#santino d'antonio/original female character
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WHERE THERE IS NO TEMPTATION, THERE IS NO GLORY.
⊱ a santino d'antonio / oc short-fic
interlude ii ( read on ao3 ) ( masterlist )
words: 2.4k
warnings: none really! just an impending, pervasive sense of doom.
rating: m/t
notes: so happy to have finally gotten this little interlude edited and pieced together! just more soft moments because they deserve it considering what's going to be coming up. thank you everyone who has been reading/interacting with this little love project of mine; it took a minute to get myself dug out of the trenches and posting bite-sized chapters because this is a short-fic is definitely doing something to me (lmao) but we're here!
as always you can find translations on ao3, where it's easier to store them in a place that doesn't get in the way.
There is very little time between when Santino cooks her dinner and when he moves her into his apartment. It happens without much acknowledgment from her; she finds herself swallowed up in moments of casual intimacy that break her down to nothing except a girl in love.
Santino wakes her up by kissing her neck and pulling her against his chest; she makes him dinner barefoot in the kitchen, all of the recipes that her mother taught her, and he drags his hand along her hip to reach over her into the cupboard; he stands still and obedient while Euphemia slides his tie into place, and when he zips her dress for her, he peppers her shoulder with kisses. He tolerates taking a walk through the park, even in the chilliness of late Fall or Winter, because Euphie can’t stand to not get some fresh air once a day. When one of her friends asks why he lets her bully him into the cold weather, he wraps his arms around Euphie with a sly smile and says, “How could I not, when I am the one who gets to warm her up after?”
He is an exceptionally tactile man. There is always a reason for him to touch her, trace each line of her, put his lips against her skin. Santi isn’t a man who loves; he covets. And Euphemia shouldn’t like it as much as she does, but she does. Her therapist says that it isn’t uncommon for a girl who grows up without touching to crave it, desperately, like an addiction.
So, she finds herself living in his loft to feed that addiction—which becomes their loft—and teaching him words in French, and feeding him olives while sauce simmers (and does not boil), and kissing the red-wine taste from his lips. It’s all very romantic and greatly overshadows the moments where Santino comes home raging mad, or when his bad mood takes over their conversation and stirs a fight between them. They’re both hot-headed—her more so than he—and he knows all of the ways to diffuse her while she knows none about him.
But it doesn’t matter, in the end; because Santino always kisses her, and always says, Mi dispiace, cara mi, ti amo, ti amo, ti amo, lip-locking between each break in words until her lungs ache.
Euphie has never wanted to be loved sensibly, anyway.
Making money stops becoming an issue. Santino might have been fine letting her wrap up her loose ends, so to speak, encourages her, even—“You should never leave business undone, my Euphie,”—but he’d never tolerate her continuing to skim out of the pockets of his associates. Not out of respect for them, of course, but because Santino is more than happy to provide.
“I have to do something,” Euphie insists, often. But Santino clicks his tongue and shakes his head, inspiring indignation in her. “That money goes to my mother, Santi.”
“Princesa, what are you worrying for?” He replies every time. In this instance, he is reading over some documents, his voice casual, simple, effective at bringing her to heel. “If your mama needs money, she’ll get it. Tutto quello che vuoi è tuo.”
Euphemia used to think that he was doing it to be generous, but as time goes on, she knows that isn’t the case. If Santino didn’t think he was benefitting from sending her mother money every month, he wouldn’t do it: but he does. Euphemia stops playing at arm candy for other powerful men; he endears himself to her by taking care of her mother; he endears himself to her mother; he’s afforded a sense of control. There is no facet of it where he isn’t getting something out of it. And she thinks, too, that maybe Santino likes it like this, where she is completely reliant on him for everything.
She doesn’t mind so much.
She would, if Santino didn’t drench her in his longing, if he didn’t make her feel, every day, that he is desperate to treasure her. She has always heard about this kind of love—and it is love—and never thought she would have it for herself.
But she does now, and she doesn’t want to let it go.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Tea or coffee, mama?”
Santino is busying himself in the kitchen. They’ve been together for a little over a year now, and they’re on a tour of Italy—not for fun, necessarily, but for integration. They have just spent the last week with Santino’s father and sister, and now they will spend the next two days in the Tuscan countryside with her mother.
