Ranger - Jericho's Boys #4 - ch. 23 (Patreon)

Very unbeta'd/Unedited. Epilogue tomorrow, bonus epilogue when I have time (I'll make the bonus epilogue what happened the night with the Triad.

Enzo

Enzo sat with his back to the cold metal, Seven in his lap, his head heavy against his chest. There was a bandage covering the four-inch groove the stray bullet had carved into his cheek and another wrapped around the missing curve of his earlobe. Atticus had assured him Seven was fine–“mild concussion, ruptured eardrum, no internal bleeding”–but Enzo’s chest was still too tight to breathe right. He believed Atticus. He just didn’t feel like believing him. Every rise of Seven’s chest against his own came as proof he refused to stop checking for.

They’d moved. Not far–just across the docks to another corpse of a building–but far enough that the shadows had rearranged themselves. The abandoned processing shed loomed like a rusted cathedral, its corrugated roof slick with moonlight. A single sodium lamp leaned crookedly from a post, flickering in and out like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to live. It threw light in uneven pulses, heartbeat flashes that made the wet ground look like it was breathing.

Atticus lingered close, his usual calm pulled taut, like he knew the second he walked away Enzo would unravel. Jericho’s low voice carried from somewhere deeper in the shed, smooth and steady as a surgeon’s hand, impossible to read. Grant and his buddies lay hog-tied in the open, their muffled groans catching beneath the whine of distant waves. Somewhere out on the water, there was a relentless dinging sound that he couldn’t quite place. Enzo’s brothers were orbiting the scene, one moment hurling insults at the captives, the next craning their necks toward the far side of the room where Avi’s ‘project’ was taking shape.

Avi stood grinning, the kind of grin men wore right before they did something they could never take back. There was that wild spark in his eyes–half genius, half lunatic–that made Enzo’s stomach knot with something between awe and disgust. He wanted to tell him to stop smiling like that. He wanted to tell him not to enjoy it. But telling a psychopath to act more human seemed a useless pursuit.

“You see it?” Avi called, his voice echoing off the rafters, far too bright for the room it lived in. Enzo had overheard him telling Asa earlier he was naming it Teeth Therapy. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. The thing explained itself.

It was a ramp, old, salt-gnawed metal climbing up from a shallow basin of stagnant water into a waiting mouth of shadow. The sides were high to keep their catch in the machine's relentless jaws. Teeth–God, they really did look like teeth–rusted blades welded at uneven angles, jagged enough to catch the meager light and throw it back in cruel, fractured gleams. At the base sat a square pit, the water inside thick and black as oil, trembling whenever the wind breathed through the holes in the walls.

Enzo’s throat felt dry as he took it in. The smell of brine and blood clung to the air. Seven’s blood. It soaked into their clothes. It soaked into Enzo’s psyche, whispering a million different what-ifs. What if the bullet had been just a millimeter closer. What if Seven had missed. Would he be clinging to three dead bodies? His pulse was loud enough to drown out the machinery starting to hum. He tightened his hold on Seven, grounding himself in the weight of him–warm, breathing, alive–and decided he didn’t care what the others did next. Not tonight.

Enzo had no idea what that pit had once held, but whatever it was had been joined by three gallons of gasoline from his trunk. The fumes curled through the air so thick his eyes burned, a sting of heat and chemical rot that coated the back of his throat. Cans and warped crates lined the walls; chains hung from an overhead rail, swaying slightly every time someone walked by. The whole setup looked rehearsed, like some insane fever dream of theater and torture, everyone knowing their cues except him.

“Enzo?” Seven groaned, his head rolling weakly against his chest as he fought to look up.

Enzo’s pulse spiked so fast it made his vision blur. For a second, every other sound–metal, waves, muffled whimpering–disappeared. “I’m here, baby. How do you feel?”

“Like someone dragged me across the pavement by my hair,” Seven muttered, voice hoarse and raw. “What happened?”

