bicker and act like a normal family.

Santo never speaks to me. Not once, not even when it's just the two of us running through the city. I try to make conversation a couple times—try to even play on some of those pet peeves of his I discovered at the cabin—but he's unresponsive to everything.

It's like I don't exist to him.

On top of that, eating my meals with the Romanos—watching them laugh, get on each other's nerves, do normal things like watch wrestling matches and joke around—has made my emotions a whole new level of messy.

I'm torn between being scared for my safety and acknowledging that niggling feeling in my chest every time I see them acting like a family. The fact that they act like that around me feels unusual. I don't feel like I'm a part of it—nobody really talks to me or includes me in their conversations—but I'm still there. And to me, someone who's never seen a family act like an actual family, it holds more weight than they probably realize.

Carlo has spent his entire life trying to be Luciano. Yet Luciano has never shown him an ounce of warmth, approval, or even familiarity. The emotion that passes between them is not love or respect or pride—it's the unstoppable drive to make Carlo just like his father.

Living with Aunt Edna and Uncle Andrea, I was never shown any familial affection either. I was sent to school and brought back to the house, much like a prisoner. I think between the two of them, my aunt and uncle spoke a dozen words to me. It was like I was never there.

Until my uncle decided I was.

I don't think Aunt Edna ever knew what he did, but I don't think she would have cared anyway. It happened first when I was eight, and once again when I was eleven. He never said one word, not during or afterwards. What I remember about those nights goes far beyond the pain of him inside me—I remember staring at his grubby fingernails, bitten nearly down to the quick, the whole time. They were right by my head as he braced his hands on the nightstand. I remember his jeans, lying in a crumpled heap in the corner of the room. He left them there, and I didn't touch them for weeks. Almost like I was afraid if I did, he'd somehow taint me more.