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I stumble to the bathroom, perching on the basin’s edge, watching Leone. He undresses and steps under the cascading water. The ink that adorns his skin comes alive, the droplets tracing the outlines of his dark tattoos. One particular design catches my eye—Italian words etched over his heart, making me wonder what the words say.
He steps out, drying himself and pulling on gray sweatpants. I follow him back into the bedroom, and he climbs into bed. He picks up his phone, thumb flicking across the screen with purpose while I hesitate at the edge of bed, worried he’ll cuff me again.
“Come here if you want to remain free of those cuffs,” he says without looking up.
Hesitantly, I approach, sliding into bed beside him. The TV’s glow casts shadows on the walls, but my attention is drawn to Leone. My fingers wander over his chest. When I stop at the words on his chest over his heart, my fingers trace them.
Eri il battito del mio cuore, la parte più piccola di me, ma la più essenziale. Ora che sei andato, hai portato via ogni pezzo, ogni parte di me. Ora che sei andato, ogni giorno svanisco un po’ di più, morendo mille volte, con ogni battito del cuore che batteva solo per te, mio piccolo angelo.
“What does this say?” I ask, trying to read it aloud, though more to myself than him, all while probably sounding like an idiot.
“Always so curious,” he mutters, setting his phone down. He sighs, looking where my fingers are tracing just above the blurred-out version of his ex’s name. “You were the beat of my heart, the smallest part of me, but the most essential. Now that you’re gone, you’ve taken away every piece, every part of me. Now that you’re gone, every day I fade a little more, dying a thousand times, with every heartbeat beating just for you, my little angel,” Leone translates without looking at me, instead glaring at the ceiling.
My brows furrow, confused. “It’s about Lydia? Do you feel guilty killing her?” I ask.
“Time for bed,” he says, reaching for the handcuffs, becoming annoyed with my questions. Panic claws at me, and I move away from him. “Cara!” Leone growls out. I shake my head.
“You don’t need them. I won’t move off the bed,” I murmur, and he sighs heavily.
“I want to sleep. You need them on,” he says, but he is lying. He was quite content working on his phone a second ago and declared bedtime the moment I asked about his ex-wife. I shake my head, and he reaches for me.
“I will stay,” I plead, moving toward him, his frustration evident when I crawl on top of him.
“I can’t sleep with you on top of me,” he states, reaching for his phone. “Sleep, I will wait for you to fall asleep,” he tells me and I prop my chin on my hand staring down at the words on his chest.
I settle against him, my curiosity unsated. The haunting sadness of his tattoo lingers in my mind, a ghostly whisper of loss. I watch him work, awkwardly holding his phone above his face, the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my touch.
“Everything okay?” I finally murmur, breaking the silence that wraps around us.
“Be better if you were asleep,” he replies curtly, not giving anything away. But there’s a heaviness that belies his simple answer. And for a moment, just a fleeting second, I see past the monster to the man who has lost something irreplaceable.
“Did you miss her?” The question darts out before I can stop it, and I tense, waiting for the storm.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, he brushes my hair behind my ear, a touch so gentle it feels alien coming from him. “No,” he answers simply, and something in his eyes tells me that this man has no room for regret.
This leaves me even more confused, given the tattoo. “I don’t want to hear any more questions about her,” he warns, and I sigh but stare at him.
“And Milo, how did you meet him?” I probe further, trying to understand the man beneath me. “How did you two meet?”
“School, then I killed his father, and mine shot him when he was a kid.” That was not the answer I was expecting.
“He still wants to be your friend when you killed his father, and your father shot him?” I ask, horrified. His brown eyes soften just a fraction. Leone nods and I stare at him waiting for him to explain, and he tosses his phone on the bedside table.
“I should have left Milo with you,” he mutters.
“Well, at least he might answer,” I mutter. Leone’s jaw clenches, and he scratches the stubble on his chin.
“Yes, I was forced to choose between his father and him. I shot his father, but then my father shot him anyway. My father thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. I hid him in my room for months before my father realized he was there. He might not have, except my father came in one night furious because Dante stole my father’s cigars and blamed me. He beat me senseless. Milo thought I was going to die, so he hit my father with my baseball bat. He was hiding under my bed,” Leone states.
“And your father let him live?” I ask.
Leone shrugs. “Yeah, said anyone willing to stand up for his son against him deserves to be at my side,” Leone whispers the last part. “He’s been more of a brother than my own blood ever was.”
“I always wanted a brother,” I admit, the words spilling out, filling the quiet with my own longing.
“Brothers are overrated,” Leone counters with a scoff. “Blood isn’t thicker than water. My family... they’re my biggest enemies.”
