Adriano Rossi
The knife slides cleanly through the deer’s belly, cutting along the pubic bone. It’s a good deer, fifteen hands with short horns. It’s late in the day to be field dressing, but the deer wandered up to the cabin to drink from the stream and when life hands you those shots, you take them. The bullet wound in my side stings as I work, but I ignore it. It’ll heal eventually. Everything does. When Parker’s shot only grazed my head, I wasn’t surprised. I survive while the people around me die. It’s always been that way.
The afternoon sun ruffles the stream, making it spark silver and gold. I stop dressing the deer and watch it. The others can think I’m unreasonable all they want, but this place is my home now.
It’s only when I’m out here that the hard music in my head fades away. It’s where I can sleep, where I can breathe without feeling like concrete is pressing on my skull. I only left the forests of Italy to help my brothers build our business and avenge our loved ones. While Parker lived, I needed to be in the world. That’s not true anymore. Soon the contract will be signed and the vengeance I’ve dedicated my life to will be null and void. It stings, but only until I remember the girl. Her cameo pale body beneath mine, her green eyes pleading for everything I could never give her.
It’s a fair price, my revenge for her safety. And living here is a compromise I’m willing to make. I have enough money to stay here for a hundred years. To let time become as meaningless as the rest of my life. The girl will marry Eli or Bobby, and Doc will manipulate the situation to suit him somehow. And I’ll hunt and fish and watch the leaves change color.
The others can compete for the girl’s heart. I only want to watch from a distance and think about her.
I turn and look through the trees that lead to Velvet House. There are more remote places, but I don’t need to strike out into the wilderness and get shot by some asshole sport hunter. I’m comfortable here. I’m near my friends. Near her. On still nights I’ll hear music coming from the house, laughter and parties and all the shit Eli loves. And one day I’ll hear her children playing on the grounds and that won’t be so bad either. They won’t be mine. But I can imagine.
I cut the hide away from the abdominal lining, lifting it so I don’t nick the stomach. The meat won’t be ready until tomorrow but there’s no reason why I can’t—
“Adriano?”
The voice is as soft and sweet as the sunshine in the water. I remember her gasps as I licked the soft petals of her cunt. The way she came on my face, grinding her hips as hard as she could, both hating and craving the release I could give her. I’ve dreamed about her coming to find me. Pumped my cock to thoughts of her climbing onto me in the dark. ‘Please, I need it. I can’t sleep without you.’
I turn.
She’s too beautiful to be real. Too small and slim. Her skin statue white, her dark hair pouring down her shoulders. She should be an oil painting hanging in some museum, but she’s real. I know because there’s always movement. The light glinting off her green eyes, her small hands knotting at her sides. She stands there in a floaty white dress and sneakers, rocking back and forth as though she expects me to come after her with the knife in my hand. The thought stirs my blood. I could hold it to her throat and take her, fuck her until she screams my name. Breed her sweet body with my child so that when her stomach curves and her skin glows, I’ll know I’ve made myself a part of her.
“Adriano? Is it okay that I’m visiting you?”
I watch her worry her plush lower lip with her teeth. She’s terrified, but I can see her tits through her dress and her nipples are hard.
I get to my feet, bloody knife still in my hand. The girl’s pupils dilate, and I think of the unknowing deer drinking by the stream an hour ago. An innocent creature I killed because I could. Because I wanted to.
“You still scared of me?”
She shakes her head. Little liar.
The afternoon she tried to seduce me, she was terrified, too. The thought of it brings the scent of grappa and clean skin to my mind. We were in my bed, her body under mine, and she was panting and telling me to take her innocence. To rip it open and make it mine. And I wanted to, my cock was so hard it felt like the only real part of me, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t corrupt her. Couldn’t take something offered in desperation.
“Is your side feeling better?” she asks.
I continue drinking in the sight of her in the dappled afternoon sun. The most beautiful thing in my favorite place. January Whitehall.
In another life, we’re lovers. I’d lie back and tell her to hurt me. To use her fists and teeth and nails. To give me everything she has. I’d feel the stinging little blows and watch it dawn on her pretty face that she can never protect herself against me, but that I will never again use my strength to harm her. But that experience belongs to some other place and time. She’ll always be mine, but I gave up the pleasure to use her when I gave up my right to kill Zachery Parker. She belongs to Velvet House now.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “Go back to the house.”
