Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

17 | Santo

"Hey. Hey. Psst."

I swat Tommaso away, my phone glued to my ear. Rage I've been trying to keep from consuming me broils in a constant state of upheaval in my gut. "Well, try harder. This is what I pay you to do. This man is a sexual predator. Likely with a long history of involvement in the creation and distribution of child pornography. Fucking find him and get me his address."

My associate starts spluttering on the other end, but I hang up disgustedly. Tommaso is looking at me owlishly.

"Who are we talking about? Who do we need to go kill?"

I roll my eyes. "There's no we. And I can't kill him yet, I don't have his location. Now what's your problem and why are you harassing me?"

Tommaso's face becomes serious, as if he's just remembered why he was being a nuisance for the last fifteen minutes.

"Well, I was in the library," he begins, and I frown. "It was a one-time fucking thing. Nina was in there and I needed to ask her something."

"What the hell did you need to ask her?"

He smirks. "If she wants to fuck. Anyway—I'm kidding! Fuck off!" He backs up, hands held in front of him as I round the counter with the intention of throttling the fucker.

"If you're kidding, what were you asking her?"

"That's not the point," Tommaso mutters, looking away. My eyes could be deceiving me, or my brother could be almost blushing right now.

"What the fuck?" New emotion burns my chest, filling me with an itching heat. There's no way he would have... no. It's not like him. My brother hasn't ever shown signs of actually liking a girl.

He watches me for a few seconds and his eyes widen. "Oh, no—Jesus, dude. I was in there asking her if she could make cinnamon rolls again. I really liked those fucking things," he mutters, clearing his throat. "But the point of what I wanted to talk to you about is this."

He holds up a book, tattered and creased with age and use.

My heart scrapes to a halt in my chest.

"Where did you get that?"

He frowns at my icy tone. "Um, Nina was reading it. I saw there was all this writing in it, and then I realized... I recognize the handwriting. Is this... was it his? Was it our fa—"

I yank the book from him, crumpling the brittle pages but not giving a fuck. He shouldn't be touching that, much less reading it.

"Hey! What the fuck?" he snaps, but I'm already striding from the room. I bypass the library and head straight up to my room. After a few moments of thought, I slip the book under my bed, knowing nobody will be looking under there.

I stand there for a moment, then kneel and grab it again. For some reason, I decide to crack it open to a random page. My eyes immediately snag on a quote underlined a hundred times over.

It's a kind of dizzying comfort to contemplate the open abyss when, at the bottom of that abyss, lies nothingness.

Fuck.

I snap it shut, shoving it back where it belongs. As far away from me as possible. But it's too late and the memories are already resurfacing.

The one thing my father left me is this book. A tattered thing, worn by countless reads and marked up with his thoughts. Although, I suppose that's a lie because he didn't leave it to me knowingly. When he died, I took it. My mother never knew, and she went fucking insane looking for that thing. I never told her. It was—is—the only thing that tells me about the man he was.