Santori Reloaded, page 11
part #3 of Santori Series
I felt a sense of peace settle over me, seeping into every molecule of my body. Our love was something no one could ever take away from me, and it was enough to carry me through the rest of my life even if I never loved again. I’d had my love already, and that was something many people couldn’t even claim on their death beds.
Gio died knowing he’d been loved, and that he’d had his fairy tale ending. And when my time came, so would I.
Even if this devil in angel’s clothing had managed to seduce my Gio into bed—and I didn’t believe for a minute that he had—there had obviously been nothing between them. It was normal, he’d said, and the thought made me want to laugh. There was nothing normal about Gio. Nothing normal about what he and I had shared. So, even if Gio had put his dick in the guy, he hadn’t given him anything else. The sanctity of our love was still intact. I’d had all of Gio, and Ryan, at best, had gotten a string of hollow orgasms.
“No more,” I said, my composure restored by the relief of that epiphany. “This guy was nothing to Gio. I highly doubt they even slept together, but even if they did…he was still nothing. What Gio and I had was special, and no one can take that away from me.”
I turned to leave, dismissing them with a casual flick of my gun. I’d nearly forgotten I held the thing. I might as well have been carrying a sack lunch for all the danger it represented in my mind.
My steps echoed on the concrete floor as I moved through the dust motes and slashes of sunlight filtering in through the windows. Behind me, Ryan whimpered and babbled out strings of incoherent words. Quietly, though. So quiet I could barely hear him. He was distraught, nearly mad with fear. I didn’t care. Didn’t care at all.
That is until his string of babbling ceased to be babbling, and one sentence rang out loud and clear. “He was my daddy, not yours.”
I froze. Not just my feet, but my entire being. There was no movement inside me. No lungs breathing, no heart pumping, no synapses firing, no guts churning. Just…utter stillness.
And then, one thing moved within me. That sentence. It began to bounce around in my brain, pinging off the sides of my skull like the metal ball in a pinball game, racking up the points total with every devastating ping.
My. Daddy. Not. Yours. My daddy, not yours. Mydaddy. Mydaddy.
I spun around, started back. My steps were even, keeping time with that awful chant in my head. Mydaddy. Mydaddy. Mydaddy.
Ryan cowered in front of me, now only a few feet away, his face slick with sweat and tears. I was vaguely aware of Theo holding up a hand, like a traffic cop trying to keep someone from plowing through a school zone at sixty miles per hour and taking everyone out.
But Theo was nothing now. A slow-motion blur in my peripheral vision. I was focused on Ryan.
The boy jerked frantically at his bindings as I bore down on him, his pretty blue eyes the size of half dollars. “No no nonononono…” He was saying, sputtering tears and snot all over the place.
My steps came to an end. The toes of my shoes butted up against his. I raised my gun, placed it against his sweaty forehead, and my hand didn’t even tremble as I pulled the trigger.
Blood and brains splattered on the wall behind him, and all of the light left his blue eyes.
“My daddy,” I said.
PART TWO
Chapter 12
KAGE
“So what did you think of Gio Rivera?” I pushed a piece of fish across the plate with my fork and glanced around the Grotto. The lunchtime crowd wasn’t the least bit interesting, but the alternative was meeting Theo’s intense gaze, and I didn’t want to see the look in those steely blue eyes just yet. Not after a question like that.
Theo cleared his throat and lowered his own fork with a clink of metal against stoneware. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Suspicion in his voice, and a hint of defensiveness.
I shrugged and finally locked my eyes onto his. “I’m just curious. In my uncle’s journals, he made it seem like you and Gio were pretty close.”
It was a half-lie. While Santori had written of the two most important men in his life spending a lot of time together, he’d also made it more than clear that there was some hostility between them.
Theo didn’t approve of Peter’s relationship with his gangster daddy, and Gio had seemed suspicious of Theo, especially in the days leading up to his death. I wanted to find out just how deep the resentment between the two went, and the only way I could do that was by pushing a button that might ought not to have been pushed.
