Page 51 of Vicious Behaviors
“I know who you are,” Marcello says evenly, not dignifying him with a look.
The disrespect pisses off Aldo.
“What? You can’t fight if there isn’t a crowd to watch you? Is that it?”
Yeah, Aldo will never say theomertàin his lifetime. Maybe not even the next. A smarter man wouldn’t bait Marcello in such a way.
To his credit, Marcello continues his training, unaffected by the taunt, which ends up infuriating Aldo even more.
“I should have known the Thorn’s bastard was too much of a pussy to get into the ring with a real man.”
This gets Marcello’s attention, and not in a good way. I swallow hard when I see him tilt his head to his opponent and smile. His eyes are vacant of any emotion, but that smile… it’s haunting.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that Marcello is more like a possessed machine than a man made out of flesh and bone when he’s in the ring, but this? This is different.
“What did you just call me?” he asks, his voice deeper, lower, darker than I’ve ever heard.
Aldo notices the shift, too. One second, he’s cockily leaning against the ropes, the next, he’s stepping back as if he just realized he poked something that bites.
“Get in,” Marcello says, flat and cold.
“Don’t do it,” I hear myself rasp, but it comes out too soft and far too late.
Whether it’s courage or sheer stupidity, Aldo somehow gathers enough of it to step into the ring. His hands are already wrapped, and as he lifts up both fists, Marcello’s smile is wiped clean off his face.
“Remember tonight,” he says.
It’s a warning. A warning for Aldo to never again call him that name—the Thorn’s bastard.
Having been born and raised not a stone’s throw away from this gym, I’ve heard the rumors about Ciro LaSpina, aka The Thorn, and Marcello’s mother, Selene, The Red Queen herself.
Before Selene ever married her husband, Vincent, she had run away from the clutches of her father and the arranged marriage he had in place for her with none other than Big Sal’s only son, Pietro. Or so he led people to believe.
Rumor has it that Big Sal had a child from his mistress and sent both away to Sicily when she got pregnant. That child was Ciro LaSpina, and when he returned, he promised the Romano line nothing but vengeance and blood.
Those plans changed somewhat when he met a young Selene Bianchi, making her and his vengeance his only obsession. The man was so resolute in his obsession that he ruthlessly killed his own brother when he learned of the upcoming betrothal with Selene.
Afraid for her own life, Selene fled Chicago, never to be heard of again. But Ciro found her in the end. He killed the man she had made a life with and brought her to Chicago to wage war with the newCapo dei Capi,Vincent Romano. Ciro had leverage after all. He had Selene, who apparently Vincent had been in love with all his life… and he had his firstborn, Jude Romano. The son that had been born out of wedlock and hidden away by Selene from Ciro for his own protection.
Details from the head-on collision after that are up to the discretion of who’s telling the story. Some say that Ciro was going to kill them all by burning Selene’s childhood home to the ground. Some say it was Selene herself who burned her home after murdering her own father, Ciro’s accomplice, in the coup. But the variation of the story that has seemed to bring out themonster in Marcello is the one where people whisper behind closed doors. That Selene seduced Ciro into her bed, and when his guard was down, she killed him so she could be with her true love, Vincent. Hence the nickname, Red Queen. Whatever she touched, rivers of blood soon followed.
I’ve seen Marcello lunch with his mother more times than I can count. I know the deep love and affection he has for her. When Aldo insinuated that Marcello wasn’t Vincent’s legitimate son, he did so at his own peril. Because in doing so, he insinuated that his mother was nothing more than a whore, who bedded her enemies just to get her way.
That insult is something Marcello would never let pass. Aldo is as good as dead.
I can’t watch this.
As I’m about to turn around to prevent witnessing a murder and blow my cover in the process, something stops me—his eyes. That cold, piercing stare pins me in place like a butterfly under glass, daring me to move a muscle. My breath catches as my heart begins to drum loudly in my chest, but I don’t move. Not even an inch.
The fight has already begun, Aldo swinging left to right and finding nothing but air. Marcello doesn’t even try to hit him back. He just dodges each hit with ease, as if playing a twisted game of cat and mouse.
However, this isn’t just some alley cat we’re talking about. This is a lion. A predator. And right now, he’s playing with his prey while staring directly at me.
My pulse pounds in my ears as the dark hue of his eyes keeps me hostage. I can’t think. I can barely breathe. Not when he smiles at me like that… just a curl at the corner of his lips.
Then he does the most peculiar thing of all. He winks at me right before delivering a knockout punch that sendshis opponent crashing to the mat, Aldo’s front teeth landing somewhere beside him.
I blink, once, twice, clearing my vision as Marcello steps over the unconscious man as if he were nothing. As if he no longer existed in his world. He then pulls down the ropes and steps out of the ring. He grabs a towel and slings it around his neck, wiping the nonexistent bead of sweat from his brow, and then slowly, deliberately, walks in my direction, stopping when he reaches me.
