“She lives in Rome, but we met there.” I told him the whole story. How we met, that she’d just ended her long-term relationship with that little punk-ass bitch, and we spent the whole week together. “She insisted on staying with her friend and says she needs time to heal. So I’ll give her some space.”
“Or maybe she’s just not that into you and is trying to let you down easy.”
The smirk that stretched over my face was instantaneous. “No, she’s into me.”
“Then why would she sleep on someone’s couch instead of in your bed?”
“She’s got to figure her shit out. I get it, it’s fine. She’s gonna go through dick withdrawal at some point, so I’ll hear from her then.” I continued to smile, remembering all the faces she made when she came. She was so pretty when she cried, her tears like diamonds. Or when her face was pressed into the sheets and her makeup stained everything. “I’m not worried about it.”
“What’s her name?”
“Aurelia.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, I like it too.”
“So her last relationship ended a week ago?”
“About.”
“And you want to get involved in that?”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
“Then you must really like her.”
I hadn’t stopped thinking about her. Every time I checked my phone, I hoped her name would be there. The second I got back in town, my regulars had started to hit me up because their dick withdrawal had kicked in before I’d returned to Rome, but my dick didn’t even twitch. There was only one woman I wanted.
But she’d asked for space, and I wouldn’t violate that request. I wouldn’t be the first to make a move when she’d asked me to hit the brakes. I wanted her, but I had too much pride to chase a woman who didn’t want to be chased. If I didn’t hear from her after a couple weeks or a month, then that would be the end of it.
But I was certain it wasn’t the end of it.
The iron gate started to lift. The beaters with bats took their positions around the edges of the coliseum so there was no escape for the prisoners, but of course, they ran out like they always did ... as if there was anywhere else to go.
The music came through the speakers, music that would play over an action-adventure film.
In rags for clothes and covered in dirt from the cells they slept in, they ran forward across the sand, some losing their balance because they tried too hard, too fast. These were the criminals who had been gathered in the last week, those found guilty of rape, murder, and direct violations of the Roman Republic. Not every violation was punished with the same severity, but these men were the worst of the worst, those who chose to hurt innocent people for their own bottom line.
Now, they would be put to death.
“It’s showtime.” I got to my feet and walked down the stairs to the platform over the pit. “For your crimes against the Roman Republic, I give you the opportunity to fight for your freedom—or die.” Forevery prisoner, there was a guard with a bat—but not just any bat, a bat studded with metal shards and nails. A single hit was a death blow. “Let the games begin.”
Graffiti was a big problem in Rome. Assholes decided they had the right to stain our Roman history, and one of our agendas was to erase those marks from our beautiful city. President Barsetti couldn’t do much other than enforce the law, which threw those assholes in jail for a couple of months before they were out on the streets again, doing the same shit.
Because Roman history was my history, I took that pretty fucking personally.
So, we stationed our men at all the main monuments, and whenever they caught someone, they smashed their faces into the cobblestones and forced them to eat the paint from the bottles. Most of them ended up in the hospital, and word had spread that the Roman Republic would come for anyone who tried that shit again.
Graffiti in the city had dropped exponentially. President Barsetti was happy, the locals appreciated it, and I defended the work of my ancestors. We paid for a cleanup team out of our own pockets to scrub all the paint off the walls and to carefully restore the stone.
Rocco and I approached the square of the Pantheon, one of the oldest and fully intact monuments that had survived all the ages. The Roman Forum contained pieces of our history, but that’s all they were—pieces.
But the Pantheon remained.
We stopped and examined the side wall, the area that had been riddled with different-colored paint and gang symbols, marking this beautiful piece of history. Now, all of that was gone.
The stone had been restored.
