Page 110 of Filthy Little Fix

"Give me one good reason," Dante replies, his voice low. He doesn't look at me.

I take another step. I touch the small of his back, feel the expensive fabric of his suit against my palm. He allows it. Unmoving, as if the touch were natural and I could touch him at any time.

Sal watches this. Confusion meets his hope, forming a strange dossier of hyperventilation.

"He's been inside their newest systems," I whisper. I lean against him. "He knows the architecture, the protocols, andmaybe some passwords they're too lazy to change. Leave him to me. I'll turn him into a weapon we can point right back at them." I slide my hand further up his back. "Dead men can't talk."

Dante is quiet. It's a long moment, and Sal looks like he's about to faint, closer with every second.

Then, slowly, the gun begins to lower. Not all at once. Millimeter by millimeter.

The hope on Sal's face is an ugly, desperate thing. When the barrel of the pistol finally points to the floor, Sal collapses into a sob of relief.

"Thank you," he chokes out, "thank you, thank you, oh God, thank you…"

"My boy thinks you're still good for something, Sal. Take a good look at him," Dante says. "He's your guardian angel now. You'd better pray he keeps finding you useful."

My boy.I have to bite the inside of my cheek hard to keep from moaning right here, in front of everyone. He's claiming me and it's fucking paradise. I lean in a little more, pressing myself against Dante's back, and Sal sobs, nodding way too fast.

"I-I will be, Mr. Volkov, thank you, thank you, thank?—"

A bang. An explosion of gunpowder.

The sound of the gunshot is deafening. I hear a sharp ringing, my body contracts and aches from the shock, and Sal screams an ugly, primitive, pained scream. I didn't see what happened. Only the result: the smoke rising from the barrel of Dante's pistol, Dante holding it with a horrifying calm, and Sal's left hand, which had been tied to the armrest, transformed into a ruined mass of blood and bone. The bullet lodges in the armrest of the chair. It almost goes through.

"Shut the fuck up," Dante says. "Let's make sure you never touch anything of ours again."

He doesn't even wait. He points the pistol at Sal's intact hand, and before Sal can beg him not to, he fires.

Sal's mind, his talent, his only use in this world… it all passed through his fingers. The code he wrote, the systems he hacked, the betrayal he committed. His entire identity was at the tips of his ten fingers, which no longer exist.

I lift my gaze from the disaster that was Sal's hands and look at Dante. He is holstering the weapon, impassive. His calm after an act of such intimate and calculated brutality…

I have never wanted a man so much in my entire life.

Dante turns, and I'm forced to let him go. I didn't want to. He turns his back on the man writhing in the chair and addresses Luca, who watches us with a stone-like expression.

"Take him to our doctor and stop the bleeding. Keep this piece of shit alive. The boy wants him for work."

Luca nods and moves to obey, gesturing for another guard near the door to help him lift the man who is now just a sobbing, bloodied deadweight of flesh.

Dante's attention turns completely to me.

"You," he commands. "With me."

He turns and walks toward the door. I follow him, one step behind, exactly where I belong.

The pain in my ribs is a distant throb now.

We walk down the stairs and corridors past the silent guards who pretend not to see us. He guides me with a certainty that makes me want to melt. I could follow him anywhere.

We stop at my temporary room—the same one a doctor shoved a needle into my arm. He opens the door and gestures inside with his chin. I step in. He doesn't.

"Don't leave until I tell you to," he orders. "Luca will come by later."

I want Dante to come in. To lock the door, to lay his hands on me. Tohurtme.

"Aren't you staying with me, mister...? You blew a guy's hands off in front of me. You should comfort me."