“How much longer’s right, Tavi,” I say in a low voice. Still, it seems all eyes in the room swing our way. I told Rosa I’d prove myself to the brotherhood, and the smart thing to do would probably be to keep my head down and do exactly what the boss tells me. But I can't help the question now. How much longer do we sit here waiting? How much longer to be holed up like sitting ducks waiting for the next blow?
“What else would you have me do, Santo?” Tavi asks.
“Aggressively seek out who did this to us.” I look around the room. Mama and Nonna and Natalia watch me from the doorway to the courtyard. “This is a conversation for a much more private audience, brother."
“Santo’s right, Tavi,” Rosa says. “This isn’t how Romeo would want us to handle things, is it? We haven’t gleaned the respect of everyone in the North like this.”
Tavi nods. The measure of a good leader isn’t just his fearlessness, but his willingness to listen to those he leads. His humility.
“This is a conversation for a more private audience. Santo’s right about that, too. Tomorrow, we move. Tomorrow, we talk details. I don't wanna lay around and wait any longer than you do. If anyone is going to threaten our family, I'd rather come out with fists. Tonight, I want everyone to be scrupulously careful, you get me?”
We all nod and head to our assigned stations. Rosa gets Natalia in bed, then heads to her own bed. I know she’s waiting for me. I primed her to be waiting for me.
I scroll through footage after footage, looking for more clues. Anything that will tell us who’s doing this and why. I think of Leo and the Regazzas. Tomorrow I’ll ask Tavi what questions Elise has asked, how far she’s gotten.
But tonight might be all that we have. Tonight might be the only time I’m with Rosa again. Tomorrow, we could be ripped apart and sent in different directions.
Tonight might be all we have.
Tonight, I’ll make Rosa mine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rosa
I’m lying on the bed on my back, thinking over the night’s events. The hot-as-fuck session I had with him right before we went downstairs, the way he lit my nerves on fire, set me off like fireworks, then put me on a low simmer for hours. A low simmer, left unattended, will grow to a boil.
Yeah, that’s about where I am right now.
I figure he’s preoccupied, but it still doesn’t feel right taking the tools he’s used on me off without asking him first. It feels deeply intimate, and there’s something about them that makes me incapable of defying him, as if he holds the key to my submission in the palm of his hand. And maybe he does.
I feel like there’s something in the air, as if something terrible’s about to happen. I can see it in Santo’s eyes, too. He knows as well as I do that threats like this culminate in violence or the like, but if we don’t know where the threat is coming from or why, it’s hard to know how to defend ourselves.
I hear him pacing in the other room and gingerly bring my fingers to my breasts. The little suction cups have held tight, my breasts tingling. I trace the edge of one. Just the edge.
“Did I give you permission to touch yourself?” Santo’s low rumble of a voice comes from the doorway. I look over at him and don’t stop circling my breast. I watch him with my head tipped to the side. He’s kept his voice low so he doesn’t wake Natalia, but her door’s shut tight and I know she won’t hear.
I can tell he needs to control me tonight. I can tell he needs to dominate.
Like a vampire feasting on blood, Santo craves my submission to fuel him. It feels like a sort of honor to serve that need for him. For Santo, I’d bare my neck.
I swallow and squirm, still focusing on him.
“Kinda dying over here, baby,” I whisper, parting my legs. My butt tingles, my breasts tingle, my belly swirls with need. I came on his tongue before the movie but that seems like a long, long time ago.
“Can’t have that,” he says in a whisper. He crosses the room and comes to me, sits on the edge of the bed and eyes me. “Let’s get these pajamas out of the way.” With a tug and whoosh, he quickly divests me of my clothes. They fall into a tumbled heap on the floor.
Yep, that’s why he wanted the baggy ones.
There’s something in his eyes that worries me. He looks… sad. As if he knows that tonight will be our last night together. As if he knows something I don’t. I watch as he eyes my body.