Theo’s jaw ticked, and he took a deep breath. “We worked together. That’s all.”
“So you weren’t friends? I thought you two were thick as thieves.”
“Pete used to like to say that. But he didn’t always see what was right in front of him, even when it was blindingly obvious.”
It had been my intention to hit a nerve, but now that I’d succeeded, I wasn’t so sure riling Theo up was the smart thing to do. I was supposed to be gaining his trust, not making him angry. But Aaron had suggested that the key to getting in close might be understanding his relationship with my uncle and using that knowledge to my advantage. I had a gut feeling that Gio Rivera might have been even more of a hot button than Peter.
“So you didn’t like him?” I pressed.
Theo chuckled darkly and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He shook his head, the tips of his long blond mane grazing the shoulders of his suit jacket. “Giorgio Rivera was not a good person. He was a dirty old man who took advantage of young boys. He was a heartless killer. A piece of shit in an expensive suit.”
“Wow,” I said. But what I thought was that it sounded like the pot calling the kettle black. I took a drink of water, hoping to hide the hint of a smirk that threatened to give away my true feelings. “So you didn’t approve of his relationship with my uncle.”
“He fucked Pete up,” he said, an edge of vehemence in his voice. “He made him so completely dependent on him that his death destroyed him. Drove him a little crazy, you know? He was never the same after that.”
“He didn’t write in his journal after that. I had hoped to learn some things about my father and my childhood, but the last entry was the one about Gio’s lover.”
Theo’s eyes widened. “He wrote about that?”
I nodded. “In great detail.”
Something flickered in Theo’s eyes. Fear? Anger? “What exactly did he say about it?”
“He said the two of you interrogated the boy at gunpoint, and he ended up shooting him in the head.”
Theo’s hands clenched into fists. “Peter never did have any fucking sense. Why on earth would he admit to that in writing for anyone to find? Jesus Christ.”
I took a swig of water and pretended to contemplate the question, even though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. “I think maybe he felt guilty. Figured if anyone found out, he’d get what he deserved.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, do you?” Theo’s amused expression was in direct opposition to his tense posture and balled-up fists. “I doubt your uncle lost a night’s sleep over that. Not because of guilt, anyway. Gio signed that poor kid’s death warrant the minute he stuck his dick in him. Peter wasn’t about to let him live. Not after that.”
“Oh. I thought that was what changed everything.”
“It was, but not because of guilt. Peter would have killed that boy a thousand times if he could have. Would have put a bullet in his brain every day just the to watch the blood splatter. But killing him didn’t erase the fact that Gio had touched him. That was the real problem.”
I got a sharp pang in my chest. The same kind of pain I’d felt when I’d read the account in my uncle’s sloppy hand. Somehow, Gio’s betrayal had hurt almost as if it had happened to me, and I could relate to my uncle’s need for revenge. It had been far too easy to imagine Jamie and myself in those roles. How would I have felt if the love of my life died, and then I found out he’d been cheating on me? Santori had believed with his whole heart that Gio was completely devoted to him—that he would do anything to protect him. But in the end, Gio had been the source of his greatest pain. All for a piece of ass.
“I would have killed him, too,” I admitted.
“You think so?” Theo asked. His arms were still tight across his chest, but his fists finally relaxed.
“Definitely. And once wouldn’t have been enough, like you said. That kind of betrayal can’t go unpunished, and since Gio wasn’t alive to take out his anger on, my uncle did the next best thing.”
“It wouldn’t have helped you any more than it did Pete.”
“No,” I agreed. “But I would have done it anyway. If he were still alive, I’d kill him myself.”
Theo uncrossed his arms and leaned toward me in slow motion, his tight expression stretching into a leering grin. In the cool darkness of the Grotto, the light played tricks, and for a moment that long, leonine face floated above the table like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. “I’m shocked at you, Little Santori. Where on earth have your morals gone?”