Enzo shot a glare towards the sweaty man with his greasy ponytail. “That stupid fuck, Ceasar, shot you.”

Seven’s head snapped downward like he could assess the damage by instinct.

“It was a stray bullet,” Atticus said from where he sat on the lowest stair riser, voice calm, clinical. “Caught your cheek and ear. You’re probably gonna have a scar, and you’re missing part of your earlobe.”

Seven sagged against Enzo’s chest with an exhausted breath. “Is that all?” he asked, relief bleeding into the words. “Is everyone else okay?”

Atticus nodded, but Enzo’s jaw flexed. “No, that’s not all. You’ve got a ruptured eardrum, a concussion, and probably a few cracked ribs from falling down the stairs.” 

His hand never stopped moving, tracing small circles against Seven’s arm like he could keep him here just by touch.

Seven grimaced. “That explains why it feels like somebody went at me with a baseball bat.”

Avi appeared in front of them, all grin and mania, his eyes practically glowing. “Perfect timing,” he said to Seven. “Just in time to watch me knock another thing off my bucket list.”

Felix and Zane traded uneasy glances but stayed quiet. Atticus just huffed, the corner of his mouth twitching like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be horrified or impressed.

Seven tried to sit up straighter, squinting toward the monstrous contraption at the center of the room. “What is it?”

“What is it really?” Avi asked, tilting his head with a smirk. “Or what’s my vision?”

Seven blinked. “Both?”

“Near as I can tell, this used to be a fish descaler,” Avi said proudly. “See those grater-like things on the ramp? They’d drag the fish across to scrape off scales before dumping them in the pool.”

Seven leaned forward, his nose wrinkling as the sharp, metallic scent of gas hit him. “What’s in the pool now?”

“It was stagnant water,” Avi said, grinning wider. “Now it’s water and gasoline.”

Seven stared at him. “You had run a dude over a cheese grater into a vat of gasoline on your bucket list? That’s oddly specific and weirdly coincidental…even for you.”

“No,” Avi said, scandalized. “I once heard this Weird Al song—”

“Who?” Seven interrupted.

“Before your time,” Avi waved off. “Anyway, he wrote about diving into a swimming pool of double-edged razor blades rather than spending another minute with his girl. And I thought, that’s art. But I knew I could improve on it.”

“Lunatic,” Atticus muttered, but his tone carried reluctant amusement.

The tension in the room pulsed like a heartbeat, laughter and horror tangling together, the smell of gasoline cutting through it all. Enzo smoothed his thumb over the edge of Seven’s jaw, feeling the dried tack of blood beneath the bandage. Seven was breathing. That was all that mattered. The rest of the world could burn.

“As I was saying,” Avi called, louder than necessary, punctuating each syllable. “I knew I could do it better. What if instead of diving into razor blades, they could—like—slide down them and land in lemon juice or alcohol…or, since we’re improvising…gasoline.”

“That’s…intense, man,” Seven said, throat tight with a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.

“This is gonna be so fucking cool,” Avi crowed and hustled back to fuss over his vision.

Enzo exchanged a look with Atticus–the only two people who felt like actual adults in the room right now–while Felix, Zane, and Jericho hovered, saying nothing that encouraged Avi’s mania yet not stepping in to stop it. Jericho offered practical tips about keeping the gears from gumming up; Asa barked a reminder about stabilizing the ramp so they didn’t collapse halfway down.

Enzo kept staring at the ramp. He tried to look away but his gaze kept snagging on small, awful details: a strip of denim hooked on a serrated tooth, threads frayed like a torn flag; a dark smear on the concrete rim near the pit; a coil of rope lying beside a winch with the kind of deliberate placement that made his chest tighten. The air tasted faintly of iron and gasoline; it made his stomach flip.

A small commotion at the door announced August and Lucas’s arrival. 

August’s smile split his face like a knife. “Oh, excellent. We didn’t miss it.”

