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ludo.
“Can I talk to you?”
Ludo is standing in the doorway to Angelo’s apartment with his worry clear as glass on his face, and for a moment Angelo considers saying no to him. It’s not a real thought, nothing he’d ever really follow through on, but he imagines it all the same. No, he’d say. No you fucking can’t. Go away. And Ludo, big-eyed kicked-puppy Ludo, would linger haplessly for a moment and then turn around, tail between his legs, and Angelo would go back to smoking through a pack of cigarettes, the TV a dull buzz of sound at the back of his head.
Angelo’s fingers drum on the edge of the doorframe, the cigarette he’s halfway through dwindling slowly to ash in his other hand, and then instead of saying anything at all he steps back a little, to give Ludo enough space to rush in, which he does, like he’s running for cover from a sudden rain shower.
They look alike, him and his brother, but only if you’re searching for points of comparison. They both have the same green-grey eyes, deep set, and the same hook to their noses, even if Ludo’s is smaller. Ludo, twenty-six, still hasn’t grown out of his baby fat, cheeks round, face soft; Angelo’s been thin-faced and flinty for as long as he can remember. Ludo, the perennial infant, had sucked his thumb until he was five, and he still cried when he hurt himself, big heaving sobs and thick tears that clogged his throat up like hair in a plughole. Angelo had always hated the sound of a crying child: as a baby, Ludo had wept relentlessly, and Angelo had had to fold his pillow around his head in hopes of muffling the sound, his teeth aching as he grit them.
Ludo never seems to know what to do in Angelo’s apartment, where to stand or sit. He’s fidgety, hands in his pockets and then by his sides and then in his pockets again, until eventually he makes a beeline for the couch and sits down on the end he knows Angelo doesn’t occupy.
“You want a drink?” Angelo asks him, as he’s shutting the door. It’s always dark in here: almost everything is black or at least darkly grey, the floor and the walls and the furniture, with gold highlights curling tastefully here and there around the ornate, antique shapes. It makes Ludo, in his mossy green sweater and light jeans, stand out. He looks like a children’s TV show presenter in all his primary colours.
“No,” Ludo says, because he never really had a taste for brandy. Angelo pours himself a glass anyway, and strides across his living room to sit down on the couch. There’s a gulf of space between them, the way it’s always been.
Ludo doesn’t say anything, not even after Angelo clears his throat to prompt him, and so eventually Angelo sighs and says, “What’s wrong? Someone break up with you again?”
“No, it’s not that.” Angelo can see his brother’s brow crease even from here. “Dad called me tonight.”
Angelo has a sip of brandy as Gabbana comes slinking out of the dark to hop up into his lap. He can feel the cat purring softly as he settles, chin on his paws, and absently Angelo sets his spent cigarette in the ashtray balanced on the arm of the couch so he can rub behind Gabbana’s ear.
“Called you about what?”
“About the business.”
Angelo’s hand stills. Something swoops in his gut, the same feeling you’d get when you suddenly drop from a great height. “What about it?”
“I don’t…” Ludo sighs, hunching forward, head in his hands, and Angelo looks over at him piercingly. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Anger has made its home in Angelo. For most people anger runs deep, in their bones, and it’s in Angelo’s bones too, but there’s so much of it that it overflows, through the sinew and muscle until it’s resting just under his skin, easy to reach, easy to touch. He can feel it roiling in him now, unsettled and tempestuous. “What did he say, Ludo?”
“I don’t know,” Ludo says again. Angelo bites the inside of his cheek. “He called me out of nowhere. I was about to go to bed. He said he’d been thinking about the future. I asked what he meant. I thought he was talking about, you know, Miami. The hotels. I already told him I didn’t mind moving there to manage a couple of them, me and Liv were excited about it. Liv’s been looking for beach houses. Can you imagine that, a house by the beach, a proper house? It’d be like living in the Salerno villa all the time.”
“In Miami,” Angelo points out.
“Yeah. So… not exactly like Salerno.” Ludo breathes out sharply, a sound Angelo thinks is supposed to be a laugh. “But he said he doesn’t want me to go to Miami any more.”
