“He’s… he’s going to clean our DNA out of here?” I asked, putting the pieces together.
“That, yeah,” Salvatore said, nodding.
“And make your little murder go away,” Silvano said.
“It was fucking self-defense, could you shut the fuck up if you can’t be halfway fucking decent right now?” Salvatore grumbled, losing patience by the second.
“Was he not murdered? Self-defense or not, there’s a bunch of fucking knife wounds in the bastard’s chest and throat. Or did he run into the knife himself? Five or so times?” Silvano asked, moving around the kitchen, making his way toward me.
“We’re just going to have to fucking endure him for a half an hour,” Salvatore said, voice low, so he didn’t overhear us.
“It’s fine. I just… I just want this part over with, so I can go check on Wren,” I said.
“Sil, can we handle Whitney first?” Salvatore asked, and I could tell it was taking actual effort to keep his tone that casual. “Then we can get out of your hair so you can focus.”
“Yeah, working on it,” Salvatore said, reaching into the sink to yank out the drain catch, and slipping his own one in instead. “Alright. Over here. Scrub the fuck out of your hands. Under your nails too. With this,” he said, dropping a little scrubber into the sink. “Then you’re going to strip out of those clothes and shoes. Right here,” he added, pointing to where I was standing. Then wash again with this,” he said, pushing a small bottle of some ominous-looking murky white liquid toward the sink.
“Right here?” I asked, looking over at Salvatore.
“Don’t worry. You’re not my type,” Silvano said with his back to me, then turning to drop the bloody knife into the sink, making me jerk back.
“Why are you washing that? Shouldn’t you just… get rid of it?”
“And leave the knife block missing a knife? Think that won’t look suspicious as fuck and have the cops sniffing around?” he asked, and I had to agree that made sense, even as my stomach twisted as I watched my bloody hands drip water and soap onto the blade beneath. “Fucking knife blocks. People are out of their fucking minds…”
“Why?” I asked, looking for any way to distract myself, even engaging with the curmudgeonly Silvano Costa.
“‘Cause of exactly what happened here,” he said, waving around. “Never a good idea to leave weapons out in the open for anyone to use against you.”
“Yeah, you can buy a lot of shit for the future place,” Salvatore said, drawing my attention away from where Silvano was shaking open the black garbage bag. To, you know, slip the body into. “But no knife blocks.”
“Future place?” I asked, hearing how tight my voice sounded, the hope and shock mingled together.
“Yeah. My place is a little tight. Your place is in a shitty area. Time to move up in the world, I’d say.”
“You… you still want… after all of this trouble?” I asked, looking around.
“Trouble? What trouble?” Salvatore asked, coming up behind me to press a kiss to the top of my head. “This is your average weekday evening in this Family.”
“The sad fucking part is he isn’t joking,” Silvano said, voice straining a bit as he pushed Josh’s body into the bag, leaving his whole lower half out still. Coming back to the counter, he grabbed another black bag out of his kit. “This isn’t even my first body this week,” he added, shaking his head.
“Babe, think tonight only cemented my beliefs that you’re the one,” Salvatore said, reaching to help me slip out of my shirt as I finished my first round of hand washing. “My only concern I had was that some of the shit with this life, with the Family, would freak you out. But I think you proved you can handle just about anything that might come our way,” he added.
It was the wrong freaking time for my body to be reacting the way it was to him undressing me.
But that didn’t stop the desire from blooming through my core even as Silvano started rolling Josh’s black-bag-covered body toward the other side of the room.
“Hey, Salvatore?” I said, turning in his arms, pressing my forehead to his chest.
“Yeah?”
“I know this is a really, really weird time and place to say this, but I love you.”
“Oh, great story for the grandkids, yeah?” Silvano asked as he started squirting some solution that was so strong, my nose burned, all over the floor. “‘Yeah, Gran and Gramp first admitted they loved each other in the kitchen of the police commissioner’s house where Gran just murdered her son.’ Shit for the storybooks,” Silvano kept rambling.
“He’s not wrong,” I said, shaking my head at myself. “I mean, I don’t… I don’t know about you, but I never planned on having…”
“I’d be fucking ancient by the time the kids graduated high school if I had ‘em now. Nah. I’m happy with the kids around. You know, so they go back to their own homes at night and I can get some sleep?” he said, smirking. “You’re more than enough of a future for me,” he added.