(Almost Two Months After The Epilogue)
Angel's POV
Pietrapaola, A quiet inland village in Calabria, Italy
The wind smelled like lemon trees and old dust, tangled with the warm summer air.
It was a quiet night.
Too peaceful.
Tony stood on the narrow balcony.
Shirtless.
Wearing jeans.
Barefoot.
His slightly longer dark hair danced in the small breeze—like some goddamn hot statue brought to life.
A cigarette burned low between his fingers.
Its tiny embers flew like sparklers—a type of fireworks.
Angel clicked his tongue at the sight.
'That's his tenth today.'
He imagined scolding him like this—'...You don't love your lungs, clearly!'—but he stopped himself.
Not liking how that sounded like they were an ordinary couple.
'I think he'll only like it and will only tease me with it,' he scowled.
'Then it will end with me staying in bed worn out and useless for days.'
And Angel hated being useless.
Hated being defenseless.
Hated letting Tony do all sorts of things on his body.
He blushed at the thought.
'No, not all of them, really,' contradicting himself.
He only hated it when all he could do was moan, plead and lose himself to pleasure.
Especially when they were running away from something.
Something unavoidable.
Reality.
What they have right now was a fragile peace.
A retreat before they come back to the real world to face the pending responsibilities.
His gaze drifted at what Tony was looking at.
The dark hills stretched out beyond them, sleepy and green, bathed in the pale light of a crescent moon.
Far from everything.
Far from the modern world.
No CCTV's.
No cars for miles.
No buzzing sound of the people and city.
Just their beat-up car, parked on the dirt road.
The village was all stone houses and cracked walls.
Hushed and slow.
Angel thought it would soothe him.
After all those loud gunshots and chaos from Hotel Valgrande in just one night.
He thought silence would help, and specifically asked Tony for this kind of silence.
Angel clicked his tongue again.
'But it didn't help.'
If anything, Tony always wanted to have sex.
'What would we do in this silence—he said,' Angel's face blushed again, '... it's to eat each other out.'
'Horny bastard.'
Well, Angel was no different.
'I'm also a horn dog.'
He turned away from observing Tony and went inside their bedroom from the doorway of the balcony, sighing.
Chasing the perverted images inside his mind away, that would make the poets blush and sigh.
He started folding their clothes into the same gray duffel bag they'd been dragging all over Italy.
They had come a long way from the Santa De Leones' mansion in Lake Como to Florence—Angel's house—to get his passport.
Then to Milan, Rimini, Tropea.
Trying to find a place to hide.
Or to settle.
For a while.
Until they sorted and figured out what to do with their life—next.
And now this place—Angel looked around their bedroom, as if he could see the whole place.
Some nameless inland village where people spoke in whispers and dogs barked at things that didn't move at night.
'Tony and I—were half-travelers, half-runaways,' he thought.
'That's what we were.'
Angel had asked Tony—who was newly crowned as a mafia Don—to run away.
For peace.
No guns.
No blood.
He winced, remembering the feeling of shooting a gun at someone.
The memory kept coming back.
Sometimes vivid, sometimes it felt like a nightmare from long ago.
Angel breathed in and out.
'Peace… Inner peace,' he thought.
Tony gave him that, without giving back a glance to what he left behind.
And for that, Angel will be forever grateful.
He knew it was a selfish thing to wish for.
But Tony confessed that he wanted that too.
The responsibility of being a Don was too great for him to bear.
After hating his family for two decades, he just couldn't come into terms how to deal with it.
He had hated the wrong people half his life.
Hated his blood.
Add the fact that Beth—who was the only one not executed that day and not part of the mafia life, might—
He said—'might take revenge'—on them.
So here they were.
Angel sighed again.
Tony hadn't said much all day—after joking that it felt like they were newly wed and on honeymoon.
He just… followed.
From room to room.
Even when Angel was out in the village treating scrapes and bruises for curious kids and old men—after they found out on their first day here that Angel was a medical student.
Tony said, it was okay.
It was how they could live unnoticed or something like that.
Angel told them he couldn't practice without a license but Tony insisted.
Saying, 'I wanted to see you treat people, doctor. You look hot by the way.'
Treating Angel like some doctor in porn.
'His goddamn sexual fantasies are so… wild.'
But then Tony would go, follow him everywhere, like a damned kid.
Not losing sight of Angel.
Not in a loud way.
No.
Just there.
Hovering.
Watching.
Always watching.
Eyes like hawk.
Once, Angel had followed a little boy to check out a hurt stray dog, and Tony had lost sight of him for just a few minutes.
He got distracted with the old people in the village, asking him to do this and that.
When he found Angel, he looked pale.
Breathing like he'd run for miles.
He'd pulled Angel into his arms and held him while cursing the village people like some mad man.
