There aren't exactly positive memories associated with my last visit to the Romano mansion.

The good parts—like the wedding, Nina's unexpected friendship, and the evening I spent with Massimo's family—are overshadowed by everything that went wrong that night. And although I've struck up a strained partnership with Santo and Tommaso lately, the gulf that exists between Massimo and his brothers inevitably separates me from them too.

And the secret I'd never breathe a word of? Despite their many faults, the chaos that follows this family like a shadow, the drama and arguments... they kind of steal their way into your heart.

And, if I'm being truly honest with myself, make me long for a place in theirs too.

But walking up to the house underneath the eternally gray sky, Massimo and I are two intruders. Storm clouds hovering over the family's peace—and he looks the part. Wearing a suit, black trench coat, and the most blasé expression I've ever seen, he makes it look like we're going to a funeral.

That feeling of not belonging isn't helped by the fact that we were accosted by security at the gate. They backed off immediately upon recognizing Massimo, pale and stumbling in apology, but the message was clear.

You are on the outside. You are no longer a staple of everyday life here.

And that ever-present, internal nagging voice chimes in, what does that make you then?

There's a spot within me that aches every time I see a family. It's a familiar story that began with my own, growing up navigating a space between two different cultures and identities. Almost able to chameleon myself into belonging, but not quite. I could get along with them, but at the end of the day? Too loud, too flashy, too independent. My mom's side, I identified with their brashness and loud honesty. Think extreme passive aggression, minus the passivity. With my dad's side, that didn't fly. They were all about the hidden meaning behind words and gestures. I liked their dedication to saving face because it passed as harmony and acceptance. Until I realized that only applied to people, careers, decisions they deemed appropriate.

Eventually I realized those parts of myself I thought belonged weren't real. It was the performance of an identity stemming from the pressure to embody one side of my heritage more than the other. And the earth-shattering confusion of realizing I couldn't fully fit with either. Feeling like I let down parts of myself by not being authentically one or the other. 

It went bone deep. Even the color of my skin—brown, but not brown enough. Constantly being questioned, foisted with expectations, asked indirectly to prove who I am. 

Bringing all this shit with me to Massimo's family home? Pathetic, stupid, won't end well. There's enough strife already. But my fractured sense of identity doesn't know how to look at a family without wondering, how can I fit into this one?

As we meet Massimo's brothers inside, the smile on my face even feels plastic.

That smile cracks, shatters, and falls to the floor in a hundred jagged pieces when Tommaso bypasses greeting his older brother to look at me and say, with a blade for a smile, "well, look who it is. My brother's little sidekick who went rogue." He looks me up and down as if inspecting a piece of furniture he's not sure belongs in the room. "You'll do anything to try and belong, won't you?"

I glance at Santo and Massimo across the foyer, locked in an intense conversation which consists mainly of Santo talking into his brother's unresponsive face.

Be calm. No drama.

Tommaso's look curls into something snakelike. Mean, vindictive. Like he savors discomfort and is mad I'm not helping him contribute to it.

"You couldn't even tell the security at the gate we'd be coming?" Massimo interrupts, raising his voice. "That tells me everything I need to know about the care with which you've been running things."

Santo's face falls at the dismissal. Massimo shoulders past him and reaches out an arm for me—which I take gratefully, but does little to reinforce the whole 'us versus them' thing going on.

"I've been following your instruction," Santo rumbles from behind us as we head into the main room. "It's been like running a fucking zoo. Some gratitude would be nice."

Plush couches, soft cream walls, a huge fireplace—the space is as warm and welcoming as I remember. Although, looking around, I'm disappointed to see no sign of Nina. Her sweet presence feels like it would help right about now.

"Vivienne's," Massimo says simply once we've settled on the couch with his palm covering my knee. "You've been following Vivienne's instruction. She's been running things while I was unable."

Slowly, his brothers' heads swivel to stare at me.

"Yes," I glare at Massimo, "and I didn't realize we were going to lead with that."

Massimo leans back, cool arrogance dripping from him. "You did a very good job. There's no reason not to talk about it." He shifts his attention to his brothers. "You know I checked myself into Alpine Meadows. Vivienne saw that someone capable needed to step in and get things done."

That, unfortunately, is much different than: I decided I wanted to die and admitted myself as a way of getting the job done without the part where I let everyone down.

