Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59804 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded and held out my hand. He held it and shakily kissed the back of it. “Warriors.”
“Warriors,” I whispered back.
He died later that night.
Slowly, I got up, walked over to Santino, and knelt on the ground. “The truth, Santino. Are you able to fight right now?”
His eyes homed in on me, so pretty and green despite the darkness surrounding us. “I’ll fight until I can’t fight anymore, Katya. I’ll fight even as I’m dying. I’ll fight.”
“To survive?”
He reached through the bars and grabbed my hand. “I don’t care if I survive. I care if you do. Can you do that for me, Katya? Can you survive for me?”
I hung my head, and tears burned the back of my throat.
I was living in déjà vu, first with the twin I loved, second with the husband I was falling for. Tightness took hold of my chest, making it hard to think or breathe or do anything except hold Santino’s hand.
“My dad…” Santino started to talk quietly. “He tried to beat our emotions out of us. He said it made us weak, I hated him for it, and then I started to believe him that maybe life was just easier if you didn’t care.”
“Was it?” I asked.
Santino lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes, but it’s lonely, and everyone fears you, hates you, so while you get the rush of being the best, you still go home to darkness, you go to sleep in darkness, you wake up thinking about your darkness, and the process repeats.” He laughs bitterly to himself. “I used to get so annoyed that people wasted time even getting coffee at a coffee shop; it seemed too leisurely. What do you even talk about at eight in the morning? Sports? The sunrise? Work? I’ve never done that before. I’ve never gone to a coffee shop just to go have coffee. Every visit has been to tail someone, to gain intel. Every purchase was stained with blood. Even my fucking coffee had blood stirred into it. How pathetic.”
“Does it make you feel better that I’ve never been to a coffee shop at all?” I asked.
He tilted his head toward me. “No, because it just makes me want to get out of here more and take you to every cafe in Paris.”
“Did you hit your head and find romance, Santino?” I joked. I had to, especially at a time like this.
He laughed and pulled me closer to the jail bars. “No, I think I just found romance in the lighting aisle of Home Depot.”
“Was that romance?”
“It was something, and you know it.”
I nodded. “It was something.”
“It is something.”
“For six hours at least.” I shouldn’t have mentioned anything because immediately his expression turned to steel.
“I won’t let him,” Santino ground out. “I won’t let him touch you.”
I rubbed my thumb across his hand. “Santino, you can’t control everything, and you can’t always win. If I need to take a loss in order to help you, then I will. I’m not afraid anymore.”
“How are you not afraid? You’re in probably the same prison your brother died in, you’re about to get forced to have sex with a monster—my brother, and I’m probably going to die, and you’re not afraid?”
Tears slid down my cheeks. “I’ll save you.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You’ll save me?”
I nodded. “I’m gonna try the whole using my feminine wiles thing.”
“Don’t,” he pleaded. “Don’t go near him. Please. I don’t think… I don’t think I could handle him taking you. I can’t.”
“I won’t scream,” I promised. “I won’t cry. You won’t hear anything except for an idiot man pretending to be a grown-up, trying to get a rise out of you. I’ll just…” I sniffed. “I’ll just pretend I’m with you, and when it hurts, I’ll think of you, and I’ll think of how you almost got your dick shot off because I didn’t want to marry someone like your brother.”
Santino lowered his head, tugging my arm through the bars and pressing his forehead against the back of my hand. “I’m not this strong, Katya.”
“You have to be,” I said. “You have no choice. Because if you’re not strong, then I can’t be strong.”
He nodded, then shifted and pressed his mouth to the back of my hand.
“You know we would have never really worked out anyway.” A tear slid down my cheek. I need to stay hydrated, but I can’t stop crying.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” He turned fully toward me.
“Because.” I leaned in close, my face partially through the bars. “You kill people and, I think, actually enjoy it.”
Santino made a face. “Only if they deserve it, but yes, I find immense satisfaction when I grab someone who’s been trafficking children overseas. In fact, it takes immense self-control not to carry out the torture longer than two hours.”