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Lorenzo sinks further into the shadows of the janitor’s closet, running a reassuring hand over the safety of his gun. He’s waited so patiently for the hallway to quiet for the evening, crouched among bottles of bleach and mops that smell like sewer water. Soon, none of that will matter.
Tonight he will get his revenge.
Rumor has it that the Theerapanyakul bastard has survived three shots to the chest and a head injury. Stubborn little cockroach. Though he supposes there’s a silver lining - it means Lorenzo can finish him off himself, watch the life drain from his eyes as he bleeds out on the linoleum like a dog. It’ll be a small punishment for the way he’d humiliated and killed his boss, for killing so many from their family.
Once upon a time, Boss Damiano was everything Lorenzo had - the only father he’s ever known. Vegas Theerapanyakul had taken that away from him. Now, unguarded and separated from his family, Lorenzo intended to make him pay for that pain with his life. Any minute now he will -
The last thing Lorenzo hears is the metallic sound a blade makes as it cuts through the air. The last thing he feels is pain across his throat. And then?
Nothing.
*
Pete curses inside his head as he hauls the body across the tiled floor. This one is heavy - muscles packed densely across his tall frame - and it’s taking all of his power and concentration to keep it steady and not make too much of a mess with the blood that’s still spilling sluggishly from the cut across the jugular. He’s never been as grateful for Chan’s harsh conditioning regime.
It’s lucky that the hallway to the coroner is quiet this time of night. Pete swipes a stolen keycard through the reader and walks into a dimly lit room. It’s cold in the coroner’s offer, and there’s an eerie sort of silence. There’s little danger here that he isn’t confident he can deal with, but he’s tense anyway. All the time he uses up disposing of the bodies means that Vegas and Macau are left undefended a few floors above, and that makes him nervous.
It takes a few moments for him to strip the body. The laces on the expensive Italian suit are complicated and his hands are slippery with blood. He memorizes the make and the model for a calmer time when he’ll be able to cross-reference it with a list of all of Vegas’s enemies, but it’s unimportant right now, expensive leather thrown into the garbage disposal with everything else. The John Doe tag will get the body out of the hospital. The deception won’t be uncovered until it arrives at the crematorium and by then the bureaucracy will stall it enough that it won’t be Pete’s problem anymore.
The hallway takes longer to clean up. He tamps down on the panic urging him to run to Vegas’s side and slips into a state of focus. It’s the same state that allowed him to survive Chan’s training and several volts of electricity running through his veins. The only reason he’s survived some of his father’s harsher beatings. Right now, it means that he can do what he must without making mistakes that will cost him down the line.
The confines of the hospital have forced Pete to be more creative in the tools he uses. A gun is out of the question, too loud even with the silencer on. The scalpel is lovely, nice and sharp, and meant to cut through skin and sinew, but it makes such a terrible mess cutting through the main artery, and sticking it through the eye is a slow way to die. Pete will have to stick to spools of surgical steel or his own hands from now on. Way back when he was still new to the family, he saw Chan break someone’s neck with his bare hands. It looked fun, but he’s not sure he’s got the arm strength to pull it off.
Pete breathes a sigh of relief at the empty hallway that leads to Vegas’s room. Inside the hospital room, it’s quiet except for Macau’s breathing and the steady beat of Vegas’s heart monitor.
Vegas is awake.
It never gets old, watching Vegas’s gaze as it focuses on him. The interplay of emotions as he recognizes that it’s Pete he’s looking at. Pete can’t believe that he used to think that Vegas was so indecipherable. Right now, his eyes are the windows to his soul, love shining through like a beacon. It’s addictive. It's like being given food after starving for so long. Pete can’t get enough of it.
Vegas is a little hazy from the pain medication but after a moment, his eyes focus and narrow. “You’re hurt,” he croaks out, something close to terror entering his gaze, “you’re bleeding.”
His heart monitor starts to beep more frequently and Pete hurries to his side, grasping for his outstretched hand. “Don’t fuss, I’m fine,” he says softly, manipulating Vegas’s fingers so they’re cupping his cheek. “The blood isn’t mine.”
