Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

54 | Nina

Santo's footsteps echo angrily through the house, but they barely register through the ringing in my ears. When I blink, black spots pepper my vision. Exhaustion threatens to drop my body to the floor in a useless heap. 

I can't imagine Santo is much different. I actually have no idea how he's standing; he looks like one big open wound. He slipped into unconsciousness in my arms for the latter half of the rocky ride home, but awoke with a vengeance when we landed. He seems to be riding out the residual effects of the drugs in his system.

The both of us trail blood as I follow his irate figure into the living room. My tears have become a silent accessory at this point. There's no logical way to process a thing like this, I know that, but this isn't what I could have expected. 

"Santo, wait—"

"Seriously?" he grunts angrily, screeching to a sudden halt.

"What?"

He moves quickly—or as quickly as his body allows—bracing himself with a shaking arm against the couch as he bends down. When he stands, he's holding Nico's Xbox controller. 

"I always fucking told him to put this thing where it belongs, in the goddamn cabinet. It's not that hard."

He sways dangerously and my concern peaks. "Santo, Samuel needs to look at our injur—"

"He's had to get a new one at least five times. Five. He leaves it on the floor, and someone steps on it. Leaves it on the fucking couch, and it's sat on. Un-fucking-believable."

I collapse shakily into an armchair, rubbing my eyes. "It's okay. We just got home. Just put it back later—"

"And what?" he snaps, stumbling to the cabinet and ripping it open. "Have someone fucking step on it again? That's the last thing any of us needs right now, to hurt our feet on this fucking thing."

He throws the controller into the cabinet, and it clatters loudly, some part of it clearly breaking. The batteries roll out onto the floor. Santo smacks his hand angrily into the door, stooping to pick them up. About halfway there, his body gives up on him, and he ends up sitting sprawled against the cabinet as he fumbles with the broken controller, trying to fit the batteries back in. His hands shake so hard that they keep falling and rolling away again. 

He drops the whole thing, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. "Fuck."

With all the effort left in me, I manage to make it to his side without passing out. I get there right as a heavy, strangled sob seeps between the cracks of his fingers. Like he senses I'm there, he leans towards me, and I wrap myself around him as best as possible. It's careful and fumbling, both of our bodies . But he cries like someone who has never known how to before, each heaving sob triggering one of my own. 

Nothing makes sense right now, but especially the fact that we all made it back to this house and Nico didn't.

The image of Massimo pulling out his phone on the front lawn and calling someone to deal with his body keeps replaying in my head. Tommaso stumbling around the side of the house to dry heave into a bush before collapsing into the dirt. Leah running to him, and Samuel just standing there in the middle of the yard with both hands on his head and tears running silently down his face. 

Yes, there's nothing about this that makes sense, perhaps because death itself goes against everything we know how to understand. We can only try to hold each other through the worst of it. 

+

The following weeks become one long, hazy day. 

I wake up early most mornings, but even if I manage to slip out of the sheets before dawn, the bed is always already empty.