Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

41 | Nina

Samuel is yelling.

I'm jerked out of a light sleep, and I'm on my feet so fast that my vision swims with black spots and I stumble, blindly righting myself before sprinting downstairs. My hip jams into the railing as I round the corner, coming to a screeching halt at the front door. 

Samuel, Leah, and Nico are crowded in the space, all staring at the two figures standing raggedly before them.

Tommaso and Massimo are covered, nearly from head to toe, in what appears to be soot. They look half dead, like they can barely stand. My heart seems to fizzle and stop altogether as I peer around them, searching.

I take in the absence of Santo.

And I crumple to the ground, because I know.

Samuel is throwing out questions that remain unanswered, and through the blur of my tears I see Tommaso slide to the floor with a groan, and he's starting to say something but I'm blocking it out because I don't want to hear the words. I don't want to hear that he's gone. 

There's a hand on my back, there's someone speaking to me, but I can't hear them. All I hear is the deafening grief of the absence of him.

+

I've been staring at the wall for at least an hour.

Leah made me a mug of tea, but it's sitting untouched on the floor. I pull my knees closer to my chest, feeling the notches of my spine digging into the wall behind me. I'm anchored here, in the panic room of all places. It's the only room that isn't filled with memories of him, the only place I don't dissolve into a mess of panic and grief, the latter of which feels wrong without knowing if he's even dead yet. 

Dead.

"He's alive. Our father is alive."

"The gas came out of nowhere. I-I don't know how, or why... we checked. We knew the perimeters were clear, we knew there was nobody else... Those women. Our men. We led them all to their deaths."

"He took Santo. And he saved us. He saved us. He said he needs to finish what he started. Somebody needs to tell me right fucking now what that means. What's going on—Simo? Why is he doing this why is he alive what is going on SOMEONE TELL ME SIMO PLEASE TELL—"

"He hasn't said a word. Not since he saw him. There's something wrong with him. Something is wrong."

Snippets of Tommaso's explanation—disjointed and turbulent but all we have—bounce around the empty space in my brain as I sit here in the dead silence. He was inconsolable, while Massimo sat there, locked in his own mind. Which means, as far as figuring out what the hell to do now, we're screwed. He's the only one who knows remotely anything about their father. 

Antonio Romano. A man whose priorities never extended beyond his business. An absent father and husband whose family meant nothing to him.

A man who is alive.

Who has taken Santo with him to an unknown location.

Unknown, that is, until Massimo got a text from an unknown number that we can safely assume is his father. A picture of Santo, chained up in a basement, blood already streaking his bare torso, his head dropped to his chest, unconscious.

As soon as I saw the picture, pushed back the debilitating terror that came from seeing him subdued like that, I knew where he was. Luciano thinks me so dim that he never considered I'd recognize those concrete walls. And maybe it's safe to assume—why would I be familiar with the basement of my childhood home that I haven't lived in since age five?