Page 19 of Savage Lover

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll handle it.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

He shuffles up the stairs to our apartment.

I watch him go, my heart full of dread.

4

NERO

When I come down to breakfast, Greta has made a batch of fresh biscotti to go with the coffee, plus a red pepper frittata in that ancient iron skillet that’s probably older than she is.

She offers me the food. I only want the coffee.

“More for me, then,” Dante says, taking a second helping of frittata.

My father is at the end of the table, reading three newspapers at once. We might be the only people who still get the paper delivered—singlehandedly keeping the Tribune and the Herald in business.

“I can get those on your iPad,” I tell Papa.

“I don’t like the iPad,” he says, stubbornly.

“Yes you do. Remember that game you kept playing, where you have to shoot peas at the zombies?”

“That’s different,” he grunts. “You’re not reading the news if you don’t get ink on your hands.”

“Suit yourself,” I say.

I take a sip of the coffee. It’s real coffee—heavily roasted, bittersweet, made in a three-chambered aluminum pot. Greta also makes cappuccino and macchiato on order, because she’s a fucking angel.

She’s not actually Italian, but you’d never guess it by the way she cooks the traditional food my father loves. She’s worked for him since before he married my mother. She helped raise us all. Especially after Mama died.

Greta is plump, with a little red left in her hair. She’s got a surprising number of stories from her wild youth, once you get some liquor in her. And she’s the only person bringing life into the house now that Aida’s moved out.

Dante just sits at his end of the table like a ravenous, silent mountain, shoveling up food. Papa’s not going to talk unless he finds something shocking in the paper. Sebastian is living on campus and only comes home on weekends.

I never thought I’d miss Aida. She’s always been an annoying little puppy, yapping at my heels. She loved to follow us around everywhere we went, trying to do everything we were doing, but usually getting into trouble instead.

It’s funny that she got married first, since she’s the baby. Not to mention the last girl you’d expect to put on a white puffy dress.

Hell, she might be the only one of us to get married at all. I’m sure as fuck not doing it. Dante’s still hung up on that girl he used to date, though he’d never admit it. And Sebastian . . . well, I can’t guess what he’ll do anymore.

He thought he was going to the NBA. Then his knee got all fucked up by Aida’s husband Callum, when our families weren’t on good terms. Now Seb’s sort of floating. Still doing physical therapy, trying to get back on the court. Sometimes joining Dante and me when we’ve got work to do. This winter he shot a Polish gangster. I think it fucked with his head. There’s being a criminal, and there’s being a murderer . . . you cross that line and there’s no going back. It changes you.

It certainly changed me. It shows you how a person can leave this world in a split-second. Dead in the time it takes to flick off a light switch. And that’s it—infinite nothingness, like the infinite nothing that came before. Your whole life is just a brief flare in the void. So what does it matter what we do? Good, evil, kindness, cruelty . . . it’s all a spark that goes out without a trace. The whole existence of humanity will mean nothing, once the sun expands and burns the planet to a crisp.

I learned that lesson at a young age.

Because I first killed someone when I was only ten years old.

That’s what I think about while I drink my coffee.

Papa finishes his first paper, switching over to the next. He pauses before he starts perusing the front page, looking over at Dante.

“What’s our next project now that the Oak Street Tower is done?” he says.

Dante stabs his fork into the last bite of frittata.

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