Page 49 of Beautifully Savage Butterfly

“And I’m the brat?” he mutters, buckling his seat belt and then grabbing the door handle while I test out the Jag’s handling with a couple of quick turns through the parking lot before finally slowing down and easing out onto the street.

It takes a minute to mentally map out the city and remember how to get where I want to go from here. It’s been nearly twenty years since I’ve taken some of these streets. The buildings become progressively more dilapidated around us, then start to thin out, apartments and high rises giving way to stand-alone buildings, warehouses, and empty shells that stopped being used for anything but homeless encampments and various criminal activities before I was even born.

“What are the chances that the Dante and Salvatore situation ends in bloodshed?” I ask conversationally, keeping my eyes on the pothole laden road ahead of me, swerving every few feet one way or the other to avoid the bigger ones. Luckily, there’s no one else on the road in this part of the city.

“High.” He laughs. “But I’m pretty sure that’s what Sal is hoping for. I’m even more sure Lorenzo knows it. He sees everything. He’s got eyes everywhere, but it’s more than that. Enzo is just… observant. He’s always aware, always alert, always thinking and planning. I don’t know how he does it. It fucking exhausts me just thinking about it.” The awe in his voice when he talks about his brother makes my chest tighten and my throat feel thick.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and press a little harder on the gas again, disregarding the speed limit written on signs too covered in graffiti to read anyway.

“That’s how Jack always was too. He was the man with the plan, fucking sharp and determined.” My voice cracks and I clear my throat.

Elio reaches over to put a hand on my thigh, and the warmth of his touch through the cotton of my pants is grounding, even if it can’t do anything to fix all the shit that’s broken and unfair in the world.

“I hope I can meet him sometime. When he’s out of the hospital and up for visitors, of course.” He says it so casually that it twists the knot a little tighter in my chest. He grips my thigh harder and then eases off. “Unless you don’t want me to. If you think he’d be disapproving or…”

A harsh laugh forces its way out of my throat. “He would definitely disapprove. But I actually think he would like you. I’m going to have a lot of fucking explaining to do though when I do introduce you.” I spot the ghostly outline of the abandoned warehouse I’ve been looking for, and ease off the gas to be ready for the turn. “After he got hurt, he made me promise I wouldn’t turn to you guys for a loan or start taking money to throw fights.”

“The moral objection runs in the family, I take it?” The amusement in his voice almost makes me laugh again. Like he finds it cute that anyone would be ethically appalled by the Moretti family business.

“Nah.” I shake my head and roll to a stop in front of the building. “I think he thought I was too soft, that if I got mixed up in all this stuff, I’d end up getting pulled in too deep.” I let out another rusty chuckle. “I guess he wasn’t wrong.”

I blow out a breath and turn off the car. Elio seems to realize we’ve stopped for the first time. I look over and he tears his gaze off of me to peer through the windshield at the building in front of us. There’s a chain around the main door, which is doing fuck all thanks to the massive hole in the side of the building, easily large enough for several men to walk through at once. The windows are all either caked with dirt or completely shattered, the parking lot is more weeds than cement, and the fading graffiti suggests that even the taggers and gangs stopped bothering to come out here a long damn time ago.

“You brought me to an abandoned warehouse?” He unbuckles his seat belt and climbs out.

“What, is this place not first date material?” I tease, getting out on my side and stuffing the keys into my pocket.

“This isn’t our first date, Boss,” he scoffs.

“No? What was our first date?” I jerk my head towards the makeshift entrance and Elio follows me.

“The underground fight at Lou’s, obviously. I tended to your wounds, and you manhandled me into a blowjob. It doesn’t get much more romantic than that.” He smirks, and I step through the opening, then turn around to grab him by the collar and drag him in after me.

He gasps, then laughs, stumbling inside and colliding with me.

“I guess I can’t argue with that.” I slip one hand around the back of his neck and pull him in for a brief, rough kiss, nipping at his bottom lip and swallowing the moan that vibrates on his tongue.

I pull back and he stumbles again, looking dazed after even a few seconds of our tongues tangling. Jesus, I could get used to that. Fuck it, I’m more than used to it already.

Elio looks past me, and I watch his expression for a second as he takes it in, his eyebrows twitching and his eyes flickering around the space. It’s not hard to figure out what this place is, but he’s not going to get much further than that without context.

I turn around to face the open space. The rusted, broken-down machinery from the early days of the factory is in pieces, littering the outer edges of the room. In the center, there’s a makeshift ring. It’s even more low budget and brutal than the one at Lou’s, than any of the other underground rings I’ve climbed into over the past handful of years to pay Jack’s bills. It’s nothing more than some frayed ropes tied to support beams to create a rough rectangle of space. The cement inside the ropes is stained brown with years of blood that was hastily mopped up, or not cleaned up at all.

The phantom sound of shouts and cheers fills my ears, making my heart race and my muscles tense, ready for a fight. The thick layer of dust covering everything makes it obvious that no one has held a fight here in years, but I swear I can still smell the sweat and blood mixing with cigarette and cigar smoke, crawling down my throat to churn in my gut.

“This is where I had my first fight.” I cross the space and duck between the ropes, my mind filling in a million details about that night I didn’t even know I remembered. Like the taste of the cheap canned spaghetti I’d had for dinner burning in the back of my throat and the glare of the lights pointed at the ring. My eyes twitch into a squint in reaction to the memory, even though the only light now is from the moon through the broken windows. “I was fifteen. Scrawniest little shit you’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure every single asshole in this place that night was expecting to see me hauled out of here on a stretcher. I was matched against this forty-year-old dude with a beer gut and these massive hands that I swear to god looked like bear paws, they were so hairy.”

A laugh gets caught in my throat. Elio’s hand on my back surprises me, pulling me back into the present again as it slides up my spine, between my shoulder blades, and comes to rest on the back of my neck.

“That’s fucked up, Boss,” he murmurs, and I nod.

“I went absolutely apeshit on him though. It felt like I’d been saving up every ounce of rage I had at my parents, at every pervert who offered me money or food for sex, at the fucking world, and I unleashed it all on him. I think I caught him off guard more than anything, but it was enough to get the upper hand and knock him the fuck out.”

“I think you still do that.” He presses his thumb into a knot on the back of my neck to loosen it and rests his chin on my shoulder. “You’re feral in the ring. It’s like you’re rage personified. It gets my dick hard every time.”

I lean into him and smirk. “Is there anything I do that doesn’t get your dick hard?”

“Not a damn thing,” he purrs, pressing a kiss to the side of my throat.

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