Two days for her mother, instead of the week that they gave Santino’s father and sister, in part because his father deserves more time and in part because Euphemia doesn’t think she can tolerate her mother in much more than two-day increments.
“Coffee, please,” her mother says, very charmed by Santino.
“Tea,” Euphemia interjects. She looks at her mother—her face is tired, and older than she really is. Euphie knows that this is a side effect of heavy, abusive drinking and years spent in emotional terror, not the passage of time. Still, she finds it hard to drum up anything except distant pity in her heart. “You don’t need the caffeine.”
“Oh, you always ruin my fun.”
Santino re-enters the room with a small cup—it’s an espresso cup, but he’s poured it with regular coffee.
“A compromise,” Santi explains, handing the cup to her mother, smiling handsomely. “To make both of my girls happy.”
Her mother preens, glows under the affection. “You are so sweet, Santi. A perfect son-in-law.”
He has always called her and her mother his girls. His own mother had passed since before Euphemia; and while he knows that Euphie’s relationship with her mother is strained at best, he does what he can to ease it. Because it makes her happy, he says, and if she’s happy, he’s happy.
“Not yet a son-in-law,” Euphie corrects, and Santino flashes her a quick, amused little smile.
“You see how cruel she is to me, madonna? I have asked her to marry me, you know.”
“Santi,” Euphemia sighs, but it has had its desired effect; her mother looks scandalized, mortified at her daughter’s resistance to marrying a man as good and handsome and charming as Santino.
“Effie, tell me that you haven’t been bullying Santino like this?”
“Mama, there is no reason—he is just teasing. Ascoltami, you don’t need to look so horrified.”
“I do not know where I went wrong with you, Euphemia Sancia.” Her mother clicks her tongue, muttering something under her breath and taking a drink of the coffee Santi made her, and Euphemia can’t bring herself to say that not everything she has done wrong in her life is a slight against her mother’s parenting skills.
Santino smiles and leans across to Euphie, bringing her hand up to kiss it.
“Don’t worry,” he says to her mother, his voice blooming with practiced warmth. “I will ask her as many times as it takes for her to say yes.”
Euphemia feels her heart stutter painfully in her chest. She knows that he means it; he’s suggested it to her three times, now. It seems to be the only thing he doesn’t mind asking more than once.
“She’s always been fussy, my Euphemia,” her mother says, breaking the magic of Santino’s eyes on her. “Never happy with what she has, just like her father. Except for you, Santi—you are the only thing she holds onto.”
Exasperation and disgust flood over her. Both the mention of the man considered to be her father and any similarities they might share has her mood souring. “Mama—”
But Santino is sweeping in, like he always does when he can tell Euphie is getting tired of her mother, coming to a stand and asking her, “We should get started on dinner, cara mia, don’t you think?”
Just like that, he’s taken control of the conversation again. He sees her flailing and steadies her. Euphemia is certain that he doesn’t love her mother—that he doesn’t even like her—but that he can spend his time tolerating her with charm and grace despite knowing what her mother allowed to go on under their roof is indicative of the man that Santino is.
“Yes,” she replies, standing as well. “You look tired, mama. Take a rest while Santi and I make dinner.”
She wanders into the kitchen with Santino trailing after her. As soon as they’re alone, he winds his arms around her waist and kisses the juncture between her shoulder and neck.
“Is it true?” he asks coyly. “That you don’t hold on to anything except for me?”
She doesn’t want to tell him very much, because he knows already, and because to say it out loud will give it legs. A year together, and she still doesn’t want her feelings for him to have legs. Santino splays his fingers against her sternum and kisses her jaw.
“You know that it is,” she says at last, her voice a little unsteady. She can feel Santi smiling against her skin.
“Euphie,” he purrs, “marry me.”
Yes, she wants to say, as her eyes flutter shut. Yes, I’ll marry you, Santi. Anything that you ask. I’ll do anything for you, if you would just keep saying my name like that.
She wants to say it but the words won't come out. There is nothing quite like the feeling of Santino peeling back each individual layer of her defenses, piece by piece; so close, she knows, he is so close, but not quite. Not yet. She is most comfortable keeping him at arm’s length as much as possible—to kiss and to fuck and to let someone hold you at night is one thing. To let someone in past the barbed-wire of defenses is yet another, impossibly reckless. To be seen feeling anything deranges you, as the poets like to say.
