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I sink into the bed, reaching out to Fallon instinctively when Leone tugs her closer, crushing her against him. She struggles for a second, but she is caught in his hold.
“Stop, I’m not hurting you, now sleep,” Leone tells her. Moving closer, I drape my arm over her waist, my fingers touching Leone by accident, yet he doesn’t seem to care; after a few moments, she relaxes between us, her hands pressing to my chest like she finds me the safer option.
However, I’m surprised by the lack of jealousy I feel that he is holding the woman I’ve secretly watched for 5 years. Maybe because it’s Leone. Perhaps it’s because Leone has always been closer to me than my own shadow, inseparable since the day he saved my life. Or maybe it’s simply because the danger we pose to each other is a bond stronger than any petty rivalry. There are no secrets between us, I could bring his empire to its knees with the information I have and he could put me on my knees without a care and kill me if he chose. We are stronger together than apart, he knows it and I know it.
As Fallon relaxes, her breath evening out between us, I lay awake, my mind wandering through our past and the uncertainty of our future.
Lying in the darkness, the soft rise and fall of Fallon’s breath against my side starkly contrasts the storm brewing in my mind. I should be asleep, but memories surge like riptides, pulling me under, back to when life was a currency spent too freely. Instead, my mind wanders to how we got here to this exact moment, what changed that this dynamic is actually possible. When I find my mind moving to the day in the cafeteria. “Do you remember when we first met? The cafeteria?” I whisper, knowing Leone is also awake, his eyes peering over at me and his chin resting on Fallon’s head.
“Hard to forget,” he murmurs from the other side, his words slicing through the stillness. “You looked like a damn street urchin,” he says, rolling to lie on his back.
A bitter laugh escapes me as I recall the worn soles of my shoes flapping against the linoleum, the snickers of those privileged kids, and the sting of humiliation that had burned hotter than the black eye my father gifted me that morning.
“Thought you’d join ’em,” I admit, the memory clear as if it were yesterday. “But you didn’t.”
“Never did have a stomach for cowards,” Leone replies.
The moment in the bathroom flashes before my eyes—the metallic taste of fear in my mouth as hands shoved me towards the toilet, the sudden crack of Leone’s fist against one bully’s face. The shock on their faces mirrored my own disbelief. Leone Pressutti, standing up for me? It was surreal. I was nobody. He was somebody.
“Should’ve known then you were different,” I say, my voice trailing off.
Silence hangs between us, thick with the unspoken bond that formed in those early days; neither of us knew it until years later when we crossed paths again. The day we truly became brothers wasn’t one of Leone handling schoolyard bullies; it was born of a shared glimpse into hell.
I was eleven when I found myself in a living nightmare, watching my father—a man destroyed by his gambling addiction—being tortured in Leone’s father’s basement. I was sure I was next. Then Leone stepped into the basement; he was just twelve. I later found out that Dante had told Leone that their father Vittorio sent for him.
Dante lied, and it was an act to get Leone in trouble since the basement was off-limits. I still remember the look on Leone’s face as he stepped into the basement and spotted me on the floor, my father handcuffed to a chair covered in blood as I was made to watch his torture.
His father was furious that Leone had come down the basement. I expected death when his father handed him the gun, a cruel choice laid before him. “Either you kill him,” Vittorio told him, waving the gun at my father. “Or I kill both of them,” his father stated. He thrust the gun into Leone’s hand, who looked at it, massive in his hand. His brows furrowed, and I waited for death while my father pleaded for his life.
Vittorio went to say something when Leone lifted the gun and shot my father in the head. Yet when he handed the gun back to his father, who only stared at his son who hadn’t hesitated, it was clear his punishment wasn’t over. Vittorio then lifted the gun and shot me. Leone’s scream pierced the silence before he was beaten and left for dead beside me. I played dead, hoping to escape unnoticed.
The real shock came when they discovered I was still alive. Leone was a bloody mess; his father had sent his men down to retrieve Leone and get rid of my body.
Yet when the man grabbed me, I cried out, pain slicing through my shoulder. The man dropped me, not realizing I was alive, and I scurried back, I could tell even Leone thought I was dead. I watched in horror, realizing I hadn’t escaped. The man lifted his gun, aiming it at my head, ready to finish the job. Leone intervened with a calmness that I would never forget; it haunts me, and I hate seeing that look on him because he is calmest at his deadliest. That is when you can see where the worst parts of his father wore off on him and, in a sense, on me.
“Your daughter’s name is Emily,” Leone said, making the man pause. The exchange that followed was surreal.
“Yeah, that’s right, buddy,” the man had replied when Leone looked at him, his face all bloody from his father beating him, yet I will never forget the coldness in Leone’s gaze.
“We are in the same class,” Leone continued.
“That’s nice,” the man said, turning back to me and lifting his gun when Leone spoke again.
“You kill him, and I’ll make sure your daughter’s life is a living hell at school. One day, when I take over my father’s empire, I will make her my whore, and she’ll spend the rest of her life on her back for my men.”
He spoke so casually that I had just stared at him. The man paused again, his brows scrunching while I watched. Leone was a boy, speaking to a grown man like they were equals.
“You are threatening my daughter?” the man laughed. Leone lifted his gaze to the man.
“Yes, a Pressutti man’s word is law,” Leone told him. The man laughs harder.
“It’s a good thing you’re not a man,” he replied, but Leone was just as quick.
“But one day I will be. And I will remember this day.”
The man hesitated and swallowed while I waited for my death, not thinking a kid could scare a grown-ass man.
“You’re gonna get me killed!” the man snapped suddenly. Leone just shook his head.
