It was not tenderness, not where we came from.It was Rasputin standing in a doorway so I would not have to see beyond it.My mother smoothing my hair with shaking hands.
It was swallowing your own fear to spare someone smaller than you.
Years later, men would call that weakness.
But men like my father were wrong about most things that mattered.
3
Tone
The smell of blood refused to be ignored.
No matter how clean the room was—no matter how much alcohol and surgical soap tried to scrub the night away—it always found a way to linger.Copper-thick.Warm.Persistent.
Tonight, it clung to the walls like it belonged there.
The small medical room, buried deep within the estate, had seen its share of damage.But this… this felt heavier.Like the kind of mess that didn’t wash out, no matter how hard you tried.
My cousin Gianni sat on the examination table with the patience of a man who had learned long ago that complaining did absolutely nothing to improve his situation.
Which was fortunate.Because I was in no mood for it tonight.
“Hold still,” I said.
“Iamholding still.”
“You twitched.”
“I breathed,” he corrected.
“That counts.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose and gritted his teeth as the heat of antiseptic penetrated his skin.
The cut across his thigh was ugly.Not catastrophic—if it had been, he wouldn’t be sitting here making sarcastic comments—but deep enough that ignoring it would have been a very poor decision.
I finished irrigating the wound and reached for the sutures.
“Remind me again,” I said calmly, threading the needle, “why exactly you thought chasing three armed men down a narrow stairwell was a good idea.”
“They insulted my suit.”
“Ah.”
I glanced up.
“That does justify a war.”
Gianni smirked faintly.
“Thank you for your understanding.”
I pushed the needle through the skin.
He didn’t flinch.
Most of the men around here were good about pain.Not because they were particularly brave—though some of them were—but because they understood that reacting dramatically in front of the others would never be forgotten.