“I wouldn’t start without you,” Avi said, grinning, like he’d been given permission to finish a thesis. “Not after you let me shatter that body.”

Lucas folded down beside Seven, keeping a careful distance from the man’s kicked-out legs. “How are you feeling?” he asked in a low voice.

“Like someone shot me in the face,” Seven muttered. The joke eased some tension; a crooked, exhausted grin softened his features. “My head’s pounding and I think I cracked a tooth. Do I look as bad as I feel?”

Lucas’s mouth quirked. “Actually? You look kinda hot, like a movie hero.”

Enzo’s jaw tightened at the casual compliment. Before he could retort, August swooped in and pulled Lucas upright into his arms. “That’s enough of that,” August said, warm annoyance in his tone. “Have we reached the point in our relationship where you flirt with younger men right in front of me?”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “If I got mad every time some student hit on you, I’d need a Botox retainer to keep up with all the frown lines.”

“That’s different,” August countered, smug.

“How so?” Lucas prodded with a laugh.

August wrapped his arms around him from behind. “They flirt with me. I would never flirt with them, not when I have you.”

Seven laughed, then tried to sit up, groaning before falling back against Enzo. He felt bile rise at Seven’s discomfort. His hands moved before his brain did, steadying him. Atticus reached for Seven and helped him up so Enzo could stand too. Seven sagged against him immediately, heavy and small at the same time.

August peered around at the contraption and snapped his fingers. “Explain,” he said to Avi. “Tell me everything. Don’t skip a thing.”

Something about August reminded Enzo of Gomez Addams, somehow both elegant and ghoulish in equal measure.

Avi bobbed with glee, hands already twitching toward controls. “Okay–so imagine a ramp with–”

Enzo kept one hand on Seven’s chest, his arm fastened around his waist. It was an anchor. The rest of the world–gasoline fumes, the metallic gleam of that ramp, the quiet gurgle of something oily in the pit–receded into the background. All he heard were Seven’s shallow breaths, the soft intake of someone drugged with adrenaline and pain. It made him meaner somehow, made him a little excited about the spectacle that was about to take place.

Avi outlined the gruesome mechanics with the pride of someone describing a masterpiece. The others listened: some with clinical interest, some with the detached curiosity of people used to making awful things happen and then washing their hands. The twins fussed at last-minute adjustments; Jericho inspected winches; Felix hovered over Zane protectively, exactly as he always did.

Outside, distant water lapped at the docks; the wind pushed a corrosive smell through the open shed and the sodium lamp above them flickered, throwing intermittent hard shadows. The scene felt like a snapshot someone would later say was prophetic, a calm before an engineered storm.

Enzo’s thumb moved across Seven’s temple, then down the cheek where the bandage rode. He could taste the chemical tang of the night on his tongue. He could hear the soft, slightly hoarse edge to Seven’s breath and the small, involuntary sounds that broke through when Atticus adjusted a bandage or when someone joked too loudly. Every laugh sounded brittle to Enzo’s ears.

Avi clapped his hands. “Ready to test?” he asked, eyes wild.

 Jericho’s voice cut through in a flat line. “No more tests.”

A shadow of a grin crossed Avi’s face; then he saw Enzo’s hand tighten around Seven's hair and, for once, the joke left him. He backed off, just a little. Even in a room full of men who’d spent lifetimes hardening themselves, Enzo’s fierceness softened something or maybe it just reminded them that they’d had people they loved put in jeopardy before as well.

The whole family was cracked. He had no idea why his mother put them on a pedestal. Not that he didn’t like them. He did. They were decent people, with their own harsh sense of justice. But there was no denying they were all a little unwell. Except Atticus maybe. Atticus felt like the only stable thing in a house of spinning knives.

Avi bounced on his feet. “Let me show you.” He padded to the ramp and ran a hand down one of the teeth, careful, almost reverent. “We repurposed an intake line from the old plant. Nothing complicated. It’s symbolic as much as it’s…well…motivational.”