Almost fascinated, I watch the residual effects of his words settle over the brothers. Confusion, hurt, anger. It's the way he communicates things, like he doesn't care about them enough to properly explain. I've been locked in a room with him for forty-eight hours, I know he's been internally agonizing over how he's going to be vulnerable. Some part of him cares, but it comes out in a way that inflames them and further isolates me.

I can see it happening in slow motion—Tommaso winding up to start spewing some bullshit, Santo wrestling with his own anger and the responsibility of managing the debris from whatever grenade Tommaso is about to throw. All under the calm, unmoving gaze of their older brother.

I need to to get the fuck out of here.

Massimo's hand tightens. Beneath the hardness, I see that hidden question. A sliver of vulnerability.

"I'm not going to be here for this conversation," I try to remain level-headed since there's already too much emotion strangling the fuck out of this room. "Be honest with them. You can do that without putting me into the fucking middle of it."

Tommaso's slow whistle trails me out of the room. "You let Hormone Central over there talk to you like that?"

"Oh you are one ugly motherfucker," I snarl, whipping around. "Do you think making everyone else as miserable as you are means you won't be the failure of the fucking family?"

I wind my way down several hallways until I find myself in the kitchen, taking deep breaths to calm down.

Well, glad I kept my cool in there.

The worst fucking part of it all is that I can probably relate to Tommaso the most. The youngest, the one who doesn't fit in. But I'm not an ass about it, am I?

Seeing as deep breathing isn't cutting it, I start rustling through drawers, opening and closing them with admittedly more force than necessary. With each slam, my blood gets hotter and hotter. Aha! There it is.

"Oh, hi! I didn't know you and Massimo were—holy fuck!"

Sweet, gentle Nina stands in the doorway with her jaw unhinged. I am brandishing a large butcher knife.

"Hello there," I try to smile, place my hand casually on my hip. "Could you point me to your basement?"

Nina's eyes flick down to the knife as she crosses the room and reaches into a cabinet. "Are you going to use that on the crazy woman down there?"

"I was planning on it, yes."

She emerges with a bag of cookies. "Do you want one? These are my favorite, they're imported from Italy." Reaching into the drawer by her hip, she pulls out a different knife. "This one is better because the handle is smaller. The one you have is too clunky. Harder to grip as you," she mimes stabbing, "you know?"

I just stare. 

"I'm going to eat literally all of these if you don't hurry up and stake your claim," Nina gestures at the cookies with her knife. "Come sit with me. Let's eat and talk."

I think I'm obsessed with this woman.

"Okay, what did she do?"

Sitting next to what I imagine the human embodiment of a pocketful of stardust would look like, a bag of cookies and two butcher knives between us, I feel entirely at ease. I also feel like it's probably a good thing I didn't go storming down there with that knife.

But now lying before me is the task of trying to explain why I want to kill someone. Worse, deciphering if what I want is what I should do.

"I want—I need her to suffer. I actually just need her fucking gone, and it's not for me. But how are you supposed to just decide to kill someone when it's personal? I know it's wrong, or at least that it should be. But what she did..." frustrated, I grab a cookie. "It's not my story to tell. I can't say anything else."

Nina nods in understanding. "That's okay. I can tell it was really bad. Can I tell you about the time I killed my father?"

Holy shit.

"You killed... but you look so nice and innocent? And—I'm sorry, your father?"

"Not technically my father but that's the easiest way of referring to him," she waves a hand dismissively. "The death itself was quick. I just kind of stabbed him in the throat. Santo still wishes it was different. He would've tortured the man for weeks, because that's just what my husband does. But Luciano was my demon. He did those things to me." A slow smile spreads across her face. "And I didn't want him breathing the same air as me for one more second. It wasn't about Santo or Luciano—it was about me, for once in my life. And I got what I wanted. His throat cut open and him bleeding at my feet."

She leans forward, grabbing my hands in earnest. "And Viv, I feel peace. This world demands so much of us. You've seen what it's done to Simo and his brothers. To still be myself is a beautiful thing. I know I'll never be like them, I'll never get into the violence and blood. Luciano took enough from me, the one thing I wasn't going to let him take was my soul. You understand? If they take your soul, you have nothing left."

We sit in silence as I consider her words. So you do the work of weighing the life of another person against your soul, and you decide which batch of consequences you'd rather live with. Because there will be some either way.

It takes me about thirty seconds to make my decision.

