Page 72 of Fastest Kill

Physical affection hadn't been a language their mother spoke. It had been rationed out for performance—a hand on a shoulder in public, a kiss on the cheek for the room—and it had never been for the private moments that might actually have mattered. It was still a language they were all trying to learn.

"You carried this alone," Rodrigo said softly. "Everything in that journal. Everything you felt about it, and everything you kept to yourself about what you overheard that night, because you didn't know how to put it into words without being misunderstood. That ends now. We're family, which means you don't have to hide who you are from us. Not from me, and not from Leo. Never again."

Dario looked at his brother's face and didn't say anything for a moment. The emotion building in his chest was taking up too much room for words.

"Fuck Gabriella and everything she put us through," Rodrigo said with absolute conviction. "We do what makes us happy now. Even if that is having sex with the deadliest assassin in the world."

Dario made a sound that was not his finest moment. "Don't start."

"I knew she liked you since Leo's wedding because of the seat she saved for you, but she really likes you if she let you stay with her parents. That wasn't a casual gesture, Dario."

Dario shifted his weight on the balls of his feet. "I know."

"So?" Rodrigo demanded. "What are you going to do about it? Or are you still fooling yourself into believing this is just a casual thing?"

Dario opened his mouth. Closed it. He thought about Frederica coming into his room last night, climbing onto his bed, picking the journal off the nightstand, and putting it on the floor because she could see he needed it out of his eyeline. Nobody had ever done something that small for him that meant so much. Nobody had ever read him that well and done something about it without making it into some kind of debt.

"You said that you didn't know how to keep Giana. I don't know how to keep Frederica," he said, trying to verbalize all the churning things he felt when it came to her. "She's not someone you keep, exactly. She doesn't sit still. She doesn't want to be managed or held down."

Rodrigo stared at him. "Do you want to?"

"Do I want to what?"

"Keep her."

Dario thought about Istanbul, and the bar, and the emptiness of going through a routine he had memorized so long ago he couldn't remember learning it. He thought about a jail cell in Crete and arriving to find a look on her face that she immediately tried to suppress. He thought about every round of every fight they had picked with each other and enjoyed, and the way she looked at him sometimes with all the passion burning inside of her, and decided to direct it at him with a force that shook him to his core.

"Yeah," Dario admitted softly. "For the first time in my life, I actually want to keep someone. I… I love her."

Something moved across Rodrigo's face that was a little surprised, but he hid it quickly and grinned.

"She's going to be difficult," he commented.

Dario put a hand over his face. "Oh, god, don't I know it."

"Genuinely dangerous. Stubborn to a degree that I find alarming. She'll fight you on everything that matters to her and a great many things that don't."

"I know," Dario said again.

"You love that about her."

He didn't answer because he didn't need to. Rodrigo's laugh was full of brotherly delight at his inner torment.

"It makes sense that you want her. You have never met trouble that you didn't walk toward," Rodrigo pointed out.

"What can I say? It's a gift." Dario glanced at the bedside table, where San Expedito stood, chipped base and all, the small writing on his flag reading HODIE.

"Good thing I've always had a saint to get me out of trouble again," he pointed out and laughed softly.

Rodrigo followed his gaze to the statue, and his smile softened. He picked the journal off the bed, tucked it carefully under his arm, and moved toward the door.

"Come downstairs. Kon is determined to check Frederica for magic, and she'll cooperate better if you're in the room."

"I doubt that, but I'm hungry, and I just know it's going to be a long ass day." Dario took one last look at his saint, prayed that they would find their way out of trouble soon, and followed his brother.

31

Frederica loved that the library ceiling had been painted with stars. The astrological symbols were rendered in dark blue and silver, delicate and intricate, the kind of work that took a steady hand, and the belief that the arrangement of the heavens above mattered enough to preserve it on a ceiling.