She slapped him and he didn’t flinch. She slapped him again and he took it. Two more times. Four slaps. Her jaw set firm, her soft eyes gone hard, staring into his. He knew why. He took it because he knew. She slapped him one time for every year he was gone.

“Four years,” Rocco, she whispered, her voice trembling on the verge of a cry.

He rubbed his chin into his shoulder, his thick hair hanging coiled between them, bobbing over his forehead.

“Four fucking years,” she repeated, but her hand came back and she soothed his cheek, her delicate hand going up and down his growing stubble.

She was in his arms now and that was all that mattered. His cock was still inside her, dwindling finally. They were sated for the moment, but it wouldn’t be too long before she’d want him again. It wouldn’t be long before she got him hard and they were rolling all over this bed. She was sweating, he was sweating, his skin was wet against her, hot and flushed. His steely arms held her, one big hand under her back, she could feel the size of it under her, supporting her, the tips of his fingers pressing in. His other arm curved underneath her, his grip on her shoulder. He felt so strong, he made her feel so soft, so safe. Her hands went up his back now, feeling all the muscles there, just like he was when she was twenty-two and he meant the world to her.

She said, “You were gone. Out of my life. I thought you were dead, Rocco. Now you’re here...it’s too much for me to...”

“I know,” he said. “It’s too much. I want to hold you forever.”

“Are you going to disappear on me again?”

“Never,” he said and he kissed her. There was a swelling inside her, his cock pushing against her walls as he took her lips again.

“Mm,” she said around his kiss and she put her hands to his chest and gently pushed him.

“Rocco,” she said, “wait. I…I—”

“I won’t disappear, Daniella. Someone wants you dead and I’m going to find out who.”

“Why me?”

“What were you doing at the meeting?” he said.

“Mn,” she grimaced and she wiggled away from his cock, felt it squirt out of her and it made her gasp in its cold absence. She smoothed her folds, and he lay to her side, his hand stroking hair out of her eyes. “Ow,” she sighed, then said, “I’m...Papa wanted me to replace him.”

“You, huh?” he said flatly.

She said, “You don’t think I could do it?”

“You can do whatever you set your mind to, Daniella. I know you.”

She had a sharp-tongued response ready. How she didn’t know him, but she swallowed it. That was over. They were together again. She bit her lip, sat up and pulled the sheets to cover her middle and her hanging breasts. “I was there to say I would take over. I would rule the Nero Syndicate.”

She turned to see him frowning, staring at her still bare parts, his hand rubbing her back.

“What?” she said. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” he said.

“All your recon or whatever, you didn’t know? ...”

“They don’t hand out a schedule. I didn’t have a lot of time anyway.”

He was laying next to her on his side, head in the pillow and she let herself fall into his arms and he held her, her head now in the space between his shoulder and his neck. She stared at the ceiling.

“You write that message in the stall?”

“Don’t scream?”

“Yeah.”

“I did.”

“How’d you know which stall I’d go to?”

“I wrote it in all of them.”

“Ah,” she laughed. “How’d you know I’d have to pee?”

His hand opened up and she placed hers in it. He put his fingers through hers again and he held her. She looked at how small her hand was in his.

She said, “You gave me something, didn’t you?”

“You’ll be fine.”

“What did you give me?” she said, twisting against him to look him in the eye. He wouldn’t look at her, just stared at her hand in his. “Rocco? ...”

“Ginseng.”

“Ginseng makes you pee?”

He shrugged, stifled a smile. “Ginseng and something else.”

“What is it?”

“It’s safe. You’ll be okay. It’s...I don’t know what the fuck it is...it’s Mexican, has a picture of a horse on the box...I just know it works...”

“You gave me...horse medicine?”

His face stayed wooden, avoiding her eyes. “I guess...”

“You can laugh,” she said, and she saw a relief pass through him and he let his smile lift his cheeks.

“It hurt so bad,” she whispered and lay her ear against his chest.

“It kept you alive,” he said and squeezed her.

“What if it had been one of the others you had to kill?”

“What would I do? I had different plans.”

“Different plans?”

“Eight different plans.”

“Eight... What if it was... What if it was Papa Joe?”

“That’s who the horse meds were for. He’s got that prostate thing. He can’t hold it like the others can.”

“Okay...Tony T?”

“Tony T?” He set her aside and took his hand back, slipped down to sit at the foot of the bed and she watched the muscles of his wide back work as he lifted his jacket from the floor and pulled things out of his coat pocket. He tossed her shoes to the floor and she giggled that she’d made him carry them. He heard her laughing and he said, “Your shoes?”

“Yeah,” she chuckled.

“You and your fuckin’ shoes,” he laughed too.

He pulled two phones from his pocket and tossed one to the floor, brought the other up and lay with her again, let her settle onto his chest again. He flipped through screens and he showed her a picture of a woman baring her breasts.

“Rocco,” she chastised.

“I’d send him that message.” She looked again, saw the woman pressing her bare tits together like a slut. She said, “Who’s that? ...His goomah?”

He said, “Better—his goomah’s younger sister. He’s crazy about her.”

“Ah,” she laughed. “Taboo love.”

“See the tattoo?” The woman had a compass star on her forearm. “He’d know it was her, she…I…woulda texted him from the bathroom for a blow job.”

“He wouldn’t turn that down.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

He tossed the phone off the bed and kissed the top of her head.

“Rocco, someone wants to kill me and we don’t know who. What do we do?”

“Do?” he said. He sat up, slipped out of bed and grabbed her, pulled her to him while she laughed and grabbed sheets and gathered them against herself. He lifted her off the bed and tossed her over his shoulder. She giggled and kicked her legs and tried to cover herself with bedding and he slapped her rump where it was exposed and walked her out of the room. “Now we get something to eat. You hungry?”