He tossed a look over his shoulder at the three men on the floor, currently being unmade by his brothers. They were filthy–salted with sweat and blood–hands bound. Seasoned. Enzo flinched at his own morbid thought. They didn’t struggle. They lay there with that hollow, stunned expression of men who never thought they’d have a last night that smelled of fish guts and rust. 

“It feels weirdly…poetic somehow. No?” Avi asked.

Zane shook his head from where he stood by Ansel. “You cannot call it poetic when it’s just…gruesome.”

Avi pursed his lips. “Okay, fine. Not poetic. Cathartic.”

Enzo wasn’t registering the words. He was seeing the pit again: black and slick, an oily eye watching from the bottom. He forced himself not to picture a body sliding into it. When Seven turned in his arms, he forced his gaze downward. He read an assent in Seven’s eyes that made his gut drop–his pupils were blown wide, chest hitting in short, painful pulls. Pain and something else flickered behind his eyes: a thrill, a grim satisfaction that made Enzo equal parts proud and terrified. That look—hungry and hollow—wasn't excitement exactly; it was relief.

“He’s right,” Ansel said suddenly. “They did the worst. They lied, sold, used people…little kids. Babies. These men are disgusting. They tried to set up Seven’s mom.”

Elio nodded, earnest. “Those women and kids are still out there. I know you said the Mulvaneys would handle it, but these guys deserve everything this machine gives them.”

Enzo didn’t know how to feel when his baby brothers recited this case for vengeance, but disgust wasn’t it. He felt a sour kind of calm, the kind that happens once a decision you didn’t ask for has already been made. Part of him wanted the men to die screaming, but another part felt like hearing the rationale from his baby brothers just proved that Enzo had converted them into something monstrous. 

Ansel and Elio hadn’t been raised in the dark the way the older Conti’s were; their understanding of violence was raw and new, they fought the bad guys with keyboards and terabytes. Hearing them justify what was about to happen made Enzo both uneasy and proud.

“Shouldn’t they suffer for their crimes?” Ansel asked, then nodded like he was answering his own question. “They should be punished. They should know fear.”

“Your brothers are sharp,” Asa said, voice flat. “They understand there’s a thin line between justice and revenge.”

A heavy hush dropped over the plant. Even the wind seemed to lean in. One of the captives shifted and the sound was a small, horrible thing–leather against concrete–dragging across Enzo’s nerves. The men’s faces were slack with the sudden collapse of their assumptions; arrogant men don’t expect an end that smells of diesel and salt. Their eyes, once sharp with entitlement, now ratcheted between panic and pleading, like animals being shuttled into a kill zone.

“I don’t want to rush anyone, but we have to pick up the kids soon,” Lucas said.

“Us, too,” the others echoed, everyone except Seven and Enzo’s brothers.

Seven nuzzled Enzo’s neck, lips dragging over his pulse point like he was considering taking things further even with an audience. Enzo’s pulse jumped.

“You okay?” he whispered against his shoulder, fingers curling into Enzo’s shirt. He smelled of iron and sweat and the faint medicinal sting of antiseptic. Enzo could feel every shaky breath, every tremor like it was his own.

Enzo leaned down until their foreheads touched. “I’m fine,” he lied, because the truth would’ve made him sound unhinged. “You’re okay. That’s what matters.”

Seven looked up, the corner of his mouth curving into that wry smile that had undone Enzo from the beginning. “Does it bother you that I’ll probably have a scar?”

“No.” Enzo’s laugh cracked. “It’s–” He exhaled hard. “I’ll take a thousand scars over the alternative. You were a little too pretty anyway. Now you’ll look just menacing enough to give you an edge in court.”

He tried to sound teasing, but his chest ached with everything that could have gone differently. He’d seen that bullet miss by a hair. The thought made his stomach twist.

Avi looked at Seven. “They went after your mom, mangled your pretty face. You want to do the honors?”