I pulled back instinctively as a frisson of fear sizzled up my spine. That face. It was the stuff of nightmares. Only this was no nightmare; it was my reality. I gulped around a lump of sawdust and dread and pulled my hands into my lap to hide the sudden tremor in my fingers.
Where had my morals gone? Because I had just made a post-mortem death threat against a young man I’d never met, and I’d meant every word of it.
Because of him, my uncle had changed. Because of him, my life had been filled with misery and loneliness where there should have been love. I had no doubt that the young Peter Santori in those journals had been capable of love, but his innocence had died that day—sprayed out onto the walls with that little twink’s brains.
The fact that there were no more journal entries after the killing was proof. It, rather than Gio’s death, had been the turning point. The moment Peter had ceased to exist and the Santori I knew had taken his place.
If not for that moment, I felt sure that Santori would have taken my father in and cared for my brother Evan and me. He would have loaded us down with toys and plied us with pistachio ice cream until we had to be rolled off to bed. He would have been Santa Claus, and we would have had a real Christmas tree. He would have been kind.
Instead, my father was gone, Evan was dead, and I’d been raised by a shell of a man.
Someone had to take the blame.
Theo’s cat grin stretched impossibly wider, and he ran a long finger around the rim of my water glass. “So you would have killed the boy.”
“In a heartbeat,” I said, steadying my voice as much as I could under his eerie scrutiny. It seemed he had sucked all of the air out of the room, and my head spun from the lack of oxygen.
“You don’t think Gio should have died for his transgressions?”
Trick question? Was he fishing? Was this a test?
“He did,” I said, too breathless. Why was it so hot in here? It had been cool a moment ago.
Theo pulled back, and the air rushed back in. I felt my lungs expand, and my brain started to clear. The sounds of clinking dishes and voices reached my ears.
“So he did,” Theo said, and his placated expression told me I’d given the right answer. “In the end, he paid for his sins.”
“But so did Peter.”
Theo’s lips tightened, but only for a second, and then his face was placid again. Almost too placid. “Unfortunately, yes. It was inevitable, I suppose. You don’t brush up against the likes of Gio Rivera and not get burned.”
“You hated him,” I said.
“More than you can ever know.” The stillness in his expression didn’t waver. “He ruined Pete.”
“But he also made him rich. Took him out of an abusive situation with his father.”
“Out of the pan and into the fire,” Theo said. “His father may have left marks on his skin, but the marks Gio left were much deeper. Pete traded his soul for that money. We both did.”
“So you don’t think you have a soul?” I’d already decided he didn’t have one, but to hear him say that about himself was a shock. Was unrepentant evil a real thing?
Theo actually laughed. A genuine laugh that crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “Oh, Little Santori. You’ve seen so much in your short life, yet you’re still that naive little boy playing with trucks in the stairwell of your uncle’s hotel. Of course I don’t have one. The minute you decide to play God—to condemn another person to death—you’ve lost claim to your soul. It just slips right out of you.” He fluttered his hand up toward the ceiling and smiled. “Did you feel it when yours left?”
I gulped. Sawdust and dread again. “What?”
“You were passing out death sentences like candy not two minutes ago. Never mind that Gio and the boy are already dead. You would have killed them if given the chance. I saw it in your eyes.”
The man was crazy. Not just evil, but a stark raving lunatic. Madness danced in those blue eyes and in that smile. But did he have a point? Was he right about me?
“You enjoy beating people,” he said. “You like the feel of your fist hitting bone and muscle. The smell of blood. The sputtering of a pulse at the crook of your arm as you choke a man to the point of death.”
“I don’t—” I began, but the denial died on my lips. He was right, this crazy man. He had looked into my eyes and found that nugget of truth. I enjoyed hurting people. The rush of adrenaline I got from it was like a drug, and I was a junkie for it.