Nina breaks the last cookie in half so we can share it.

"Can I ask you something?" I try and fail to keep the frustration out of my voice—but I think it's been established by now that she can handle it. "Why the fuck are they so dysfunctional? All of them. It's like they work extra hard to be stubborn pricks."

Nina levels me with the tired look of a woman who married into it. "To be frank, I hardly know Simo. But I can speak for the others. And they thought he was never going to come back. Every time he's returned, he'll leave for longer. And then this last time, he had you speaking on his behalf like he was done even thinking about them. That's how they took it. But of course they won't tell him that. They're going to be assholes and then he's going to shut down."

"This isn't shit that would be easy for anyone to talk about, much less him. He needs patience and understanding. It's hard to give, but doesn't everyone deserve some? I know what he's like, but there's so much more to him."

Nina smiles warmly and I relax, realizing I don't need to defend him to her. "That makes me happy. I was so hoping there was. And I'm glad he let you see it."

Now to hope he lets them see it too.

I pause to listen for anything coming from the other side of the house. There haven't been gunshots yet...

Something crashes. A vase, maybe, and a piece of furniture. Raised voices and heavy footsteps soon follow. Cursing violently, Nina grabs the knives and throws them back in the drawer. As I watch her do what I presume is an immediate sweep of the area for sharp objects, I don't exactly feel optimistic about how that little talk went.

Massimo comes in first, one hand rooted in his hair, pulling, the other clenched into a fist. I meet him by the kitchen table, gently pulling his hand between mine and working to unwind his fingers.

"I. Cannot. Deal. With. Tommaso." 

Before I can respond, a commotion goes off behind him—the entrance of Stubborn Prick Two and Three. And just like that, chaos erupts.

Without breaking stride, Tommaso beelines towards us with a violence that is slightly concerning. Massimo growls under his breath, shoving me behind him right as Nina steps in and places her palms on Tommaso's heaving chest. He keeps pushing forward, moving her several feet before Santo intervenes in a violent lunge that knocks Tommaso clean to his ass.

"What the fuck?" I say to anybody listening.

Not that anyone can. Santo's shouting at his little brother about pushing his wife, Tommaso is shouting about fuck all, and Nina—bless her—is trying and failing to make her soft spoken voice heard above it all.

"I'm sick of the way he speaks of you," Massimo grits out, staring coldly at the commotion. "I won't sit there and let him disrespect you even after I explained everything you did for this family."

"You guys spent all that time... talking about me?" I blink in complete shock. At his clueless nod, I wrench myself away from him. "Well, I shouldn't have fucking come then!"

Massimo tenses. "You're exactly where you should be and you're not going anywhere else."

"No, I'm everywhere, Massimo. And that's not right. Keep me out of it! I know I kind of put myself in it when I took control—"

"Which is precisely why I won't stand his pettiness," Massimo interjects firmly. "You are the only reason everything didn't fall apart. You are the only reason I'm here." His blank gaze glitters as he peers closer at me. "You are also confusing me, Vivienne, with this drama."

"You want drama, you have more than enough without me," I hiss. "You and your brothers had your issues before I came into the picture, Massimo. Fix those. Don't use me to avoid being vulnerable with them." He steps closer, frowning as I back away. "They already don't accept me! It doesn't help your case if you go in there and only talk about the woman they believe is the reason they're losing you."

"We won't be fixing any issues until Tommaso learns some respect—" 

The rest of what he says is lost beneath more shouting from his brothers, who are noticeably louder than him. Then, suddenly, there's a loud clatter.

"Everybody shut the fuck up!"

Everybody shuts the fuck up. Nina's in the middle of the room, a knife clenched in her fist.

"You," she points the blade at her husband, "I am fine. We have bigger issues than Tommaso pushing me back a few inches." She shifts the blade to Tommaso. "And you, I swear to fuck, fix your shit. Viv is a part of this family whether you like it or not." She takes a deep breath, turning to Massimo sans knife. "Since they can't tell you, I will. They were hurt because they thought you were never coming back, but their pride and arrogance keeps them from communicating that to you like mature adults. However," she swallows, closing her eyes briefly, "we can't read your mind. You leave, you come back. Then you leave again without a word. There is pain in this house that you can't escape from, and it's pain the three of you need to share."