Enzo’s fists clenched before he even realized. It was hard–almost impossible–to reconcile the man in his arms with the predator the others saw. This was his Seven. The one who teased him into late-night takeout runs, who kissed him quiet, who was soft even when he tried to pretend otherwise. The world didn’t get that version. Only Enzo did.

All Enzo wanted was to go home. To lock the doors. To bury himself in their bed with Seven alive and warm and safe. Almost like he sensed Enzo’s trepidation, Seven shook his head. “No, they’re all yours.” 

“We ready?” Asa asked.

No. They weren’t. Enzo wanted time to line all this up in neat moral boxes and label it justified, but the Mulvaney’s didn’t wait for permission. Seven was beat up but his gaze was steady and calm. There was a quiet hunger in it, and something in Enzo’s chest gave way. He kissed Seven’s temple, a quick, hot press of lips. 

“Okay,” he said finally, voice rough with restraint. “Let’s just do this and get it over with. I want to get my brothers home, and I want to take Seven to a real hospital.”

Avi saluted, grinning. “Yes, sir. Clean. Courteous. Educational.”

Seven turned in his arms, back warm against Enzo’s chest, watching the procession. They moved like a unit. Efficient. Practiced. A pack that had seen every shade of cruelty and learned how to choreograph around it. Enzo didn’t watch the details; he couldn’t. He dropped back onto a stack of thick wooden pallets, Seven draped across his knee, his hand resting softly over the curve of Seven’s ribs just to feel him breathe.

His brothers floated closer, wide-eyed, transfixed by the mechanical ballet unfolding in front of them. The captives' ropes were cut, brought forward one by one, their faces sliding from confusion to terror in an instant. They pleaded, of course. Grant stammered excuses, swore he’d been forced, swore he’d never meant to hurt anyone.

The words fell on deaf ears.  Avi almost laughed himself sick. “Even if that were true,” he said. “Nobody cares. Nobody here even has the capacity to give a shit.”

It wasn’t true, but nobody would waste their tears on these men either. They seemed to understand that nobody was coming to save them. After that, the laughter died.

The silence that followed was worse. Thick. Breathing. A silence that crawled over the concrete like some kind of living thing.

Enzo saw it then…the shift. Fear didn’t cleanse these men; it corroded them. He hated himself for noticing the details: how Grant’s hands shook, how Ceasar’s face went slack, how the stench of urine joined the reek of gasoline and metal. When Grant’s bladder let go, it wasn’t just shame, it was recognition. They finally understood this was real. 

Seven watched, unnervingly calm. If not for the way his fingers wound through Enzo’s, white-knuckled, Enzo would’ve thought he was unaffected. His stillness was its own kind of violence, the quiet kind, the kind that meant he was done feeling anything for these losers.

The closer the men got to the top of the ramp, the closer Enzo’s brothers drifted to his side, both wide-eyed and reverent, watching with grim fascination. Felix leaned against the far wall, Zane tucked into his chest. August stood a few feet off, the detached expression of a man cataloging a crime scene, while Lucas thumbed a message into his phone like they weren’t all standing in hell. Jericho knelt near the machine, eyes fixed on the gears, more worried about the engineering than the execution.

Asa hit the button. The ramp groaned to life with a shriek that set Enzo’s teeth on edge. Metal grated against metal, echoing through the rafters, sharp as a scream from some final girl. The teeth caught the light, glinting like diamonds…or bones.

Avi was just about to pitch Grant forward when Asa barked, “Wait.”

Avi’s glare was so childish Enzo almost laughed, right until Asa produced a sleek metal lighter. The flame flared bright against his fingers. For one heartbeat, they all held their breath. Then he tossed it into the pit.

The explosion of fire hit them like a lungful of heat. Flames roared up, curling the air into shimmering waves. The smell of burning gasoline flooded the room, sweet, acrid, alive. Enzo’s lungs burned.

