Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

35 | Nina

"How did you spend your Christmases growing up?"

We lie almost nose to nose as the sun begins to rise, but we don't pay attention to that, to the infiltrating day or what it means. Because today is the day that Santo leaves.

Instead, we try and talk about what we'd talk about if we were normal. If only all we were thinking about right now was the holiday, what we were going to be eating, what presents we had bought for others. 

But even our normal isn't that normal. 

"We never did much." His eyes glaze over as he's transported back to his childhood. "Our parents were too insane to ever start any traditions, and by the time it was just me and my brothers, we weren't really able to. It's always been just another day. It was once we met Samuel and he started bringing Leah around that we started celebrating those things. But it's not really celebrating. It's just..." he trails off, becoming distracted pushing a tendril of hair from my forehead.

"Being together?" I smile softly.

"Yeah," he says on an exhale. He suddenly flips to his back, sighing up to the ceiling. I frown, but refrain from asking what's wrong immediately. It looks like he's thinking hard about something, struggling with whether to speak or not. 

"I want to tell you what happened to my parents."

The words sit between us, hanging, waiting to be picked up by him or left to fall and shatter on the ground. I nod, not wanting to disrupt him, so I silently let him gather his thoughts.

After a few moments, he turns to look at me. "Well don't stay all the way over there," he grumbles. 

"Oh, right," I breathe, quickly fitting myself up against him as chuckles shake his chest. He traces ticklish circles on my shoulder, and they seem to calm him. 

Minutes must pass before he opens his mouth. "My father committed suicide. My mother was killed six years later." 

A chill spreads through me, and I peer up at his face, blanketed in an expression that betrays nothing. No pain, grief, or discomfort.

"My father, Antonio Romano, was good at what he did, which was run a tight business. When his business went to shit, he didn't have anything else to live for. And he left my mother, a child herself, with four young sons. She couldn't handle it. She had these episodes. She was mentally ill and she never got any help for all the shit that was wrong with her. She'd almost kill my brothers sometimes, but that was accidental. I was the only one she actually wanted to kill."

My heart gives a painful clench, and I know that what he tells me next is the thing he's kept close to his chest so I don't have to see it.

"When she gave birth to me, that last sane part of her broke. I was just... I don't know. I don't think I was a particularly difficult child. There was just something off with me." His voice becomes bleak, and I feel a tsunami of anger towards a woman I know hardly anything about. "One night when I was twelve, she almost succeeded. She had a knife to my chest." My hand goes without thought to trace the scar on his chest, and he shivers. "She would've killed me if Simo didn't kill her then."

We remain silent together as I process his pain, what it means, how it's torn him open. So much more makes sense now, and I press myself tighter into him, absorbing the sigh he releases into my hair. 

"Massimo's scar..."

"He gave it to himself. He would always tell me that when she hurt me, she hurt him. I guess he meant it literally."

I swallow drily, understanding more about the Capo now too. How is it possible, that they could grow up in so much turmoil?

"What happened after they were both gone?"