“You do,” he said. “You love it. It’s part of who you are.” He held up his hands. “I’m not judging, of course. I know you’d enjoy cutting off the blood flow to my brain and feeling my body go limp in your arms. And do you want to know a secret?” He leaned across the table and motioned for me to come close.
Every instinct in me screamed to resist. To not lean in. But I did it anyway, mesmerized by his words. By his assessment of me.
He wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck, strong fingertips digging into the flesh there. His lips came so close to my ear I could feel his breath as he spoke. “I’d enjoy it, too. Hurting you. Being hurt by you.”
“No.” I tried to move away, but his fingers dug in harder. Bruising.
“I’d like to slit your throat from ear to ear and fuck you while the life drains out of you.”
I did snatch away then, knocking my nearly-empty water glass to the floor. I barely registered the sound of shattering glass against stone.
Theo let out a hearty laugh and pointed at me. “You should see the look on your face.” He shook his head and popped a piece of French bread into his mouth. He chewed with his mouth open, and I thought I could see the young pool-hall hoodlum he’d once been. Before Gio Rivera’s world had taken his soul. “I’m just yanking your chain, man. Except about the fucking. I’d never joke about that.”
I stared at him, frozen as the waitress hurried over to clean up the mess I’d made. I sensed her there at my side, squatting as she gingerly picked up shards of glass and placed them on her serving tray. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. I couldn’t do anything but stare at Theo, the scene he’d put in my head playing out on a loop behind my eyes.
My naked body lying on a blood-soaked bed, throat slit from ear to ear. Theo hovering over me with a knife, grinning that maniacal grin as he pushed into me.
“A joke?” I asked, hearing the tremor in my own voice. “Kind of a sick thing to say, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Not for a guy with no soul.” When I only continued to stare at him, he laughed and pulled the linen napkin from his lap. Dabbed at the corner of his lips. Dropped it into the middle of his plate. “You need to lighten up, Kage. Let’s get out of here. I have something to show you.”
Something to show me. Could he finally be ready to open up about his business? I needed to get with the program and quit staring at him with that accusatory glare. That was no way to get what I wanted. I forced my lips up into a wicked grin. “Not a knife, I hope.”
That drew another laugh from him. “You and I are going to get along just fine.”
Chapter 13
KAGE
It turned out that what Theo wanted to show me was at the Scepter Hotel, one floor down in the basement he hadn’t allowed me to see before. Excitement thrummed in my veins. This was it. The moment of truth. He was either going to let me in on his secrets, or he was going to kill me. My fingers sought out the gun hidden at my waist beneath my suit jacket. I’d found myself doing that more and more often, especially when I was around Theo.
A familiar sense of peace washed over me at the hard bite of metal beneath my fingertips. I’d gotten comfortable with my firearm over the past few weeks at the gun range, and at night when I unholstered it and pointed it at the full-length mirror in my bedroom. I could use it if I had to. Wouldn’t hesitate. The only problem was that Theo kept me so off kilter with his jokes and veiled threats I wasn’t sure if I’d see the danger coming if he decided to take me out for real.
I thought of what my uncle had shared in his journal. The snippets of life with Theo. The hints of something darker beneath the surface of the story.
Your friend has a little problem.
I followed Theo into the elevator and stood at his back as we descended into the bowels of the hotel. I nudged the safety of the gun with my fingertip, not quite disengaging it, but very nearly. We might as well have been going into the Bermuda Triangle, because if he decided to do something to me down there... I shivered, wondering what he would do with my body. Cut me into tiny pieces? Dump me in an unmarked grave next to Z, so far out in the desert I would never be found?
“I can hear you breathing,” Theo said without turning around.
I snatched my hand from the gun and tried to control my breaths and the erratic heartbeat that rattled in my chest. “I’m kind of excited.” It wasn’t a lie, but I was also terrified. Same physiological response.