Zane whipped around and smacked Asa’s arm. “You moron! What if that pit had chemicals in it? You could’ve blown up the entire fucking building!”

Asa shrugged, the picture of unrepentant glee. “But it didn’t.” He flashed a grin. “Yay?”

“You’re an asshole,” Zane muttered, turning away. “I’m sleeping with Avi and Felix tonight.”

Asa caught him around the waist, hauling him off his feet. “Like hell, you are.”

“You don’t own me, Asa Mulvaney,” Zane said, though his smirk betrayed him.

Asa captured his mouth in a filthy kiss that had all of them looking anywhere but at the two of them. When he finally released him, he purred, “That’s where you’re wrong, Lois.”

Atticus groaned. “Can you two flirt creepily later? We’re on the clock.”

“I hate to admit it,” Felix said, rubbing a hand over his face, “but Freckles is right. Lets finish this creepy game of Shoots and Ladders and go home. These guys aren’t worth all this effort.”

Avi’s smile was the stuff of nightmares. “You’re right, kitten.”

He shoved Grant onto the ramp, the teeth catching on his flesh instantly. Grant screamed, and it was the worst sound Enzo had ever heard. Not because of the pitch, but because of what it did.

It changed the air. For one still, suspended moment, everyone stopped. The flames hissed, the machine whined, and every eye turned toward the ramp whether they wanted to or not. They stared not like killers, but like…witnesses, watching something they could never unsee. Enzo’s stomach flipped, not from guilt, but from the sick gravity of understanding: this wasn’t justice. It was…inevitability. 

Enzo tried to convince himself it was only a movie, that it wasn’t real. But you couldn’t smell the sharp stench of iron and urine when you were watching a horror movie, couldn’t hear the way someone’s flesh peeled away from muscle down to fracturing bone. Each man passed out from the pain about halfway down, only to erupt from the flames screaming when they hit the pool, their bodies jerking and writhing as their flesh charred like marshmallows over a fire. 

The air shimmered with heat, thick with smoke, the kind that crawled into your hair and stayed there. The smell of burning flesh was nauseating, not because it smelled bad, but because it was almost indistinguishable from any other cooking animal. Though burning hair would never smell like anything but hell. Enzo’s hands tightened into fists around Seven’s until his knuckles turned white, feeling like he didn’t breathe again until all of the men were dead.

“Who’s cleaning this mess up?” Jericho finally asked, staring at the still-burning pool of liquid.

“Not us,” Zane and Felix said in unison. “We’re going to Dad’s. Avi and Asa can take cleanup since it was Avi’s bucket list item. We’ll just sleep there with the boys.”

When Avi made a disappointed sound, Felix shrugged. “It’s the least you could do for hijacking Seven’s kill.”

Avi looked a little sheepish when he turned to Seven. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s okay,” Seven said around a yawn. “Your dad’s gonna take out the donors and help the women and kids they kidnapped. I kind of owed you one.” He curled up against Enzo’s chest, a jaw-cracking yawn splitting his face. “But don’t forget to mark it off your bucket list. I know there’s a hard copy somewhere.”

“Why don’t we drop the boys at your mother’s house?” Atticus said to Enzo. “It’s on our way home anyway, and I know you want to have Seven seen at the hospital.”

“What’ll you tell them about…that?” Ansel asked, pointing at Seven’s battered face.

“That someone who looked a lot like Grant came after him and then disappeared into the night. They’ll buy it. Bethany already threw him under the bus with her testimony,” Enzo said.

Seven looked around then. “Uh, where is Bethany?”

He’d been so worried about Seven, he’d forgotten all about her.

“Adam and Noah came and got her while you were out. They got her and her mother out of town in case some of the donors got wind of what was going down and tried to take her out,” Enzo said.

Seven nodded. “Oh.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Enzo said. “We need to go home and clean up first. We smell like blood and gasoline.”

“It won’t be suspicious if you go home first?” Elio asked. 

