Giovanni doesn't answer with words, but he does nod his head.
We stand, breathing hard, the inherited violence of generations pulses beneath our skin, demanding release. But neither of us moves. We're too evenly matched, too familiar with each other's methods. The battle has become metaphysical now.
We are equals. Not by accident—by design. In sparring, in weapons, in discipline, the scales were built to balance. From childhood on, Giovanni Bavga was the template, and I was told to become his mirror. The Moretti line doesn't have a whole city—not even one as small at Pittsburgh. We've got the rivers. And it's a good deal. They're lucrative. But there is no Moretti boss in my immediate family. There is no Salvatore.
Giovanni was always the standard. I was always reaching up. And he's good. He's as dangerous as any man can be. But in afight, a fair one, anyway, he cannot beat me. But I can’t beat him either.
I turn away first, crossing to the far side of the dungeon. The movement is deliberate—not retreat but tactical repositioning. I begin to pace, the rhythm calming the chaos of my thoughts. "Why the fuck did you let her live?"
Giovanni walks over to the bench and sits down. His movements carry the deliberate weight of ritual. Slow. Measured. Like a man approaching confession with sins too heavy to hold upright. He leans over, putting his head in his hands—a posture of supplication I have not witnessed in him since we were children.
"I asked you a question." My voice remains level. Not raised. Never raised. Volume is the weapon of men without discipline. "Why. Did you let. Her live."
Giovanni makes me wait. This is his pattern—control through absence. The room tightens around us almost suffocating. I can feel my patience fracturing, the microscopic cracks spreading beneath the surface of my skin. One more moment and I will break his jaw. Teach him the cost of silence when blood demands answers.
Finally, just as my hand forms into something that will leave marks, Giovanni looks up. Those laser-focused green eyes that have stared down men three times his size are suddenly blurry. Unfocused. Wrong.
"I like her."
The confession hangs between us like a profane prayer.
"She's chaos, Jino. Messy." His hands gesture outward, fingers spread as if trying to catch something intangible, something slipping through his grasp like sand. "The shit left behind after a dust storm. There’s nothing precise about this woman except..." He pauses, searching for words that won't betray weakness, that won't shatter the facade he's spent yearsconstructing. "These words she collects. She curates them. Arranges them into particular patterns in her head. Effortlessly. She doesn't even try. They just come spilling out in the most extraordinary combinations and it paints the world in an entirely new way."
I watch his hands tremble slightly as they move through the air, trying to capture the essence of something formless, something that defies his need for order and control. His reverence for her chaos is a contradiction that disturbs me deeply.
Giovanni has always been a man of meticulous precision, of calculated moves and measured responses. Yet here he sits, speaking of disorder with something akin to worship in his voice, as if this woman's untamed nature is not a flaw to correct but a wonder to behold.
The stigmata inked into my palms seem to burn as I flex my fingers, the rosary beads tattooed along my knuckles catching the dim light. I've dedicated my life to structure, to the ritual of breaking down and rebuilding that which is disordered. And now Giovanni speaks of embracing the very chaos we've sworn to contain.
I observe the reverence in his voice. This is heresy. This is Giovanni Bavga—heir, executioner, perfect son—speaking of disorder as if it were sacred.
"She makes me laugh." The admission sounds torn from him. "She's earnest. She tries hard at everything."
A smirk forms on my lips before I can suppress it. Yes, she does try hard. Yesterday—her first day of submission training—she maintained Position One until her thighs trembled like seismic aftershocks. Position Two until her knees bruised purple against the concrete. Position Three until tears poured from her eyes like rivers.
Earnest is not the word I would have chosen.
Stubborn, perhaps.
Willful to the point of self-destruction.
But her dedication—the way she commits with her entire being to even the most humiliating task—is a desirable trait. The foundation of proper discipline.
Something I can work with. Something I can shape.
Giovanni continues, oblivious to my assessment. "She doesn't feel like a woman. She feels like a friend." The word 'friend' carries an unfamiliar weight in his mouth. "I like her—could... maybe, one day, love her. If I let myself. I could see it."
Love. The weakest confession. The most dangerous attachment.
"I know it was a mistake to leave a witness to Rico's murder." His voice hardens again, edges returning. "But I tried to push her away. Did push her away. After she recovered in the Bavga wing at Presbyterian Hospital?—"
"You took her to Salvatore's hospital wing?" The words burst from me, a controlled explosion. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
The Bavga Wing is sacred space. Reserved for Salvatore's treatments. The fortress where family secrets are tended, where blood is shed and cleaned in the same breath. To bring an outsider there is to invite death inside our walls.
Giovanni puts up a hand. The gesture is both dismissive and pleading. "Don't worry, I paid them off. And trust me, it was more than enough to buy silence about one girl with a head wound. They don't know what's going on. They probably thought I struck her and was trying to cover up my crime. Or, at the very least, minimize it."
The arrogance. The blind, foolish arrogance. A Bavga son taking a bleeding witness to the most guarded Bavga sanctuary. The staff might be paid, but eyes are everywhere. Ears are everywhere.