well raised and highkey!canon
timeline: post-Prague, pre-Naples by a few months
The call comes just past midnight.
Most of the time—correction, all of the time—he would ignore such a call. If someone is stupid enough to try and reach him at this hour, that's their business and mistake to make. Why should he care for stupidity of others?
Especially when he has urgent reports to read and prepare for a meeting tomorrow. He is to attend this meeting on his father's behalf due to his...slipping health.
There is a change in the air, Santino can detect it and taste it. He knows Gianna is the same. She's pulling her own strings and making her own preparations.
Camorra is on a brink of a revolution once again and he and his sister are at the helm of it.
However, only one name could ever distract him from his family—only one and he lowers his wine glass for upon spotting it.
Dropping his pen on the documents carelessly, Santino picks up the phone at the second ring.
"Cara mia," he greets with a slight twitch of his lips and leans back in his leather seat. "So lovely to hear from you."
He tries to imagine you—wherever the Russian might have sent you away—and wonders what horizon you are observing. Outside, the bay of Naples glows in the pale moonlight through the partially opened balcony doors.
A rattling, shallow breath echoes in his ear and his slight smile crumbles as he sits up, pressing the phone closer.
"Where are you?" he demands softly. "Are you injured?"
But you were. You've been doing well. No relapses, slow but steady progress since Chicago. Fewer nightmares, more genuine smiles. He barely checks in with Winston anymore, and the last time he did has been as awkward and as stilted as all the times before it but necessary.
She's doing well. There was the Casablanca incident but it was harmless. She's stronger now. I think she's finally starting to let it go.
Casablanca has been a small setback—more worry that it was worth because you were fine. When he tracked you down, you had clung to him, arms around his shoulder and soft pants against his neck.
He had chewed out the manager who sat through it all with gritted teeth and pinched expression—apparently your newest friend, and he couldn't help but wonder how you always win loyalty so damn easily in a world where none is given.
Still, he's Camorra heir and she was a newly appointed manager who did not need an enemy. A smart woman if not a highly unpleasant one.
You had needed him though.
Didn't allow anyone else to touch you or help you, and through the uncomfortable roll of something he didn't dare to acknowledge as worry in his chest, shone something close to...happiness.
He's been hated, cursed, scorned.
Never needed—not genuinely. Not without deals or favours or expectations. Not with a sleepy smile and crinkling of eyes as he helped you to bed.
A vast difference to what he witnessed in Chicago.
An emptiness still but softer this time. More bearable.
"Water?" he guesses, tense. "Is it getting bad again, cara?"
Santino is not quite sure which question you're responding to but it doesn't matter.
"Where are you?" he urges, trying to keep his tone calm. Patience, as you always remind him with a judicious grin, is not his strong point. "Tell me where you and I'll send Ares with the jet, amore. She can pick you up and you can stay with me for a few days, hm? Or New York, whichever you prefer."
Somewhere safe. Somewhere where this won't be used against you.
He feels like punching something. He should call the old man now, warn him. Winston has...something with you that Santino doesn't quite understand. It's an odd bond but you trust the man and Winston has proven that he...cares.
"No. Can you..." you breathe and he steps from behind the desk, marching towards the balcony. He needs fresh air—your voice— "Could you...just...stay on the phone with me, Santi?"
He hates the fact that even now you calling him that makes lightness bloom in his chest.
He has a mountain of work to get through but your voice—
Tiny and scratchy with pain. He doesn't hear tears and feels selfishly grateful for it because he can't imagine not tearing the world apart to find you if he did. See with his own eyes that you will be fine. It's only been three weeks since he's last seen you but it feels like an eternity now.
"Of course, amore," he reassures and steps into the warm Italian night air, running his hand through his hair. He swallows, listening to your unsteady, slow breaths through the line. "Are you counting?"
"Ah, that's my girl," it slips out before he can control it, and he rushes ahead before you can comment, "Keep doing that, bella. Would you like me to talk?"
Another breath, steadier this time. "Please."
He's imagined plenty of scenarios in which you may use that word with him but none of them involving this damned pain.
"My birthday is in a few months," he says conversationally, forcing the loftiness into his words, but his fingers keep flexing against the railing. He stares out towards the sea and wonders where in this wide, wicked world you are. How long it may take to reach you. After Tokyo, every time something goes wrong, he's always intimately aware of the particular disadvantage that is you still being on Tarasov's chain. "I am planning a party. Would you care to come? As my honour guest, of course. Perhaps my plus one as well, yes?"
That dream of you beside him.
One day soon you will be free of Tarasov and after that—
Oh, after that. He has every intention of offering you a place in his family, beside him.
His father's reign is coming to an end and one day he will sit at the very top.
The Camorra crown will sit on his head and he will spill all the blood needed to get it.
And when he's Head you will be free.
Even if it means shredding Viggo Tarasov and his family to pieces. Slowly. For all he's done.
He leans over the railing, his fingers rubbing against his temple.
"Good, amore. How are you? Do you need anything?"
Because he never knows what to expect or what he can do to help with this.
It's uncomfortable and pitiful to admit his lack of know-how when it comes to these matters. He doesn't understand your demons, not really. He tries but fails most of the time.
Caring is exhausting. But it's you.
A muffled rustling, and then he hears your voice clearer like you're speaking right into the receiver, "Would you stay with me?" you half-ask and half-plead and it's like a kick to the chest. One of your blade between his ribs. Sinking deeper, deeper, deeper— "On the phone till I fall asleep. Please, Santi."
You are so very, very dangerous.
"You don't need to ask, (Name)."
He's only returning the favour, he reasons, for back when you stayed with him on the phone as he rang you drunk and in need of company. He's never had someone before he could trust with grief.
He's only returning the favour, he forces himself to repeat.
Like that might change the fact that you could ask him anything with that subdued need in your voice and he would give you everything.
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