Tommaso opens his mouth, only for Nina to swing her knife around, a vicious look on her face. "No. I want Vivienne to respond." Indignation screws up his face, but she won't take it. "You men have had your chance to work things out and look where that got us. I look like a crazy person!" She takes a moment to collect herself before turning to me. "Go ahead, babe."

"First, I would like to say I am in love with you," I tell her. Massimo chokes on his spit while Nina grins. "Look, I think the most immediate issue here is the woman in the basement, and we should focus on that first. You all need answers, but they are not easy to give." Blindly, I reach behind me to grab Massimo's hand. Without hesitation, his fingers curl around mine. "So I would kindly ask that everyone shuts the fuck up and sits in the other room. We will be there in a minute."

"You heard her!" Nina and her knife echo me when nobody moves. To their credit, they seem to be frozen in varying measures of shock instead of male stupidity this time.

Santo is the first to nod, approaching his wife tentatively. She glares up at him as he takes the knife away and leans down, pressing a firm kiss to her mouth. By the time he pulls away, she's softened considerably. "I'm sorry, tesoro." His voice is rough as he passes his thumb gently over her lips. "We're going."

Then he gives me a nod and leaves, grabbing Tommaso by his collar on the way out. Nina heaves an exhausted breath. Her and I share a commiserative glance, and then Massimo and I are alone.

I squeeze his hand. He draws me closer, eyes silently searching mine, and I allow us to stay like that until he finds what he's looking for. My residual stress and frustration begin to cool, and his does too. I didn't think about it until now, but all the heightened noise and chaos couldn't have been good for his head.

"I'm going into this blindly, dolcezza." I hear in his voice the weight of that. Opening up for the first time in his life, sacrificing his pride when he feels it won't be worth it. Bowing the knee to his brothers.

"I know. I'm looking out, let me be your eyes." I keep my voice low and soft, mindful of his aversion to noise. "But before we go in there, I just need to know—is there any way you'd prefer it to go with her?"

His gaze shutters at everything I'm leaving unsaid. Neither of us have acknowledged Cora's obvious fate—because it's not like Massimo has been eager to sit down and discuss how he wants her to die. But once his brothers know, I'm pretty sure a Nina and Viv Intervention will not be able to get between them and Cora.

He shakes his head, leaning down to kiss me like he needs the contact while he's forced to talk about her. "I don't care."

It's the kind of answer that makes me believe he has more to say. He's holding something back.

Minutes later, we're all sitting on the couches. Pistachio is nestled at Nina's feet, the only happy one in the room. Tail tentatively wagging as he peers around at everyone presumably gathered there for him.

Everyone is doing a great job at shutting the fuck up. Unfortunately including Massimo. I read the impatience in Santo's crossed arms, Tommaso's bouncing knee. But they wait. And so Massimo is allowed to take the time and space he needs.

"Adamo Mezzasalma is a therapist I met around the time things fell apart at home. It was his home we stayed in, years later when things got very bad. Do you remember? We had nowhere to go. The three of you were more dead than alive."

Santo's frown suddenly clears. "I do. He and his wife took care of us. I always wondered what happened to him."

"I connected with him again, once I had ensured the success of this family. He is the reason all of us survived, and he'd expressed a desire to keep in touch. We struck up what I now believe was some sort of... friendship. Until, a few months before Nico died, he began drugging me so I would exhibit symptoms similar to the ones I struggled with as a child."

The twinge of confusion in the air shifts to the sharp edges of anger as Santo and Tommaso, like two guard dogs, begin to sniff out some injustice done against their brother. Massimo continues without taking a breath.

"He did it because of that woman, because he believed I had to lose my mind in order to lose her. She ran Hope Valley—and I am not sure how love works, but she found some version of it with me when I was there. She was the only one I knew to look for when I needed someone. And I know you remember that day everything got better," he turns to Santo, his hand cool and lifeless in mine. "You never knew how I secured safety for you. I never wanted you to know." Slowly, the sea of his speech is broken up by choppy waves of emotion. Violent swells, pitching surges. "I promise, I never wanted either of you to know."

Tommaso's staring at his brother like he's never seen him before and slowly, with a look like thunder, Santo stands. But he kneels at Massimo's feet.

"Va tutto bene, fratello. Dimmi."