Angelo and his father had talked about this already. The expansions into Miami were a golden opportunity for the business, not only because it’d serve for more locations to launder cash, but because there’d be greater opportunities to develop business connections outside of the Five Families. Ludo, the personable younger son of Giovanni Salucci, friendly and well-liked, was the ideal person to send to Miami to manage their interests in Florida. He’d never had much interest in the criminal activities his family was involved with, which suited Angelo just fine. Ludo could be their legitimate face, all smiles and hand-shaking, while Angelo did the real work, the hard work, and when the time came the business would be handed to him. Ludo could stay in Miami with his hotels and his girlfriend and his beach house. He can stay there forever, as far as Angelo cares.
Angelo’s always accounted for Ludo in the visions of his future, but only in that sense: Ludo would be away, not here, not in the way like he usually is. Not an irritating presence in the forefront of Angelo’s life, not a point of comparison for Angelo’s ex-wife or his mother or his father. Sometimes it feels as if Ludo was born exclusively to remind Angelo of his inadequacy, his impropriety, his stupidity.
He has a sip of brandy and holds it in his mouth until it warms before he swallows it. “What’s he want you to do instead?”
“He says I need to stay here,” Ludo says. “I need to get involved with the business more. You know, the business.”
Angelo’s grip on his tumbler tightens a little, fingertip digging into the carved decoration on the edge of the glass. “Why?”
“He didn’t say,” Ludo says. He has his hands pressed between his knees, the whole shape of him taut and tense. “Not exactly. I asked why. He just said I need to learn. But I was wondering if… if he meant… like you.”
“Like me.”
“Like… what you do.”
“You can’t do what I do.”
That much has been clear for a long time now. Only Angelo has a gift. Only Angelo can burrow into someone’s head and pull out their deepest fears and make them feel so real in the moment that they capitulate to questioning in a matter of hours. He’s been doing it since he was nine years old. Ludo couldn’t even hope to do what he can do.
“I know, I didn’t mean that.” Ludo pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment, and Angelo watches the way his temples pull taut as he screws his eyes shut. “He said his plans had changed, his plans for the future of the business, and he said that he wanted me to get experience now so that I can…”
That feeling is back again, in the pit of Angelo’s stomach, tight like a vise. “So that you can what, Ludo?”
“So that I can learn,” Ludo says, practically whispers. “For the future.”
The glass in Angelo’s hand smashes.
Gabbana makes a surprised mewling noise as he tumbles inelegantly out of Angelo’s lap, skittering away, but Angelo can’t find it in him to care right now. Ludo looks over at him, brow creased, eyes wide, and after a moment of silence he moves closer on the couch, reaching out for him. “Abbie, your hand...”
“Fuck off, Ludo, Jesus Christ.” Angelo bats Ludo’s insistent hand away and stands up straight, all at once as if he’d been pulled up by a noose around his neck. His throat feels thick, like there’s something in the way of letting him swallow, and for some reason he can’t feel the sting of glass in his palm over the ringing in his ears. The nickname rankles. Abbie is what Ludo had called him as a toddler, when his little baby mouth couldn’t make the right shapes for any other part of his name, and so he’d approximated the sounds the only way he could. But long after he’d been able to say Angelo’s name with little trouble, the nickname stuck around. Abbie.
Before Ludo can say anything else, Angelo strides into his kitchen, the door swinging shut behind him.
“Angel.” Alastor is here, tall and slim and blonde and the same as he’s ever looked, startlingly blue eyes flashing in the low light. He’s close in an instant, his slim-fingered hands warm as he takes Angelo’s hand and turns it over. His palm is dotted with glass and beads of blood, but as Alastor brushes his thumb gently over it, the skin seals up, flecks of glass falling to the kitchen floor as if they hadn’t been jammed into his skin at all. The sting, if there ever was one, is gone.
“Ally, he wants—”
“I heard,” Alastor says, his voice soothing. He lets go of him, just for a moment, to slide a hand through Angelo’s hair, his palm settling at the back of his head.
“He wants to replace me,” Angelo says anyway, the words sticking on their way out, because he’s not going to get anywhere if he can’t even say it aloud. “All my fucking life I’ve worked for this and he wants to replace me with Ludo. Fucking Ludo.”
