Page 30 of Until You Break
EMILIO
"Up."
A guard stood over my bed, silent and patient, waiting for me to move. The faint squeak of his polished shoes and the chemical bite of oil from his holster filled the quiet like threats that had learned how to breathe. Sunlight sliced the room in a hard line; dust spun in it like tiny witnesses.
I scrunched my eyes against the light, blinking slow as I woke. "Who are you? What do you want?"
He smirked, the corner of his mouth tugging with a private satisfaction. His thumb rubbed the seam of his glove once, slow and deliberate. "To get you ready. Come on, now." His voice was warm with the lazy confidence of a man who has seen this before.
"Salvatore... my brother. Is he alright?"
The guard's smirk spread into something closer to amusement. "He is. But his car isn't." He tapped the butt of his holster with a gloved fingertip, the sound crisp in the air.
"Did they hurt him? Those motherfuckers...I will?—"
"Get up now." He set a small tray on the bedside table: a steaming cup of coffee, dark and sharp, and a croissant, flaky and warm. The pastry smelled obscene in the cold room. Myhand hovered over it for a breath, pride sharper than hunger, before my fingers curled toward the croissant.
My throat scraped when I swallowed. Phantom heat, a taste I couldn't spit out. The ache low in my body hadn't left either. It waited, mean and patient, like a debt daylight intended to collect.
On the chair nearby, clothes waited, black and precise, laid out like a verdict.
The shirt was silk.. It slid over my shoulders like water that had learned how to hold a shape. It wasn’t mine. Nothing about it was. Even the weight on my skin felt borrowed, temporary, waiting to be taken back. The collar nipped my throat when he buttoned it.
“It’s tight,” I muttered.
“It’s correct.” His hands smoothed it flat with the precision of someone who’d buried men in better clothes. “Chin.”
I lifted it. He knotted the tie, tugged once, fastened cuff links, white gold, Bellandi crest sharp enough to open a vein. The jacket followed, heavier than it looked, fitted so I stood straighter whether I wanted to or not.
The mirror gave back a stranger in Bellandi black. The cuff links winked like fangs. Even my spine looked conscripted, held upright by a will that wasn’t mine.
“You’ll thank me later,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not letting you embarrass yourself. Shoes.”
They were polished leather. They were so reflective I could see my mouth in them. A stranger’s mouth.
“Where are we going?”
“A meeting,” he said.
“With who?”
“You’ll see.” The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Buttons,” he added, tapping the jacket. “Don’t fidget.”
Two guards in suits waited in the hall. Earpieces, holsters visible. Subtlety wasn’t the point. They fell in behind us as we walked. The house smelled like coffee, lemon peel, rosemary from outside. Under it all, metal.
The cars waited, black paint, dark glass, engines idling. I told myself this could be it, that “meeting” meant Papà. That maybe he’d managed to negotiate, to give Marcella what she wanted, to bargain my way out. She had already announced her intention, but I clung to the idea that deals could be made, that there was still a way to step back from the edge. Hope is a dumb animal, it walks long after you’ve shot it.
A guard slid in beside me. Perfect posture, hands folded.
We drove in silence. The city blocks slid by, laundry like flags, mopeds, a woman dragging a stubborn dog. The driver turned off the main road into streets where stone pinched the light. The engine’s hum climbed the way a throat does before it swallows.
The building rose from pale air, stone and glass, new pretending to be old. Courthouse. Chapel. Any place where men tell other men the world is different now and will be forever.
Dark-suited men smoked on the steps. Conversation died when our car stopped.
