Dark Soul Vol. 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

he just never showed any of it.
    “Yes, please. Just espresso. No milk.”
    Franco set about making two more coffees, placed one down before Stefano, hands as steady as death. He glanced up, and Stefano felt that odd twinge in his chest—and, granted, deeper—at the gaze.
    Those eyes knew . Dark green as the jungle, or a tropical storm at sea.
    “Thank you.” Stefano placed the cup in the center of a triangle he formed with thumbs and first fingers. “Right, I’ll wait until you settle.”
    Franco sat down at the table. The tiny cup in his long bony fingers looked like a toy more than something containing a beverage. “Is this the debrief?”
    “Well. Is there anything I need to know about the kills?”
    Franco shrugged. “The less you know the better. That way they can’t catch you with insider knowledge.”
    “There’s that.” Stefano shrugged. “Any loose ends that need tying off?”
    “All done. Silvio even saved the priest.” Franco glanced at his brother, who shrugged.
    “Killing priests is bad luck, even an Orthodox one,” Silvio murmured, clearly repeating an argument they’d had before the bomb exploded. “The cops are going to be interested in it, so we’re not doing much of anything. Hey, Franco and I did a year’s work in a month, so I think we could even take a break.”
    Counting bodies in yearly averages. As sinister as it might have sounded to an outsider, with Silvio it was playful. “Sure. If you guys want to go to Hawaii to relax . . .” He left that hanging, because of course he didn’t want to see them leave again, not so soon. Not ever, if he could prevent it. But how.
    “Only if you’re coming,” Silvio drawled, still perfectly relaxed.
    Stefano almost laughed at the tone; Silvio’s more European vowels had flattened to what he probably thought sounded American. As easily as he changed to female, he was shit with accents.
    Franco’s lips twitched, but his attention was on his empty cup.
    “I can’t just up and go.” Not with Augusto and the capos playing power games, and when were they ever not? “And where I’m going, Donata’s going.” Man and wife. All the big promises from the day of the two-hundred-guests party and her wrapped in off-white silk and lace, diamonds and pearls around her throat. And him the luckiest, happiest man alive. And what had he made of it?
    “There’s that,” Silvio said, matter-of-factly, and sat up. He looked undecided for a moment, then stood. “I’ll take the bike for a spin.
    Missed the curvy roads through the cliffs. That’s driving, not the shit we had before.”
    The “Be careful” died on Stefano’s lips when Silvio shot him a dark, feral glance and all but rushed out of the kitchen.
    Franco looked after him, then fixed his gaze on Stefano. “Always let him go when he’s like that.”
    “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to get between him and his next adrenaline rush.”
    Franco’s lips quirked. “He’s just getting rid of the energy. Racing does it. I sometimes think he’ll end up like James Dean, wrapped around a tree. I don’t think he’d mind.”
    For a man of so few words, those were a lot of words. And an image Stefano really didn’t need. “So, for your help . . . Money’s really no issue. I could set you up nicely for a while, and you work out where you’re going to take your life.”
    “Buying me time to think?” Franco lifted his shoulders. “I can always live off the land.” Like a hermit, out in the wilderness. As a sniper, he’d been trained to do that. Be invisible, eat whatever grubs and roots he could find. Franco, becoming one with a tree, sleeping stretched out on a branch, watchful and silent like any other predator.
    They’d de-civilized him in the Legion, Stefano imagined, and Franco might have realized he liked it that way. That self-sufficiency, that wanting for nothing, that complete independence was something Stefano envied bitterly.
    If he could live like that, too, what would he do with