“It’s not fair, Angel.” Alastor’s forehead presses against his. “It’s not right. All the work you’ve done. You never questioned it, not once in all these years. And he wants to pass you over for your brother.”
“He doesn’t even want it,” Angelo chokes out. “He never wanted it. He’s not made for it.”
“He’s not.”
“He never wanted it.”
“He didn’t.”
“He’s weak.”
“He is.” Alastor’s nose runs gently up Angelo’s cheek, and his lips press soft against the peak of his cheekbone. “He’s not like you. You’re strong, Angel, you’re so much stronger than him. You’re stronger than anyone. You deserve control. It’s what you were born for. And your father has no right to take it from you.”
He’s right. Of course he is. Alastor’s been right ever since he first came into Angelo’s life, the night of his twentieth birthday. Angelo’s special, he always has been, and Alastor’s the only one who’s ever really seen him for what he is. The only person who knows how important he is and what he deserves and how vital it is that he gets it. And as he continues, low-voiced, mumbling in Angelo’s ear as he strokes his hair, Angelo can feel that anger under his skin starting to boil, spitting droplets of white-hot rage. His arms pull tight around Alastor, fists pulling at the fabric of his shirt, and he presses his face against the warm crook of his neck and breathes in the familiar scent of him, his protector, his demon.
“Do you know what you have to do?” Alastor asks, his voice barely more than a whisper, ghosting by Angelo’s ear, and gently he disentangles them from each other, holding him at arm’s length with a hand cupping his cheek, so he can slide his thumb over the scar Angelo’s carried since he was fourteen.
Angelo nods.
“Alright.”
The walk back to the living room takes seconds. It feels like less, like the length of a blink. Ludo’s standing up now, face painted with an irritating mask of concern, and when Angelo’s close enough he surges forward, though stops about a foot away like there’s an invisible barrier holding him back. “Are you alright?”
“It’s fine.” There’s a gulf of space between them, the way it’s always been. “So what are you gonna do, Ludo?”
“I don’t know.” Ludo looks pale, the pinkish warmth of his skin shrunk to two spots high on his cheeks, like he has a fever.
“Are you gonna say no to him? Our father?”
Ludo opens his mouth and inhales, and then shuts it again. He looks like he’s about to cry.
“Are you, Ludo?”
“I don’t—”
“If he asks you to take over the family after he retires, what are you gonna say to him?”
“I don’t know, I—”
Like oil heated in a pan, his anger spits. “Fucking answer me, Ludo!”
“I can’t say no!” Ludo yells right back, his voice cracking. “I can’t say no to him, Abbie!”
When he thinks about it afterwards, Angelo will be sure it was the nickname that pushed him to it. Abbie, so plaintive and desperate, like an excuse of its own. He always had it in his mind that you don’t remember a thing like that, that your brain blocks it out, but it’s not hard to remember at all.
It’s not hard to remember the way he surges closer and knocks Ludo sprawling onto his back, the way he chases him down to the floor and his fist connects thickly with the edge of his jaw and Ludo gasps in pain and shock and confusion. It’s not hard to remember his voice, panicked and high and thin, as Ludo squirms under him and gasps out, “Abbie, stop, please don’t hurt me, Abbie!” It’s not hard to remember the feeling of Ludo’s throat under his palms, the panicked bounce of his Adam’s apple as he gasps for breath. It’s not hard to remember how tightly he holds him, watches him splutter and panic.
Angelo’s always been stronger than Ludo, always taller, always quicker to fight and to fight dirty, and Ludo never used to fight back when they fought as children. But it’s not hard to remember how, the night Angelo kills him, he pushes desperately at Angelo’s face, he claws and scrapes at Angelo’s arms with a dying man’s perverse strength, he even takes a nick out of his neck with his fingernail, a thin mark that bleeds a little and heals fast, the last thing Ludo ever gives him.
He’s panting when it’s over, his hair hanging in thick strands in front of his face, his breaths heavy and jagged. Ludo’s eyes are open, his neck raw and red. He doesn’t know how long he’s like this before Alastor’s there, a hand on the back of his head and then his shoulder, “Oh, Angel,” whispered into the darkness.