She laughed, “Yess-ss,” her head over his shoulder watching her hair swing around his perfect ass, watched his cheeks move as he walked her to his kitchen and set her on a stool. She covered herself up with sheets, wrapped them under her arms, crossed her legs like a lady.

He kissed her lips and she sucked on his. He said, “Wine?”

She nodded quickly. She indeed wanted wine.

He moved around the kitchen naked and she could watch this show all day. She leaned back on an elbow, watched him work. The house seemed to be vacant and Rocco was squatting here. There was not much furniture, occasional cardboard boxes stacked neatly against walls...

The house was beautiful. Warm, with honey amber stained timber and plain white dry wall, some of the walls were left in the original stone. The kitchen was modern and clean, marble counter tops and subway tile, expensive stainless appliances. Rocco set two goblets on the marble and uncorked a bottle of wine and poured for both of them.

“Primitivo,” he said, and he clinked his glass to hers. They drank. The wine was needed. She ached, she needed it deadened. She’d skinned her knees, wrenched her back, had her arm seared by a bullet, been fucked into oblivion by a dead man, stared death in the face today and lived... She took a long sip that turned the glass up and she emptied it. She poured herself another while Rocco went to the fridge.

“What is this place?” she said, looking around the dim house, up into the high vaulted ceiling of the kitchen.

“It’s empty, vacant,” he said, his head in the fridge. She watched the bright light spill from it and zip along his hot naked edges, the curves of his muscular thighs, the peak of his bicep as he took out two paper-wrapped bundles. “We’re safe here. It’s rented through...an associate.”

“Associate?”

“Killian. Long story,” he sighed, tossed the packages to the marble and leaned on it and sighed. “Long story,” he repeated. He turned to her then and he held her in his arms, said, “This is going to be your home until we find who hired me.”

She slipped her arms around his waist, said, “Who do you think hired you?”

“Don’t know. Proxy through a proxy. But I will find out. Steak?”

“Steak?”

“You want one?”

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head, “Yeah, I’m starving...”

“We worked up an appetite,” he said. He held her chin and kissed her lips, said, “And we’re just getting started.” Her heart swelled a moment as they kissed and as he turned she steadied herself on the counter, watching him walk to the oven and get out a pan. He moved around, putting the pan on the burner, getting a foil-wrapped brick of butter out of the fridge and putting it on the marble by the stove. He was beautiful. His muscles moved like waves under his tight skin, his drawings squirmed on his muscular arms and that heavy truncheon swung between his legs and bounced off his thighs. He unwrapped the meat, peeling back the butcher’s paper and exposing the glistening bright red flesh of New York strip. Four years. Four fucking years she’d been without him. Her heart was soaring right now but he’d been...alive...that whole time. He’d been living his life without her. Where? Where did he go and who was he with? What did he do? Slowly a malaise settled on her, a heavy woolen blanket around her neck and her shoulders, scratching at her, irritating her.

She drained another goblet of wine and poured herself another.

Rocco was in thought and he lay his hands flat on the counter on either side of the unwrapped meat, his eyes staring blankly across the kitchen. “You didn’t recognize those guys in the stairs?”

“No,” she said coldly, sipping the wine.

“Me neither. Someone brought in outside crews. Brought in me. Brought in killers from who knows where. How many more are there?”

“You could have asked them if you hadn’t killed them.”

“If we had time, I woulda. I woulda made them talk.” His face turned to hers, a slight worried angle to one eyebrow. “You mad I killed them?”

“No,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“They woulda killed you. Any man that would harm you is going to die, Daniella. Someone tried to kill you. I’m going to turn this city upside down and shake em out. Then I’m going to cut their throat and let em bleed out in the street.”

Her malaise turned to dread. She was lost now in a forlorn sea. This was all too real. Her adrenalin was depleted, her passions sated, there seemed nothing left but the sanguine reality. He was going to kill or she was going to be killed. She didn’t want to die and she didn’t want him to die. He could die. He was Rocco and he was scary but he wasn’t invincible.

He held a butcher knife now, dwarfed in his huge hand, still staring absently, still lost in dangerous thought dreaming of slitting someone’s throat. He completed her thought for her.

“Papa Joe, Tony T. That prick Saturn...” he shook his head, chastising the men behind those names, picturing their faces, his brain working overtime to figure which one had ordered her dead. She couldn’t believe it had been any of them. They all knew her as a child. Held her in their arms when she was a baby, been at her christening, attended her birthday parties...

They were hard men. Callous men. But could one of them be that evil? That heartless? But they were men like that. Even her Rocco. He’d loved her. But he was evil enough to walk away from her. Let her fly to Greece and wander the fucking streets. Let her think he was dead. Let her cry herself to sleep every night for practically a fucking year. If her Rocco could be so cruel any one of those men could have ordered her dead.

“Tantalo,” Rocco grumbled. “I’m startin’ with him. You know one time...what he said about your pop, I heard him—”

She said, “Where were you?”

“—say that he wasn’t fit to run...” his worried eyes looked to hers.

“Where were you?” she repeated.

His head hung now, his bulging shoulders thrust up around his ears, his thick hair tumbling over his forehead. He was silent. In a gap in those waves of hanging black hair she could see his lashes blinking as he stared at the slaughtered meat.

“Rocco? ...” she repeated.

He shook his head and those twists of hairs bounced and swung. His hand came up and he swooped it back, smoothed his hair in place, threw his head back and stared at the ceiling now.

She got off her stool and padded in bare feet the two steps to get her right next to his warm body. She kissed his arm, ran her hand up his hard belly and spread it over his chest. Her knee parted her hanging bedsheets and brushed against his.

She whispered, “You wanna save me? You care about me? You care you start right now with the truth, you fucking bastard.”