Vegas frowns, but his heartbeat starts to even out into a more natural rhythm. It takes a lot for him to coordinate his fingers to wipe the small bloodstain off Pete’s cheek. It’s kind of adorable, how focused he is. Pete will have to be more careful to clean himself up properly next time. He’d hate for Vegas to worry.
“Are they coming for me?” Vegas asks as if echoing his thoughts. Pete’s smile turns fond. Even riddled with bullet holes and on several milligrams of morphine, Vegas is still so sharp.
They’ve come for Vegas - the Italian man with a wound like a smile across his jugular; the Russian boy that died so slowly with a scalpel in his brain; the Chinese woman who choked quietly on surgical wire; and even a man that Pete had trained personally some years ago. He hadn’t taken his lessons to heart - he died easier than the rest. Korn should have known better.
“It’s nothing you have to worry about,” Pete says and feels his grin twist into something feral. “I’ll protect you. You and Macau both.”
Because for all that Vegas had called him his pet, Pete is hardly a spoiled lapdog. He’s a barely tamed wolf, ready to rip apart everyone who threatens what’s rightfully his .
Vegas’s fingers ghost across his cheek in a caress, a quiet acceptance. Pete allows himself to lean into it, letting his warmth chase away some of the chill that settles into his bones when Vegas isn’t in his line of sight. It’s been a hard couple of days.
“Stay,” Vegas rasps out, and Pete opens eyes he’s involuntarily closed to meet his gaze. “Sleep.”
If it were an order, Pete would be able to ignore it. But it’s not. It’s a tone he’s heard only once before, edged with terrifying resignation when Vegas had looked up at him and named him his executioner. That was before Pete knew what it felt like to lose him. Before he knew what the world looked devoid of color. Before his body learned what it felt like to be so terribly cold.
He can ignore an order, but he can’t deny Vegas anything he asks like this.
So he curls up in the chair next to his bed, his head resting in the palm of Vegas’s hand, familiar gun callouses against the thin skin of his cheek. He doesn’t sleep. He suspects he won’t be able to until he empties out the rest of his savings and gets them an apartment he can turn into a fortress. With Vegas and Macau safe behind ten alarms and twenty booby traps, and sitting on a veritable hoard of ammunition, only then will Pete be able to sleep through the night.
Right now, he drifts, in a place between wakefulness and sleep that’s mostly restful. He doesn’t stir until several hours later when a nurse comes in to check on Vegas.
A minute later, he’s choking the life out of her with his bare hands because he caught her trying to inject poison into Vegas’s IV line. Macau barely stirs through the commotion but Vegas is awake, his dark eyes lucid as he takes in the scene.
Nobody has ever looked at him the way Vegas does. Like Pete is something precious, something terrifying, something infinitely desirable. Pete hides the monsters within behind a bright smile and soft words, but with Vegas, there’s nothing he has to hold back. He lets Vegas see - all the jagged, ugly, deadly parts of himself. The part of him that’s ruthlessly proud to see the life flow out of the twitching body in his arms.
The look he gets back makes him burn from the inside out. Vegas looks awed .
“The things I’ll do to you when I get out of this bed,” Vegas says softly in the ensuing silence.
I’ll make you burn, his gaze seems to promise. I’ll ruin you. I’ll make you forget your own name.
Face burning, Pete leans over to trace the path of a tear across his cheek with fingers that are still cold from the woman’s rapidly cooling body. It’s a promise. The smile that stretches across Vegas’s face could fuel Pete through another hundred murders.
*
It’s not yet dawn as Pete steals through the hospital corridors with a body wrapped in spare linen cradled almost tenderly in his arms. Several flights of stairs above him, Vegas is in his hospital room. Pete will return to him quickly. In the meantime, hidden in the folds of his bedding and cradled in his beloved hand, is Pete’s favorite gun. A placeholder.
Beneath his skin, the monster is still and quiet, fed by blood and Vegas’s smile. It’s the closest to the surface that Pete has allowed it to be since the night he murdered his father. It feels good. It feels right.
Once Vegas and Macau are safe, Pete will revert to his soft, tender, clumsy self, only revealing the void within himself to Vegas’s demanding gaze.
But until then?
Anyone that walks into the hospital intending to hurt what is his won’t be walking out of it alive.