Ludo is standing in the doorway to Angelo’s apartment with his worry clear as glass on his face, and for a moment Angelo considers saying no to him. It’s not a real thought, nothing he’d ever really follow through on, but he imagines it all the same. No, he’d say. No you fucking can’t. Go away. And Ludo, big-eyed kicked-puppy Ludo, would linger haplessly for a moment and then turn around, tail between his legs, and Angelo would go back to smoking through a pack of cigarettes, the TV a dull buzz of sound at the back of his head.
Angelo’s fingers drum on the edge of the doorframe, the cigarette he’s halfway through dwindling slowly to ash in his other hand, and then instead of saying anything at all he steps back a little, to give Ludo enough space to rush in, which he does, like he’s running for cover from a sudden rain shower.
They look alike, him and his brother, but only if you’re searching for points of comparison. They both have the same green-grey eyes, deep set, and the same hook to their noses, even if Ludo’s is smaller. Ludo, twenty-six, still hasn’t grown out of his baby fat, cheeks round, face soft; Angelo’s been thin-faced and flinty for as long as he can remember. Ludo, the perennial infant, had sucked his thumb until he was five, and he still cried when he hurt himself, big heaving sobs and thick tears that clogged his throat up like hair in a plughole. Angelo had always hated the sound of a crying child: as a baby, Ludo had wept relentlessly, and Angelo had had to fold his pillow around his head in hopes of muffling the sound, his teeth aching as he grit them.
Ludo never seems to know what to do in Angelo’s apartment, where to stand or sit. He’s fidgety, hands in his pockets and then by his sides and then in his pockets again, until eventually he makes a beeline for the couch and sits down on the end he knows Angelo doesn’t occupy.
“You want a drink?” Angelo asks him, as he’s shutting the door. It’s always dark in here: almost everything is black or at least darkly grey, the floor and the walls and the furniture, with gold highlights curling tastefully here and there around the ornate, antique shapes. It makes Ludo, in his mossy green sweater and light jeans, stand out. He looks like a children’s TV show presenter in all his primary colours.
“No,” Ludo says, because he never really had a taste for brandy. Angelo pours himself a glass anyway, and strides across his living room to sit down on the couch. There’s a gulf of space between them, the way it’s always been.
Ludo doesn’t say anything, not even after Angelo clears his throat to prompt him, and so eventually Angelo sighs and says, “What’s wrong? Someone break up with you again?”
“No, it’s not that.” Angelo can see his brother’s brow crease even from here. “Dad called me tonight.”
Angelo has a sip of brandy as Gabbana comes slinking out of the dark to hop up into his lap. He can feel the cat purring softly as he settles, chin on his paws, and absently Angelo sets his spent cigarette in the ashtray balanced on the arm of the couch so he can rub behind Gabbana’s ear.
“Called you about what?”
“About the business.”
Angelo’s hand stills. Something swoops in his gut, the same feeling you’d get when you suddenly drop from a great height. “What about it?”
“I don’t…” Ludo sighs, hunching forward, head in his hands, and Angelo looks over at him piercingly. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Anger has made its home in Angelo. For most people anger runs deep, in their bones, and it’s in Angelo’s bones too, but there’s so much of it that it overflows, through the sinew and muscle until it’s resting just under his skin, easy to reach, easy to touch. He can feel it roiling in him now, unsettled and tempestuous. “What did he say, Ludo?”
“I don’t know,” Ludo says again. Angelo bites the inside of his cheek. “He called me out of nowhere. I was about to go to bed. He said he’d been thinking about the future. I asked what he meant. I thought he was talking about, you know, Miami. The hotels. I already told him I didn’t mind moving there to manage a couple of them, me and Liv were excited about it. Liv’s been looking for beach houses. Can you imagine that, a house by the beach, a proper house? It’d be like living in the Salerno villa all the time.”
“In Miami,” Angelo points out.
“Yeah. So… not exactly like Salerno.” Ludo breathes out sharply, a sound Angelo thinks is supposed to be a laugh. “But he said he doesn’t want me to go to Miami any more.”