She stares at my middle and when I glance down, I see my T-shirt is covered in blood and hair. I look like an animal. A killer. Heat spreads across my face. I never realized how cold my baseline is until I see her and everything scorches hot. “Go.”
She doesn’t move. “You gave Zia’s daughters money.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” My voice is raspy from disuse. I clear my throat.
“I just wanted to say thanks. Zia’s daughters paid for a wonderful funeral and now they can put money aside for college funds or whatever they need. Their lives are changed forever because of you.”
“Their lives were already changed because of me.”
The girl’s face falls. “I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
I squat beside the deer, and resume cutting its abdomen.
“Mr. Parker was always going to punish me for ruining our wedding,” she says. “He told me in the limousine. Even if you hadn’t taken me to the hospital, he wouldn’t have let her survive.”
I cut away the hide, careful not to damage it. I don’t need Parker explained to me by a child. Especially since he’ll walk free now. Live a long, profitable life making hell for anyone who crosses his path.
“Adriano…?” Her voice is closer. She’s closer. “Can I help you?”
For a second I think she means emotionally, then I look at the knife in my hand. “Help cut up a dead deer?”
“Yes.”
I turn and look at her. I expect to see nervousness, but there’s just mild curiosity. “Why?”
“Butchering is an important part of the cooking process,” she says as though we’re in school and a teacher just called on her.
I look at the animal. The thing is half her size. “You’ll fuck up your dress.”
“I’m sure Eli will get me another one.”
I don’t know why I do it. Maybe some crazed loneliness, or her beauty, or just the cool clear afternoon. I turn the knife and hand it to her, handle first.
She takes it eagerly, crouching beside me. “What should I do?”
“Hold it firmly,” I hear myself say. “If you cut yourself, it’s your own fucking fault.”
She doesn’t flinch as I guide her hand, showing her how to slice upward through the hide so you don’t get hair on the meat and avoid the stomach and lower colon. She’s not strong enough to saw through the pelvic bone so I take over, slicing the deer wide and pulling the guts into a bucket to throw away. I cut out the heart and liver, tossing them onto a clean patch of grass. January watches in fascination as I wash the deer’s insides with river water then string it up along a tree branch.
“Aren’t you going to pull off all the hair and cut out the venison?” she asks.
“No. You need to leave it for at least a day, so the rigor mortis wears off and the meat goes soft.”
She looks away. I’m sure the phrase rigor mortis made her think of dead people. Probably the ones I’ve killed.
Good. Run away and leave me alone.
Without something to do, I’m far too aware of her body, her breasts, her lips, her shy smile. She only came here to thank me. Whatever happens, I will not reveal any more of myself to this girl.
She stands and wanders closer to the water. “Did someone teach you to hunt?”
“No.”
She toes off one of her white sneakers. “You taught yourself?”
“No.”
“Then how…?”
“The men who worked for Eli’s Nonno hunted boar. Sometimes, I went with them.”
Not that they wanted me to come. I was big and young, and I was an outsider. I barely spoke Italian and what I knew I confused with English and Ukrainian. Doc told me they’d shoot me in the back of the head when I wasn’t looking, but they didn’t. They let me camp with them. As I began to bring down boar and red stag and roe deer, they stopped laughing at me. Instead, they passed me bottles of homemade grappa, the glass already blurry with greasy fingerprints.
The girl is looking at me and I sense her curiosity and longing. I might not be the only one remembering our turn in my bed. But what the fuck am I supposed to do about that? Invite her into my cabin? Give her flowers or kisses or whatever the fuck normal men do?
She shifts her weight, pushing off her other sneaker then bending to pull off her sock.
“What are you doing?”
She blinks at me. “Cooling off.”
“I told you, you’ll ruin your dress.”
She smiles sweetly and then in a long, heart-stopping moment, pulls the floaty material over her head.
She’s naked underneath, her porcelain skin shimmering in the sun. My mouth dries over. “Are you fucked in the head?”
She moves toward the water, her ass swaying in a confusing mix of the refined and the erotic. “I don’t know, maybe?”
