Blood vs. Water

Enemies

"I'm sorry." She finally spoke up when they walked into the kitchen. "I really am."

"What are you sorry about?" Aurelio was genuinely confused at her random unwanted apology. He turned around after putting the keys down on the counter, giving her his undivided attention.

"The... like you know..." She gestured toward his pants and then realised where she was looking so she looked at the ceiling instead. "I didn't mean for that to-" she stopped speaking as soon as she heard the deeply appealing laugh of Aurelio Romano. She had never heard this full blown laughter out of his mouth. She found herself embarrassed now more than before and her face heated up.

"Amore mio, sei divertente." (My love, you're entertaining.) She didn't know what he was saying so he continued. "If you had to apologise every time that happened, you'd be out of breath." He so shamelessly admitted to Daphne. Her eyes bulged... (no pun intended).

She swallowed not really knowing how to reply to that sentence. Was he attracted to her?

"I have something to take care of tonight, so I'll be gone throughout." He said and then added. "Or do you still 'not really care'." He mocked her taking out his phone.

"I don't." She gave him some sass. "But what are you going to do?" She tilted her head to she side and sucked her lips against her teeth.

"Turns out the son's little gang was not so little and now they're causing me problems." He walked up to her and grabbed her face with his fingers laced into the hair at the back of her neck. "And I, need to kill them." His thumb dragged out her lips from her teeth and she felt like herself shudder.

"Okay, so just a normal day in your line of work. Got it. Murdering people, how wonderful." She said moving away from him moved on her way to the stairs to read in the library. "Good luck murderer." She yelled back to him, climbing the stairs.

"Daphne." He said and she turned around. "Come here." He told and she rolled her eyes, coming back down to him.

"What?" She asked him crossing her arms.

"Color?" He asked her, picking up his phone from the counter. His arms flexed at her picked it up. She looked down at her shoes.

"Lilac." She said with a toothy grin. "Why?"
He pressed the call button and said, "The gun will be on your bed before I leave. And my number is already on your phone. Use it."

She nodded her head gratefully and walked up the stairs. She felt all giddy about having her own gun. She couldn't focus on her reading much after that and just stared at the pages of ink.

She thought about her reading habit long and hard. Maybe it was good for her, maybe it was bad for her. Maybe it was her escape from reality from a young age, where she could live in another world. If she were to die young, people shouldn't assume she never lived a full life, because in the books she'd read, she'd already lived hundreds of lives. And isn't that just a blessing?

-

That night when Daphne exited the library and walked back to her bedroom, there was a box with a bow tied to it.

She smiled as she pulled the bow and opened it. Inside she saw the carefully packed custom made lilac-coloured gun. She knew lilac wasn't the best of colour for a gun, but she loved the colour now that Aurelio had introduced her to it. She looked at the gun and she prayed that she would never have to use it.