"She ran a sex club, and I became one of the many boys who worked for her. She eventually began selling me to various powerful members of a network that uses children as their currency." Massimo's voice is soft as a whisper, but his words fall like dead weight in the silent room. "I was sold to many powerful men, over and over again. I never wanted to, but I felt we had no other option for survival. Money was good, we even had too much of it. But I couldn't get out. They were always violent but it was getting worse," his voice cracks, "and I wasn't sure how I was going to keep hiding it."

There's a beat of silence before Massimo continues with a sudden burst of energy, like he needs his words detailing the abuse to be buried. "That was when I discovered our father was alive, Adamo saved us, and I decided the one thing I was good at was keeping you alive. So I tried to protect you all from him, until I failed. With Nico."

The silence seems to stretch on for so long. Santo's head is bowed as each word seemed to visibly press him closer to the ground, and Nina's hands are covering her mouth. Tommaso's the one who makes my breath catch. He's standing but visibly holding himself from coming closer. Eyes of obsidian, dark fury that everything else in the room bends to.

I fully expect him to say something about Nico, faced with an opening—perhaps the first one ever—to talk about him with Massimo.

"That woman downstairs, she hurt you? She did all that?"

Massimo's nod is one brief incline of his head. He's done speaking, and his hand is like a cold slab of marble against mine. 

It's like some permission has been granted. Like a bomb detonating, the room descends into chaos once again. There's shouting, a lot of it. A wave of general scrambling. We get swept up into it, but my hand never disconnects from Massimo's as we follow his brothers to the basement.

Cora is locked in a single cell, crumpled on the cold floor with her fists wrapped around the bars. Her fall from grace is both beautiful and satisfying. Her hair looks like straw, coarse and clumpy. The lines in her face, all exhaustion and emotion, age her at least two decades, and her skin holds a yellow pallor. She's untouched—just dehydrated, I imagine. But her rot is showing.

Watching Santo and Tommaso rip open the cage like feral wolves and descend upon her is an undeniably pleasant feeling. They don't use knives or guns, just their hands. She screams loud enough to wake the dead when she notices Massimo standing there, just watching. Doing nothing to stop it.

But the thing with vengeance, even the bloodiest, most deserved kind, is that there is brokenness it cannot fix.

Especially that of the man next to me, standing tall and steady despite the fact that this is just more of what he hates.

"I understand it now," my heart threatens to give out as he turns to look at me, "what you didn't want to tell me earlier. You've never liked blood or excessive violence. Even before you told me that, I always saw it in you."

"They need it," he jerks his chin towards his brothers, "to make them feel like they did something for all those times they couldn't. The truth, Vivienne, is that I have never been more apathetic. If there's any woman who can evoke something in me, it's you. Not her."

How is that actually so romantic?

And of course, here he is, putting his brothers first.

Although it seems this time, they won't let it go unnoticed.

Tommaso has a blood splatter across his face and his hands are red. Santo is no better. Their eyes are identical black holes, sucking any and all light into the fathomless deep. Desolate and wrecked. But they leave her laid out on the floor like some kind of sacrifice, coming to stand before us.

Tommaso's smiling. "What now?"

"You've spilled so much blood for us. Both our parents, your own," Santo says. "It's our turn to do it for you."

Massimo nods. It's a release, a sigh as soft as the gentlest wind. It's the admittance of, I've had enough, permission granted. It's Massimo saying, I'll let you be for me what I've always been for you.

He's delivered killing vengeance for his brothers countless times. This time, for maybe the first time, he won't need to get his hands dirty.

Tommaso reaches over to the wall where, conveniently, there hangs an array of knives. He shifts that chilling grin in my direction, holding the handle of one out to me.

"You wanna have a go?"

Cora whines faintly in the background, sounding like she's choking. From this angle, she looks like half mangled roadkill. Hardly human.

I hesitate. "I don't kno—"

"Fine by me," Tommaso rolls his eyes, flipping the knife to hold it. "I just offered to be nice. Figured you'd say no."

I reach forward to grab it. "Give me that, asshole. I didn't want to look too eager. You're supposed to wait at least two fucking seconds, let a girl act coy."

Nobody says anything for a moment, until a noise pierces the air. Soft, breathy, amused.

Massimo is laughing.

Teeth glinting through the dim light, eyes of honeyed luminescence as he gazes at me.

Nobody knows what the fuck to do for a second—until it becomes increasingly obvious. Tommaso breaks first, throwing back his head and letting out some sort of jubilant whooping laugh. The rest of us follow until there we are, laughing in a fucking dungeon with a half dead body on the floor and murder hanging imminent in the air.