She steps into the stream, gasping at how cold it is. I wait for her to dive, my cock hard against my leg, but she turns in a slow circle. “It’s so nice.”
I can’t talk. I can’t blink. I can’t move.
She scoops up a palmful of crystal water and splashes it across her breasts. My head squeezes like it’s in a vise. “I don’t have anything to dry you with.”
“That’s okay, I can use my dress.”
The fading sunlight dots the stream with flecks of gold. They dance around January Whitehall like they’re drawn to her. But of course, they are. Everything bright should be.
She raises her arms above her head and turns in a half-circle, humming a song that’s almost familiar. Then she lowers her arms and lifts a leg, diamond droplets clinging to her shoulders. She’s dancing for me. Dancing the way she used to dance in her ballet studio when I was pretending to be a janitor. Only now she’s not in leggings and a leotard, she’s naked in every way she can be.
She holds her hands in front of herself and then spins. Our eyes meet for just a second and I understand. She’s thanking me, letting me watch without having to touch. Without having to force things or hurt her the way I would if we fucked.
That’s another reason I didn’t take her virginity. Fear that I’d break the honey sweetness that radiates from every inch of her. But like this… with her in the water, I can’t get to her, and I don’t want to.
I sit on the stream bank and unbuckle my belt. Her ballet outfits were always tight but now I don’t have to imagine her bare tits swaying, the flashes of her pink cunt. I can see it all as she spins for me.
My cock hurts when I take it in my fist. It’s as big and ugly as I am, as marked with scars and tattoos. The girl’s breath catches in her throat as I tug, but she keeps dancing, pretending to be oblivious. We’re both pretending now. I shouldn’t be doing this, I swore I’d let her be happy with my brothers, with some other, less damaged man. But here I am, stroking off to her, letting her see exactly how I feel.
I pull myself tight and fast. I can almost taste her rose-pink nipples, almost feel her sweet breath at my throat. Her dancing slows. She runs her hands over her tits, and I make a guttural sound like a wounded dog. That’s all I am, a filthy beast panting after a beauty I could never possess.
Our eyes meet again, and I look away, pain and lust rising in me like a tide. I disgust myself, but I can’t stop pumping, can’t stop making myself come to her. I think of her on her knees with my gun in her mouth and my balls tighten up.
“More. Keep moving.”
She does. When she danced ballet, she was so scared she’d get something wrong and disappoint her teachers. Now she’s moving like the water around her, rippling like the afternoon sun. In my dreams, she’s always dressed as a ballerina, one leg on the barre as I fuck her. But this is better. This is everything.
I come with a grunt, striping white across my hands. I look up and the treetops spin. Stupid. Reckless.
A whimper makes me open my eyes. The girl is standing stock-still in the water, a hand pressed between her legs. My semi-hard cock pulses. “You liked that, huh?”
She doesn’t say anything, but her head gives the slightest incline. I scrape out a laugh. “Are you gonna rub your little cunt? Show me how much you liked it?”
Her soft lips part and she mumbles something.
“What?”
“Would you… do it for me?”
I look at her, a glowing goddess in the crystal stream. I look at myself, at the mess of cum and scar tissue and ink and deer blood on my hands. “You deserve better, Pryntsesa.”
Pink tinges her pale cheeks. “I like when you call me that.”
For a second I feel my lips curving upward, then my stomach plummets. All at once I feel like I do when I’m in public without a gun. Naked. I turn, wiping my palms on the grass. “You need to leave. Get your slutty dress on and go back to the house.”
The girl’s face falls. She takes her hands away from her pussy. That small sacred place I’ll never corrupt.
“Adriano… Can’t I just like you?”
That twisting feeling in my chest again. Why can’t this girl be bitchier? Why can’t she cry and whine and beg?
I stand, pulling up the fly on my stained hunting pants. “There’s nothing to like.”
“Maybe we just see you differently.”
“Are you fucked in the head? I threatened to kill you a hundred times. I fucked your mouth with a gun. Twice. And I liked it.”
I would have done anything Eli ordered me to do, but when January Whitehall arrived, I wanted to abuse her. I hated her, this princess that had everything—that everyone wanted. I was already coming to thoughts of her every night and now she was in my home, invading my space as well as my head. I wanted to kill her. At least I thought I did.