From then on, he forbade Angel to treat people and to give medical advice.
They went home like that.
That was three days ago.
It was time to leave again.
Angel zipped the bag on the bed with a sigh.
Small hairs started to stand up on its end.
He didn't hear Tony enter—but he felt him.
His presence.
"We can't stay here anymore," Angel whispered.
"We can't stay with a lot of people around us."
'I think you've got anxiety.' he wanted to add but didn't.
Tony didn't say anything.
He just wrapped his arms around Angel from behind.
He smelled like cigarettes and soap.
'And his scent…'
"I'm sorry, babe," Tony said quietly.
Angel covered Tony's arms with his own.
A silent way of saying, '...it's okay.'
Accepting Tony's way of apologizing.
They stood like that for a while.
Quiet.
Angel was the one who finally broke one of their rare sweet moments.
Rare, because most of their touches always spiraled into sex, like animals in heat.
Rough, needy, and fast.
Sometimes, it was just one look, then—bam.
Angel would find himself in the middle of throes of passion.
Writhing.
Moaning.
Fire, every goddamn time.
It never faded.
Angel turned in his arms and said softly, "Tony."
Tony met his gaze.
"I thought we could live here longer," Tony mumbled.
"Well, I thought so too… until you started showing people your madness," Angel answered.
Tony raised a brow.
"You sleep better here you know."
Angel sat up on the bed.
"Yeah, because it's quiet."
Then in a softer voice, "You're one to talk."
A beat passed.
"You also sleep better here," Angel added.
Tony knelt in front of him, took Angel's hands, and kissed his knuckles.
Their eyes met again.
But then, he laid his head in Angel's lap.
"I don't sleep better," Tony started to confess.
"I just stopped dreaming," he murmured.
Angel gently ran his fingers through Tony's hair, not saying anything.
"Why would I dream?" Tony added. "... when the dream's right here?"
Angel felt the smirk in his voice and rolled his eyes at Tony, still not saying anything.
"You know I love you, right?"
The words made Angel's heart flip.
'Damned handsome sweet devil,' he thought while his heart was doing cartwheels.
"You know," Tony went on, "...you've never actually said you love me, amore."
He peeked up at Angel through the dark.
"I'm starting to think that you only want me because of my face and body," Tony said with laughter in his voice.
"Like a handsome dildo."
'Bastard.'
Angel felt pressure rise in his chest.
Not anger.
Just tightness.
Like the air between them had thickened with unspoken things
He reached down, covered Tony's eyes with his hands—hiding the blush warming his face.
"Wanna go?" he asked instead.
Tony sighed.
"You packed already?"
"Yeah…"
"Then let's keep going."
Tony stood, grabbed the shirt off the bed and slipped on his shoes.
Like always, they left euros under the chipped ceramic ashtray.
The car rattled down the hill.
The road curved tight through cypress and stone.
Angel leaned his head back against the seat.
He wore one of Tony's big shirts over his walking shorts.
The car was warm, the rhythm lulling him to sleep.
Thirty minutes had passed.
Angel was almost asleep when he noticed Tony kept glancing at the rearview mirror.
Twice in five minutes, then he would look back on Angel—as if checking if he was there and not some illusion.
After checking on Angel, he would check the rearview again.
"Paranoid much?" he mumbled sleepily.
Tony didn't respond.
They crossed a rusted bridge.
Then—
POP
The windshield cracked with a clean, terrifying snap.
Tony cursed and swerved.
Another pop—
The back window exploded.
Angel's sleepiness vanished.
He ducked instinctively.
"What—"
"Hold on tight," Tony growled.
Tires skidded on loose gravel.
Another shot—closer.
It echoed off the cliffs.
"Fuck!"
Tony took the next curve blind, clipped a stone wall and floored it.
"Are you okay?" he asked Angel.
Angel's pulse roared in his ears.
They didn't see the shooters.
Just the blur of the black helmets in the trees.
Then silence.
Tony didn't slow down.
"Babe, are you okay?" he asked Angel again.
"Y-yes," Angel sat up, breathing shallowly.
"W-why… who are they?"
Tony's face turned grim.
Jaw clenched, a vein ticking near his temple.
"Probably Beth," he answered flatly, hand's steady on the wheel.
A confirmation.
Not panicking unlike Angel.
"CIA?" Angel looked at him.
Angel's fingers curled on his knee.
"Are you okay?" he asked Tony, his tone worried.
Tony didn't answer his question, instead, "Put your seatbelt on, babe."
"I don't want anything happening to you."
Then he added:
"I won't let them. Trust me."
Angel's breath hitched.
Then a beat.
"I promise," silver eyes sharpening, "...I'll burn the world down if I have to."
**