Indebted to the Mafia King
Shards

Dante

I slump against the passenger's seat, fighting for breath as Tony drives us back through the city streets. Standing up for a few minutes felt like running a goddamn marathon, and I can't forget the burning in my chest anymore. Tony glances at me in the rearview mirror but doesn't say anything. He said enough on the ride over.

As soon as he told me Eleni shot Uncle John, I was on my feet. When he told me it was the same day everything went down with Luca, I put together a picture in my head. I expected her to be grieving, just trying to hold the pieces together. Instead, she doubled her kill count in a single day. The Eleni I met in The Greek Corner, the one who glowed while telling me about the after-hours gyros, would've broken down. That's the Eleni I was racing for when I hurried out of Domino's apartment while his wife yelled for me to lay back down.

But as we drove to the house for a change of clothes and then where Eleni was "working," a new story took shape. A hardened, take-no-shit Eleni who ran the Saints for her own reasons and in her own way. I couldn't believe it. As Tony turns onto the Verrazano Bridge, part of me still can't. I just keep thinking about her twirling in her suit before we left to go meet Thano, giggly and nervous and waiting for my word. Hell, in the car on the way home from the safe house upstate, when she couldn't name a single goddamn organization.

"Uncle John was trying to take over?" I ask quietly.

Tony shrugs. "I had him handled."

The day I got shot, he was angling for my seat. Maybe Eleni did the right thing, killing him. That thought is so incongruous, it almost makes me laugh. I can't imagine Eleni, my El, with blood on her hands.

"So, she's handling the business," I say. "Keeping the shipments on track."

Tony purses his lips. The next time he does that, I'm knocking the look off his face. Assuming I can ever muster enough energy to move my arms again.

"She was." He stares at the road. "Then, a pocket of Lombardi loyalists popped up."

I closed my eyes. "How many is a pocket?"

"Almost a dozen," he says. "She gave the order, we cleaned it up, and I expected that to be the end, but before we even got to lick our wounds, she called...she says it's an all-hands meeting. Everybody piled in, and she declared open season on anyone who ever ran with the Lombardis or the Coppolas, unless they join the Saints on probation."

I exhaled slowly. I was out for two weeks. With the first pocket, and how big those organizations were... Eleni has to have dozens of deaths on her hands now. That doesn't fit with the polished, put-together woman I'd seen at the docks. She couldn't know what those orders meant. The Eleni I knew wouldn't be able to get out of bed after that many murders, much less run a warehouse with the sort of instinctual precision I'd seen in the capos.

Two weeks, and they were all eating out of her little hands. Maybe I never knew Eleni in the first place.

Tony pulls up to the house. "You want me to...?"

I shake my head. "If I can't walk up my own front stairs, you should just put me down."

He frowns but lets me climb out on my own. Every muscle aches. Exhaustion drags me slower and slower. By the time I reach the front door, I'm puffing like a pack-a-day smoker. It suddenly occurs to me that I don't know if Eleni changed the locks. I pull out the set of keys Tony gave me with shaking hands, leaning on the doorframe for support, and slide the one that should work into the knob. It twists. She hasn't given up on me entirely.

Inside, two armed soldiers stand next to the door. I've never stationed guards inside.

"Go home," I say tiredly.

They exchange looks. Not again.

I straighten up as much as I can manage, my stitches pulling unpleasantly, and put on my old scowl. "Go. Home."

They leave and shut the door behind them. I slump. Am I even still the boss, if my own men won't answer to me? Through my haze of self-pity, I realize the house is silent. No Gianna. No Eleni. I expected them to be here. Hell, I expected them to be in my office. I trudge up the stairs to my room.

The door is ajar. The light is on. I push inside with my heart pounding, imagining any number of enemies sitting on my bed with Eleni's corpse at his feet.

The only things on my bed are a few cardboard boxes labeled "Dante" and a half-packed suitcase. I stare around at the room. My wall of pictures is turned so the other side of the cork faces out, and sticky notes of business terms cover the back. The chains on the bedposts are gone, and my bedspread has been replaced with...is that the quilt from the guest bedroom Eleni was sleeping in? The soft hiss of the shower edges into my notice, then abruptly cuts off. I turn toward the bathroom door and replace it open. Eleni finishes wrapping a towel around herself and steps to the sink. She spots me in the mirror.

"Oh," she says quietly, as if to herself. "You're back."

"What are you doing?" I gesture to the boxes on the bed.

She picks up a comb and runs it through her hair. I stare blankly. Her toothbrush wasn't in here when I left. Nothing was. She sleeps down the hall.

"You have the better bathroom." She shrugs. "And I needed my bedroom for an office."

"You know damn well that's not what I'm asking." I start to storm toward her, but pain shoots through me. I grab one of the bedposts for support. "The fucking boxes?"

"The boxes are stuff of yours that I moved," she sniffs. "The suitcase is mine. We're even, so I'm leaving."

I blink. My chest aches in a new way, which at least adds some novelty to what is quickly becoming the worst day of my life. "Even?"

"You killed Christos. I killed John. We're done here." She meets my gaze in the mirror, and her eyes are dead. Completely emotionless.

Anger flushes my veins. This is still my house, still my syndicate, until they put me in the goddamn ground. Whatever is happening between Eleni and I will be done when I say it's done.

My gaze catches on the way her fingers tremble around the comb. Another moment passes, and she bites her lip like she's holding something back. Maybe that's a single sliver of the Eleni I knew.

I will myself to drop to my knees, to beg her forgiveness, to ask her to stay and help run the syndicate while we figure out how to piece back together the shards of what we had. But it's my house. My syndicate. Pride keeps me on my feet. "You did a good job,” I say stiffly. "While I was...Out."

Eleni closes her eyes and sets down the comb. "I'm going to go sleep in one of the guest rooms."

She breezes past me on her way out of the room, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have left not to touch her. The feel of her skin is burned into my brain, but I don't want to be screamed at. I'm bone-deep tired of fighting. I turn back to my bed, to the boxes and suitcases I can't lift in my condition, and fish out a pair of pajamas before leaving as well.

Her scent is all over my room, embedded in the sheets. I'm instantly comforted by it, slipping into a hazy half-sleep fractured by stress and conflicting feelings.

Did she sleep here because she found the same comfort in my scent? Did she lay here like I am and realize the slippery slope we're on, and how deep she's fallen, and how much there's left to lose?

I roll over onto my side, staring at the picture-plastered wall.

Maybe it's better if Eleni leaves.