“I like you,” she says softly. “Under everything, I think you have a good heart.”
I bark out a laugh. “You gonna cure me with your love, little girl?”
She lowers her head, her bare tits shining in the setting sun. I want to find her a towel. I want her to leave and never come back.
“Wake up, Pryntsesa,” I say, striding back to the deer. “I want to shoot a load in you, same as any straight man with eyes, but I’m not some dog you’re gonna train. This is where I belong.”
It’s still too soon to carve the meat but I pick up my knife and slice into the front leg. I want to hurt something that can’t feel. I want to be alone. There aren’t enough intact places inside me for me to love. How can she not see that?
She steps out of the water, brushing her hands across her sides. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she picks up her dress and pulls it over her head. Her movements are exaggerated. She wants me to look. She’s changing already. Living at Velvet House, away from her family and the threat of Parker, there’s something flirtatious to her that wasn’t there before. But I don’t mourn her inexperience. She has an innocence of heart, not body. She’ll always be pure, sweet and soft as a cloud.
When she’s dressed and her shoes are back on her feet, she walks toward me carefully, as if I was a caged bear.
“You bring out this side of me,” she says. “You push me away, or you like… hate me, and it makes me want to try more.”
“It’s because your father is dead,” I say, slicing through the haunch.
I expect her to withdraw, but she gives a small laugh. “Maybe I just like being this girl.”
“What girl?”
She raises a hand to her mouth. “You look at me like I’m magic.”
“You are magic.”
It comes out without me wanting it to, involuntary as blood from a wound. My face burns, the places where the scars are go white as flame. I hack at the deer, sending strips of meat spraying across my chest and feet.
“Can I come visit you?” she asks.
I think of her, curled in my arms. The two of us sleeping under the stars. “Maybe.”
Another soft laugh. “I guess that’s a start. Will you think about coming up to the house for dinner sometime? Maybe seeing the guys?”
“No.”
She sighs. “Adriano, I know you miss your friends.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Only girls have friends? And family? Because that’s what you guys are. Family.”
“Family can fuck up, Pryntsesa.”
She frowns. “Do you mean them or you?”
I say nothing.
“There’s something I’m not seeing. Some reason that you can’t forgive each other that no one wants to admit.”
I think about that night we sat down, the four of us back at Velvet House for the first time since January’s abduction. I remember Eli’s judgement, Bobby’s disappointment, Doc’s mocking smile. I slash at a swell of the deer’s fat, carving it from the meat.
“There’s no bad blood between me and my brothers. But I’m not going to eat at the same table as the men who insulted me.”
Her brow furrows deeper. “What did they say?”
I stop slashing. I know I shouldn’t tell her, but the words are boiling up like poison, the injustice of it. The idiocy. “They said they wouldn’t have done what I did. That they think I was weaker than they would have been.”
January goes still. “You mean taking me to my Zia?”
I raise the knife again. “Yes.”
“They don’t think I could have gotten them to let me go see my Zia?”
There’s a heat in her voice I didn’t expect. An annoyance that makes my lips try to curve again.
“No, Pryntsesa, they don’t think you could have seduced them. They believe I’m more vulnerable to you because I watched you dance all those years.” Because I’m in love with you.
“All of them? Even Bobby?”
“Bobby was the one who said it first.”
Her pretty mouth falls open. “They’re wrong!”
I flick a piece of hide off the knife. “That’s what they think.”
“And what if I can prove they would have let me seduce them?” she says in a hard voice. “What if they admit it?”
I laugh. “They’ll never admit anything. Bobby maybe, but not Eli. And Doc’d cut out his tongue first.”
“I can do it.” Her face shines as she says the words, like a saint on a mission.
I turn my back to her. “Then go.”
“Okay, but I’ll be back. I’ll get them to admit they’re wrong.”
She walks toward the woods, then glances back at me over her shoulder. “Adriano, I know you hate everyone, and you’re mean, but I would like to spend more time with you.”
That damned twisting in my chest. The lightness and heaviness that’s more unbearable than pain. “You’re supposed to choose one of them, Pryntsesa. Not me.”
She flashes me a smile. “Maybe I’ll choose all of you. That’s what you wanted anyway.”
And before I can say anything, she slips through the trees and runs toward Velvet House.