AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ethan
After a lot of arguing, we parked the piece-of-junk car in front of the original owner’s house and left the keys on his doormat. As if he’s going to want it back smelling faintly of cum with no roof and an empty petrol tank.
My head hurts and every part of my face feels dried out, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, but I tell myself it’s just from driving with the top down. I want to buy a cold bottle of water on the fifteen-minute walk back to the hotel, but all the groceries and cafes we pass are shut. Victor says it’s forriposo, the Italian version of asiesta, but it gives me the eerie feeling that the city is some kind of set that closed down when we left and hasn’t yet realized we’ve come back.
At the top of a steep hill, we pause. There’s a chest-high wall, and Victor climbs on top of it, straddles it while I stand on my toes and prop myself up with my arms.
Among the dense clusters of buildings, I can see shocks of green and orange and purple where people keep their small gardens—a tree, a pot of flowers, an umbrella, the pieces of a tranquil, ordinary life. Behind me, cars flick past down the tight street, inches from clipping my shoulder.
“So,” I begin, less because I have something to say than because I wish I knew what to say.
The heels of his sneakers bounce against the wall as he swings his legs, knocking loose bits of crumbling plaster. “Don’t talk any more.”
Then he jumps down and we keep walking in silence. It’s warm without the countryside breeze, and a light sheen of sweat coats the back of his neck.
Jogging to catch up, I reach out and touch his wrist where his hoodie sleeve ends, the soft spot where his pulse sits. I can feel him tense as I lace my fingers through his.
“You’re pathetic,” he murmurs, not looking at me. “We agreed to stop this once we got back to Naples and you can’t even last ten minutes.” His grip tightens and he runs his thumb over my knuckles, back and forth, tracing each one.
“I’d consider this more Naples-adjacent. All the locals agree the city line starts somewhere around the Regale Hotel.”
He snorts a laugh in spite of himself, shaking his head.
“Are you scared?” I ask, suddenly. “About coming back?”
“No.” His grip shifts uneasily in mine.
“Because I told you I won’t let anything happen?”
He chuckles drily. “You say fucking stupid things. No, you know me.” He reaches out his free hand and trails his fingertips along the yellow, graffitied concrete. “I don’t give a shit about anything.”
“Cockyanda liar. Where have you been all my life?”
“In your nightmares,” he deadpans, and we both crack up.
No one meets us when we arrive at the Regale Naples, and that’s when things start to fall apart.
I gave Gray our arrival time, but the lobby is empty except for a retired American couple in matching tropical button-downs. I’m about to point them out to Victor, but he crowds my elbow, tension rolling off his body in waves. Bringing him back here feels like a betrayal, but I don’t know what the hell else I was supposed to do with him.
“Mi scusi…” A woman in the hotel uniform taps my arm. “I’ve been asked to direct you to Werner Lang’s room upon your arrival, on the third floor.”
The elevator ride is silent except for the rattle of the cage and squeak of the cables. Victor opens the front-facing camera on his phone and squints at it, fidgeting with his hair. I start to feel that familiar pinch and grind of anxiety in the back of my head, the suffocating sense of helplessness.
When we knock on the end suite on the third floor, a muffled voice says, “Come in.” I glance at Victor, but he doesn’t look at me.
I’m braced to get glared at, yelled at, asked for explanations. But no one even looks up when we enter. The suite has been rearranged into a kind of office-slash-command-center for Werner’s business dealings. Heavy velvet curtains black out the windows, leaving the air dim and cool, with a dry smell like paper and mothballs. Gray and Werner are fixated on a small laptop on Werner’s desk.
The atmosphere crackles ominously like the second before a lightning strike as Gray straightens up and examines us. “Have a seat, gentlemen.”
Instead of sitting next to me, Victor drags his chair to the opposite end of the desk before slouching into the plastic seat. When I shift positions, I can still feel his dried spit, traces of cum on my chest. He won’t look at me.
“We have a situation.” Gray shuts the laptop, and the stress in the lines of his face makes my chest go cold. Werner’s stormy, slate eyes watch me as Gray picks up a sheaf of papers and tosses them into my lap. I hear a rustle as Victor stands and the soft shift of his breathing when he comes to look over my shoulder.
The top page appears to be a printout of some kind of web forum, the kind that’s full of anonymous users who make the news for doxing people or distributing illegal porn.
It isn’t until I hear a faint, strained moan in Victor’s throat that I read the title of the forum thread, timestamped this morning.
Victor Lang never used steroids — I have proof
