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Neo stood in the doorway, gun raised. “You weren’t ever going to do it.”
Vitari aimed down his gun’s sights at Neo’s face and tugged the trigger. The gun kicked, a neat hole opened up in Neo’s cheek, and his whole body jerked, as though tugged on strings. Neo collapsed and lay twitching on the floor.
Vitari stole a breath, trying to make his heart and lungs work again. His mouth tasted coppery, like blood. Not my blood. His papa lay on the floor, crumpled like a frail old man. Dead.
“Vitari…” Francis stumbled into the doorway, still in his scruffy Panama clothes, his hair wild and eyes wilder. He reached for the doorframe and looked down at Neo, then over at Giancarlo. “Oh no.”
Oh no.
Vitari tried to hold the pieces of himself together, he really did, but the more he clutched at the stoic version of himself—L’ Angelo della Morte—the more it turned to dust between his fingers. He was falling, coming apart at the seams. A sound fell out of him, a strange, keening moan, and then he was back in the chair, fighting to keep all the tiny pieces of himself in one place before they shattered forever.
“Francis?” he whispered, prayed, dreamed.
“I’m here.”
And he was. He collected Vitari, hauled him into his arms, and it was there where Vitari finally stopped trying to hold himself together. He sobbed and clutched at Francis, needing to know he was real, and here, and solid, and everything. He smelled of earth, sweat, and Francis, and Vitari crushed him close, clinging to him, desperate and destroyed from the inside out.
“I’ve got you,” Francis whispered.
He sobbed so hard it hurt, as though each sob scooped out another piece of him. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t stop. All the hate and fear and countless feelings flooded out of him. His papa was dead, he’d killed the man who’d murdered him, and Francis was here.
His papa had brought his love home.
“I’m here, amore mio,” Francis said, hugging him close. “I’m here, I’ve got you. We’re together.” He said the words over and over, in different ways, but also the same, and slowly, carefully, Vitari picked up the broken bits of himself and put them back where they belonged, so he could breathe, and think, and function.
Francis eased back. His warm hands cupped Vitari’s face, and his big hazel eyes were bright and glassy and all Vitari wanted to see because everything around him was too much. A dribble of red blood stood out starkly on Francis’s pale neck. Someone had hurt him.
Vitari almost lost it again.
“Breathe.” Francis bumped their foreheads together.
Breathe. Yes. Breathe and live. And survive. Like always. Like he’d been doing since he’d been trapped in Hell as a boy. Had he ever escaped? Was he still there?
“All right?” Francis asked.
Vitari blinked, shedding the last of his tears, and nodded. He licked his lips, tasting salt now, not blood. Sitting back, he picked up the whiskey and poured another glass. “That one’s for you,” he croaked, flicking his finger at the glass he’d poured for Francis before the world had shifted on its axis.
“Oh.”
“You’re going to need it.”
Francis picked up the glass and gulped it back in one. He coughed, wheezed, and smiled, and Vitari’s heart cracked wide open for him. His love. Here. Somehow.
Francis’s smile faded, though, when he looked across the room and saw the two dead men.
This was… going to change everything.
“Uhm… should we run?” Francis asked.
He could see why he’d ask it. They’d always run before. But there was nowhere left to run to, no sanctuary where the Battaglia wouldn’t find them.
“No.” There was no running from this.
“All right,” Francis said, not missing a beat.
And that was why Vitari loved him, among many, many reasons. Father Francis Scott would stand by him forever, no matter what.
Vitari stood, breathed out, and crossed the floor. He dug Giancarlo’s phone from his pocket and used his thumb to unlock it, mentally disassociating himself from the horror of manhandling his dead father. “But we’re going to need help.”