“We’ll be even more suspicious if we go in like this,” Enzo countered. 

Seven looked up at him with tired eyes. “Let's go home.” 

Once they were outside, Enzo gulped in clean air, welcoming the smell of salt and the stench of rotting seaweed. The tide whispered against the pilings, the rhythmic sound lulling him, quieting some of the night's panic. He opened the passenger door for Seven, but couldn’t bring himself to let him go. 

Seven wrapped his arms around him, pressing his cheek to his chest, just letting Enzo hold him, the two of them swaying as those not in charge of clean up drove away one by one. When they were alone, Enzo tipped Seven’s head up, brushing his thumb along his jaw, trying not to focus on the bandages. 

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said quietly.

Seven’s lips curved faintly. “I knew what I was doing.” 

Enzo growled. “You could have died.” 

Seven looked exhausted, but still he tried to appease Enzo. “I had to protect your brothers. You’re mom really likes me. I didn’t want to ruin that by returning her two youngest in body bags.” 

“It’s not funny,” Enzo said, chest so tight it hurt to breathe. “If you had died…” he couldn’t even get the words out, tightening his grip on Seven until he yelped. 

“Ribs…possibly broken,” he wheezed around a pained gasp.

“Oh, fuck. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Enzo said, touching him gingerly “Shit. I don’t know if I can handle you getting hurt like this again.” 

Seven smiled. “Is this the part where you give me an ultimatum? Where you tell me I have to choose between being a vigilante and being with you?” 

Enzo scoffed. “Don’t be stupid. An ultimatum only works if you’re willing to live with either choice. I hope by now it's clear that I cannot live without you.”

Tears formed in Seven’s pale eyes, but he tried to blink them away. “Don’t make me cry, you dick. Do you know how bad tears sting an open wound?” 

Enzo captured his mouth in a raw, excruciatingly slow kiss, attempting to catalog every gasp, every sigh, the sound of their lips meeting and parting. “Please just…promise me you won’t make me spend every night wondering if you’ll make it home?” he begged between kisses. 

“I promise. I can’t say I’ll never have to patrol. I owe Jericho that much, even if he’d say it wasn’t true. But I won’t volunteer to take other people’s shifts anymore. Not now that I have someone waiting at home for me.” 

“I know I said it earlier but I just need to say it again. I love you so fucking much. I can’t believe that I almost lost you…again.” 

Seven cupped his face, forcing him to meet his gaze. “You never lost me. Even when I wanted to strangle you, I was still so crazy in love with you. That’s why it hurt so bad.” 

“I swear on my life,” Enzo said. “If I ever break your heart again, you can hand me over to Avi as fodder for one of his bucket list items.” 

Seven blinked up at him, horrified. “You have no idea what you’re saying right now…” 

“I do. I really do,” Enzo swore, peppering Seven’s jaw and throat with kisses. “I can’t wait until I put a ring on your finger, until you're mine in every way.” 

“I’m already yours…in every way. But you’re not getting out of proposing to me. And it better be a spectacle. I’m talking a trip-to-New-York-billboard-in-Times-Square big, buddy.” 

“Hell, I’ll buy you Time Square if I have to,” Enzo promised, scraping his teeth against Seven’s throat until he hissed. 

“Just how much money do you have?” Seven asked absently, tilting his head to give Enzo better access. 

“Enough to keep you in chore charts and rubber duckies for life,” he murmured. 

“That’s so hot,” Seven whispered, his hand sliding down to grope Enzo’s half-hard cock. “Do you think we have time to fuck in the shower before our trip to the emergency room?” 

“What am I gonna do with you?” Enzo murmured, sucking his plush bottom lip. 

Seven gasped. “Don’t worry, Daddy. I have a list.” 

“Fuck, you’re perfect.” 

“Took you long enough to notice.” 

Enzo nodded. “I’ll spend forever making it up to you.” 

Seven smiled against his lips. “Oh, I’ll make sure of it.”