Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

14 | Santo

One month, one week, and two days.

One month, one week, and two days of the little distraction that likes to roam our house with big, unassuming eyes and wild hair.

I growl, slamming the punching bag in front of me. One month, one week, and two days of me not being on my fucking game.

For the first time, the sixth of the month came and went without much of a change to my sanity. Usually, I'm raring to go for the Serpentine meetings, and the days that follow are a peaceful enough respite from my usual reality. The sixth of every month marks a purging of some of my darkest tendencies, the only time I can truly indulge without holding myself back. The numbness that follows—while volatile and crushing in its own way—is a welcome relief.

When there's no escaping your reality, you learn to blend in.

But not this month. No, this month, I returned home with my head all wrapped up in eyes that are like honey dipped in sunlight, smooth legs that curve gently beneath leggings she wears on our morning runs, and soft breaths that seem to fill the room when she's sleeping and we're sharing a room.

Upon our return from Seattle, I've been having to ask—well, demand—more targets from Simo and it's really posing a problem. I have a lot more steam I need to blow off, whether from Simo pissing me off or Nina simply existing. Simo is not running out of targets—there's an endless amount of pain and suffering in the world, an endless number of people who cause it—but my brother does seem to be questioning my sanity.

Not out loud. He's not good at the verbal. What he's good at is keeping all his thoughts somewhere deep in his subconscious, somewhere I'm not sure even he can access, but letting them slip out through idiosyncrasies I've become accustomed to over time. A twitch of his lips, a hardening of the eyes. A tenseness to his jaw, or a carefully masked rebuke.

Personally, I have other worries. I'm going to run out of ways to administer torture, eventually.

I've also had to get my clothes dry cleaned an inordinate number of times.

My fist stings as I deliver a particularly hard punch. Tommaso thinks I'm training for World War Three, and I might as well fucking be. Ever since that night in Seattle, where I got drunker than I've been in a while and acted like a weak fool in front of her, it's like a door within me has been kicked wide open.

I can't make sense of the desires boiling just beneath the surface of my skin when it comes to Nina. I thought they would be gone after I'd tortured her some more. That was what I did. What I was good at. She'd been all but dropped on my doorstep—or left in my getaway car, same difference—and I had been ready to deal with her the same way I deal with everyone else. But now that Simo had decided against that, I was frustratingly restricted from doing the one thing I knew would make me feel better.

But would it?

My knuckle busts open, blood smearing along the bag, but I ignore it. They're all busted at this point, and it doesn't fucking matter. My brothers think I'm insane—more than usual—and it all comes back to the frustrating existence of one fucking girl. Why couldn't she just have been someone whose untimely demise would have benefitted us?

Even just a little bit. That would've been fine.

And Jesus, I don't even have my morning runs to myself anymore. Maybe I am finally going insane—because I crave time away from her but then I drag her along with me on any little errand. I bring her to family meals like she's one of us.

I have a filing cabinet in my head, and there are only three sections: people I need to kill, people I work with, and my family. Nina doesn't fit into any of those. Safe to say I've never not known what to do.