Cora starts screaming, renewed with a new energy. She claws to a half sitting position, face twisted in anger. I don't think any of us can understand her above the sound of our laughter, but her point is clear. She needs Massimo to care. Needs him to be angry, hurt, empty, anything as long as it's because of her.

But he's not even looking in her direction, his smiling face tilted down at me.

"Think you can do the honors?" Tommaso challenges. It's an obvious dare.

And an absolute honor.

She droops in misery as I near her, melting to the floor again with the knowledge that she's not going to get Massimo. I try to picture her beautiful and put together, but I don't think she ever was. It feels like her own sins have already done most of the job—she's black, blue, and bloody, but she's been decaying from the inside out for a very long time.

She blinks up at me miserably. When she sees the knife, tears start seeping through the grime on her face, over her cracked lips.

The blade in my hand is a thing that's living, glinting beautifully as I slowly bring it to the soft skin of her neck, testing the give.

"You don't have him," I tell her gently. "You don't own any part of him."

And with that, I let the knife do its job. I deem the cut deep enough when I hear her start choking. It's long but she's not bleeding too quickly.

I stand and back up without taking my eyes off her. She's so weak now that her words aren't forming.

I feel two presences on either side of me. Massimo's brothers. When I look at Tommaso, he's grinning at me. And for the very first time, it doesn't ooze poison.

No words are spoken, but it feels like a big moment.

I go to Massimo, my insides a complete whirlwind. He's kissing me before I know it, having met me more than halfway. His hands, big and warm, frame my face and run down my neck, shoulders, back, and up again before he pulls away.

Any doubts I could've had about whether he'd see me differently, or even want to touch me after that are banished.

"Look at you," he murmurs, gently straightening my necklace. "Not a drop of blood on you. Clean and easy. Looks like you really are my woman, hm?" The gentle words are followed by a firm tuck of my chin. "Which means that I will defend you whenever and wherever I see fit. Your earlier point is understood; do I make mine clear?"

"You really care about that stupid shit right now?" Does he not even want to watch her die?

"What's stupid is that question." Massimo's eyes narrow threateningly. "I'm waiting, dolcezza."

"God, fine," I give in, dazed and forgetting what I'm even agreeing to. "I get it. Understood."

Ten minutes later, Cora's still not done dying. It appears I am an expert throat-slitter and I've cut her where she'll bleed out slowly and painfully. Massimo sighs and checks his watch.

"Let's go. I want her to die alone."

Tommaso immediately lets out a relieved groan. "Thank fuck, I'm starving."

I make sure I'm the last to leave, peeking over my shoulder. Cora watches us through leaking eyes, lips still trying to shape words. She's watching as Massimo loops an impatient arm around my waist, pulling me upstairs. I feel her eyes on us until the door slams behind me.

♛

Apparently the whole time we were doing our thing, Nina was doing hers. Which was avoiding the blood and gore by running around the kitchen, throwing together enough food to feed a small army. A mere thirty minutes later, all cleaned up and changed, I find myself sitting down for a meal with Massimo and his family.

Just a casual evening of drama, death, and dinner.

Santo kisses his wife's smiling face, and she squeals as he presses a flurry of kisses along her cheeks and jaw. Tommaso has a joint loosely held in one hand, which he holds out to me when he notices I'm looking.

I put it between my lips, inhaling the thick smoke. Everything slows for just one moment, as if the world is taking a deep breath with me. I blow the smoke back into his face.

"Nice one, V," Tommaso says, and I know he's not talking about the drag.

Despite the facade of ease and comfortable conversation, nobody eats much. In little silences, everything still feels strained and heavy. But it's like an unspoken rule between the brothers—no more talking about it now.

One may think that after being at each other's throats all day, confronting unimaginable pain from their past, and committing a joint torture and murder, there might be a bit of awkwardness at the family dinner.

But the Romano brothers seem to thrive from chaos. The kind that makes me, for the first time, feel like I belong.

♛    

You guys. While I MAY have a couple more tricks up my sleeve, this story is seriously wrapping up. And I am devastated. 

I cannot thank you enough for all the love you give Viv and Simo. And Dark Saint is getting closer to 1 mill than I ever thought it would??? Ily all.

- G