Deviant Prince [Romano Brotherhood, #2]

31 | Massimo

My father didn't believe in anything.

It's a challenging balance to achieve, because everyone believes in something. God, money, sex, love, other people—take your pick. But not Antonio. He was a plastic man with a black hole for a heart, and nothing to give his oldest son who was growing up to be too much like him.

People talk about masks sometimes. It can be almost reassuring for some—if they find issue with someone's persona, at least they can tell themselves it isn't real. But it would not be accurate to say my father ever wore a mask, even in those early years when he was working against his nature to show his sons an ounce of affection. Because that would imply there was something real beneath it.

I have always thrived in the minutiae. The small details, the preciseness of all things. It's in those spaces I find things others overlook. And at some point I realized that if there was anything my father believed in, it was luck.

He had a handkerchief he carried with him everywhere. He rarely pulled it out of his pocket or referenced it at all. It was so understated that I doubt anyone else ever gave it a thought. But I noticed it. And as a child, I often thought about how there must have been some memory attached to it. Something or someone he held close to him. Perhaps the only thing he held that way, some mysterious puzzle piece that had the potential to make him real.

He kept it in one of his pockets, folded into a tiny square. A piece of trash, tattered thin, an ugly amalgamation of colors and patterns.

"Where exactly are we going, Boss?"

I glance up from my lap, meeting Ronan's eyes through the rearview mirror. They're predictably empty, cold as steel. He routinely makes unfortunate decisions about his appearance, and this time it's a black septum piercing. He looks like a homicidal bull.

I try to call on Ronan as infrequently as possible, but I needed him today. His background is dubious at best, but I'm not in the business of knowing my employee's personal lives. Whatever he's been through has hardened him into a machine, one I can use.

"Just keep straight on this road."

His finger ticks against the wheel. He may appear relaxed, but the carefully blank look on his face tells me he's getting upset. I call him when I need someone to bleed, not to get a ride out into the middle of nowhere.

"This road leads to nothing but mountains. You finally putting a bullet in my head?"

Only tolerating Ronan's attempt at humor because I know the man is about as capable of emotion as I am, I look out the window. I'm still not used to the mountains. They jut out of the flat plains, rising up out of nothing and almost violent in their size. So vast, so oppressive. So different from Chicago and everything I know—yet somehow I don't mind them anymore.

Trying to appreciate the scenery only reminds myself more of the fact that I'm the passenger, not the driver, and it makes my chest tight. Today was an exception but my brothers, soldiers, and associates know that I always have to be the one driving. Except with her.

As if he smells the direction of my thoughts, Ronan pasts a smirk onto his lips. "The way that girl of yours fights back was fun. You should let me have her for a little."

An icy dagger sinks into my chest. Repeatedly. "Touch her and I will find that woman and her little boy you play happy family with, and have them both gutted."

All contrived humor leaks from his face, knuckles going white as he grips the steering wheel. Ronan might be empty, but he's obsessed with a girl from a small west coast town. He knew her when they were children and kept tabs on her after he moved away. Of course his version of keeping tabs is downright stalking, but for all she knows, he just sends them money and pops into town every now and then to eat her food and warm her bed. He refuses to tell me where they live—and with good reason. It's a sweet little story. She's practically helpless, a single mother working to provide for a pathetic little family of two.