Angelo and his father had talked about this already. The expansions into Miami were a golden opportunity for the business, not only because it’d serve for more locations to launder cash, but because there’d be greater opportunities to develop business connections outside of the Five Families. Ludo, the personable younger son of Giovanni Salucci, friendly and well-liked, was the ideal person to send to Miami to manage their interests in Florida. He’d never had much interest in the criminal activities his family was involved with, which suited Angelo just fine. Ludo could be their legitimate face, all smiles and hand-shaking, while Angelo did the real work, the hard work, and when the time came the business would be handed to him. Ludo could stay in Miami with his hotels and his girlfriend and his beach house. He can stay there forever, as far as Angelo cares.
Angelo’s always accounted for Ludo in the visions of his future, but only in that sense: Ludo would be away, not here, not in the way like he usually is. Not an irritating presence in the forefront of Angelo’s life, not a point of comparison for Angelo’s ex-wife or his mother or his father. Sometimes it feels as if Ludo was born exclusively to remind Angelo of his inadequacy, his impropriety, his stupidity.
He has a sip of brandy and holds it in his mouth until it warms before he swallows it. “What’s he want you to do instead?”
“He says I need to stay here,” Ludo says. “I need to get involved with the business more. You know, the business.”
Angelo’s grip on his tumbler tightens a little, fingertip digging into the carved decoration on the edge of the glass. “Why?”
“He didn’t say,” Ludo says. He has his hands pressed between his knees, the whole shape of him taut and tense. “Not exactly. I asked why. He just said I need to learn. But I was wondering if… if he meant… like you.”
“Like me.”
“Like… what you do.”
“You can’t do what I do.”
That much has been clear for a long time now. Only Angelo has a gift. Only Angelo can burrow into someone’s head and pull out their deepest fears and make them feel so real in the moment that they capitulate to questioning in a matter of hours. He’s been doing it since he was nine years old. Ludo couldn’t even hope to do what he can do.
“I know, I didn’t mean that.” Ludo pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment, and Angelo watches the way his temples pull taut as he screws his eyes shut. “He said his plans had changed, his plans for the future of the business, and he said that he wanted me to get experience now so that I can…”
That feeling is back again, in the pit of Angelo’s stomach, tight like a vise. “So that you can what, Ludo?”
“So that I can learn,” Ludo says, practically whispers. “For the future.”
The glass in Angelo’s hand smashes.
Gabbana makes a surprised mewling noise as he tumbles inelegantly out of Angelo’s lap, skittering away, but Angelo can’t find it in him to care right now. Ludo looks over at him, brow creased, eyes wide, and after a moment of silence he moves closer on the couch, reaching out for him. “Abbie, your hand...”
“Fuck off, Ludo, Jesus Christ.” Angelo bats Ludo’s insistent hand away and stands up straight, all at once as if he’d been pulled up by a noose around his neck. His throat feels thick, like there’s something in the way of letting him swallow, and for some reason he can’t feel the sting of glass in his palm over the ringing in his ears. The nickname rankles. Abbie is what Ludo had called him as a toddler, when his little baby mouth couldn’t make the right shapes for any other part of his name, and so he’d approximated the sounds the only way he could. But long after he’d been able to say Angelo’s name with little trouble, the nickname stuck around. Abbie.
Before Ludo can say anything else, Angelo strides into his kitchen, the door swinging shut behind him.
“Angel.” Alastor is here, tall and slim and blonde and the same as he’s ever looked, startlingly blue eyes flashing in the low light. He’s close in an instant, his slim-fingered hands warm as he takes Angelo’s hand and turns it over. His palm is dotted with glass and beads of blood, but as Alastor brushes his thumb gently over it, the skin seals up, flecks of glass falling to the kitchen floor as if they hadn’t been jammed into his skin at all. The sting, if there ever was one, is gone.
“Ally, he wants—”
“I heard,” Alastor says, his voice soothing. He lets go of him, just for a moment, to slide a hand through Angelo’s hair, his palm settling at the back of his head.
“He wants to replace me,” Angelo says anyway, the words sticking on their way out, because he’s not going to get anywhere if he can’t even say it aloud. “All my fucking life I’ve worked for this and he wants to replace me with Ludo. Fucking Ludo.”
