Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

40 | Santo

Horror.

It's not at all merciful. Nearly blinding.

All consuming.

For a moment, I can't see, can't hear. All my senses seem to leave me, a white fire traveling through my consciousness that shocks, blinds, and deafens me all at once. 

When my vision clears, when the world rights itself and I become aware of my surroundings, I find I'm propped against a nearby column. The splinters from the decaying wood dig into my palm but I don't feel it.

I don't fucking feel anything.

Luciano is on his hands and knees, one hand clutching his throat as he draws in deep, rattling breaths. In between wheezes, he's laughing. It's a horrible rasping, gasping sound that makes my gut twist. Like it's so imperative for him to laugh right now even if it tears out his throat. 

He's looking at a spot a few feet to the right of me. At my brother.

Simo, who is on his knees. Simo, whose body curls in on itself as I watch, his chest curving towards the ground in a sick, agonized arch. My brother, who is letting out the most agonized keening sounds, almost like the sounds a wounded animal would make in its last tormented moments of life.

I stumble towards him, convinced he's been shot. He's bleeding out. He's been hurt. 

"Always so dramatic. If I had known this was the welcome I'd receive, I would have returned earlier. Why, hello, Santo," my father turns to me, eyes glittering conspiratorially. "I'm not quite sure what's wrong with your brother."

My mouth is open but I'm not saying anything. I'm not even sure I'm breathing. I stumble one step closer to Simo, kneeling next to him. I need to make sure he's not dying. He couldn't have been shot, could he? I wasn't aware of my surroundings for a brief few seconds—or maybe it was minutes. Someone could have shot him.

Fuck.

My father is alive. He is alive and he is right here and standing in front of us without even a scar to show for the bullets that I know, I fucking know ended his life because I was there. I was bathed in his blood and I was there.

There is no blood pooling around my brother, no injury he seems to have sustained. He's not clutching at any part of him like he's in physical pain. He's just broken somehow.

The sounds he's making are heart-wrenching. They pierce right through me. I've not seen my brother so much as laugh or smile something that's real, much less exhibit this level of emotion. Not since he saved my life. Not since that night, fucking years ago.

"What's wrong with him? What's going on? Is that—is that our..." Tommaso is beside me, leaning over our older brother. He's looking at me with terrified eyes, like a little boy begging for assurance that the shadow on his wall in the dead of night isn't a monster.

"Our father," I say breathlessly, or at least I think I do. It feels like I'm not in control of my body. The monster is real, and he's here.

Tommaso pales, looking like he's going to be sick.

"Will someone get him to pull it together? I was hoping for a family reunion, and I can't quite have that until my oldest son picks himself up from the floor."

Tommaso puts a hand on Simo's back, and we both stumble back as his body flinches violently at the touch. My brother has not preferred to be touched since I can remember—he likes cleanliness, being in control, and doesn't tolerate the touch of others simply for the way it doesn't mesh with the order he creates around him—but this, this is something else.