“It’s not fair, Angel.” Alastor’s forehead presses against his. “It’s not right. All the work you’ve done. You never questioned it, not once in all these years. And he wants to pass you over for your brother.”
“He doesn’t even want it,” Angelo chokes out. “He never wanted it. He’s not made for it.”
“He’s not.”
“He never wanted it.”
“He didn’t.”
“He’s weak.”
“He is.” Alastor’s nose runs gently up Angelo’s cheek, and his lips press soft against the peak of his cheekbone. “He’s not like you. You’re strong, Angel, you’re so much stronger than him. You’re stronger than anyone. You deserve control. It’s what you were born for. And your father has no right to take it from you.”
He’s right. Of course he is. Alastor’s been right ever since he first came into Angelo’s life, the night of his twentieth birthday. Angelo’s special, he always has been, and Alastor’s the only one who’s ever really seen him for what he is. The only person who knows how important he is and what he deserves and how vital it is that he gets it. And as he continues, low-voiced, mumbling in Angelo’s ear as he strokes his hair, Angelo can feel that anger under his skin starting to boil, spitting droplets of white-hot rage. His arms pull tight around Alastor, fists pulling at the fabric of his shirt, and he presses his face against the warm crook of his neck and breathes in the familiar scent of him, his protector, his demon.
“Do you know what you have to do?” Alastor asks, his voice barely more than a whisper, ghosting by Angelo’s ear, and gently he disentangles them from each other, holding him at arm’s length with a hand cupping his cheek, so he can slide his thumb over the scar Angelo’s carried since he was fourteen.
Angelo nods.
“Alright.”
The walk back to the living room takes seconds. It feels like less, like the length of a blink. Ludo’s standing up now, face painted with an irritating mask of concern, and when Angelo’s close enough he surges forward, though stops about a foot away like there’s an invisible barrier holding him back. “Are you alright?”
“It’s fine.” There’s a gulf of space between them, the way it’s always been. “So what are you gonna do, Ludo?”
“I don’t know.” Ludo looks pale, the pinkish warmth of his skin shrunk to two spots high on his cheeks, like he has a fever.
“Are you gonna say no to him? Our father?”
Ludo opens his mouth and inhales, and then shuts it again. He looks like he’s about to cry.
“Are you, Ludo?”
“I don’t—”
“If he asks you to take over the family after he retires, what are you gonna say to him?”
“I don’t know, I—”
Like oil heated in a pan, his anger spits. “Fucking answer me, Ludo!”
“I can’t say no!” Ludo yells right back, his voice cracking. “I can’t say no to him, Abbie!”
When he thinks about it afterwards, Angelo will be sure it was the nickname that pushed him to it. Abbie, so plaintive and desperate, like an excuse of its own. He always had it in his mind that you don’t remember a thing like that, that your brain blocks it out, but it’s not hard to remember at all.
It’s not hard to remember the way he surges closer and knocks Ludo sprawling onto his back, the way he chases him down to the floor and his fist connects thickly with the edge of his jaw and Ludo gasps in pain and shock and confusion. It’s not hard to remember his voice, panicked and high and thin, as Ludo squirms under him and gasps out, “Abbie, stop, please don’t hurt me, Abbie!” It’s not hard to remember the feeling of Ludo’s throat under his palms, the panicked bounce of his Adam’s apple as he gasps for breath. It’s not hard to remember how tightly he holds him, watches him splutter and panic.
Angelo’s always been stronger than Ludo, always taller, always quicker to fight and to fight dirty, and Ludo never used to fight back when they fought as children. But it’s not hard to remember how, the night Angelo kills him, he pushes desperately at Angelo’s face, he claws and scrapes at Angelo’s arms with a dying man’s perverse strength, he even takes a nick out of his neck with his fingernail, a thin mark that bleeds a little and heals fast, the last thing Ludo ever gives him.
He’s panting when it’s over, his hair hanging in thick strands in front of his face, his breaths heavy and jagged. Ludo’s eyes are open, his neck raw and red. He doesn’t know how long he’s like this before Alastor’s there, a hand on the back of his head and then his shoulder, “Oh, Angel,” whispered into the darkness.