“Sancia, hm?” he continues instead, when she can’t bring herself to answer, as the words stick in her throat. It’s one of those things where Santino seems to exercise a surprising amount of patience, this whole ordeal of to marry or not to marry; later, Euphemia will come to understand that it is because Santino believes their life together to be inevitable, that she will always say yes to him, one way or another.
For now, she turns in his arms, cocking a brow at him. He continues, “It means sacred.”
Euphemia nods sagely and props herself up on the counter. “Buon ascolto, my love. I suppose that means you should work very hard to worship me well.”
Santino laughs. He leans in, trapping her against the counter—though it isn’t much of a trap if she’s a willing participant—and noses the slope of her jaw.
“Yes,” he murmurs, “I suppose that it does.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━
On the last leg of their tour of families, Santino insists that they spend a few days in Rome by themselves.
The days are used mostly for doing a lot of nothing; neither of them are particularly interested in sight-seeing, but rather interested in seeing each other, a thing which they don’t seem to tire of particularly quickly. Instead, they shop, or lay in bed together until the afternoon, or go out to eat when street lights kick on and the city takes on a life of its own.
“You are much happier, Euphie,” Santino says one evening, smoothing out his napkin on the table absently, “when you are not around your mother.”
It’s not a question, per se, though she knows that he expects an answer. But she is still young and a little petulant, and she likes to push his buttons and make him say exactly what it is he means, so she takes a sip of her wine and replies, “Yes.”
He arches a brow at her. He looks particularly handsome like this, she thinks—not around his family, just eating dinner in a streetside restaurant in Rome, illuminated in warm candlelight and the glow of the streetlights outside.
“Are you going to tell me why?” he asks, amusedly.
“If you ask.” Euphemia sets her wine glass down on the table, and when Santino reaches for her hand, she lets him take it, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. “But it is so boring, Santi, to talk about my mother. Why don’t you ask me about something else?”
The brunette’s mouth is curving in a little smile. “Like…?”
“Like…” Euphie gestures with her free hand, like she has to really think about it. “Euphie, how did I get so lucky to have a woman like you? That is a good place to start. Or, what will you do with me once you get me back to the hotel? Or, Euphie, will I ever be so fortunate as to call you my wife?”
Santino laughs, leaning into their conversation, bringing her fingers up to kiss them. He has long lashes; soft, and dark, and they brush the tops of his cheekbones when his eyes close. Santino glances from her fingers up to her, that boyish grin on his face.
“I already know the answers to the first and last question,” he says casually, like it’s no big deal, but he’s grinning wickedly at her when he says it. She scoffs.
“Dimme poi,” Euphie insists. “I am dying to know, Santi.”
His expression is very sage, very wise, and he nods his head. “Il destino,” he says, winding their fingers together, “e tra un anno.”
There is something very heart-stopping about the way Santino articulates il destino, as though it is fact, as though there is something undeniable about their coming together.
“How do you know?” she asks. “In a year?”
“Because if you do not want to marry me by then,” Santino replies matter-of-factly, “then I am certainly not suited for marriage at all.”
She rolls her eyes, taking a drink of her wine and savoring the way his eyes trail over her, admiring, drinking her in.
“Well?” he prompts. She looks at him expectantly, and he reiterates, his gaze set on her, “What will you do with me once you get me back to the hotel, belladonna?”
Euphemia feels her heart stutter painfully in her chest when he looks at her like that; like she is the only person in the entire universe, like she has become the sun that snags him in her planetary pull, like he will never, ever grow tired of looking at her. It sweeps the breath out of her.
“Anything, mio amato,” she murmurs. “Anything you want, if you promise to never stop looking at me like that.”
#john wick fic#santino d'antonio/original female character#santino d'antonio#c: euphemia volpe#f: where there is no temptation there is no glory#spilled ink#john wick oc#i'm fine we're fine this is all fine nobody panic#gonna#q#this so that i can pretend i don't see it djhfbjdf#x: senza tentazioni senza onore
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hypnophobia (teaser)
a teaser for my upcoming ares (john wick) fic
pairing: ares x original female character
note: the following contains scribbles of planned content from my draft document. there is no guarantee that any of these words will actually make it into the final draft.
“I just have one question for you: what the fuck did you think was going to happen?”
Beatrix hesitates. “I was handling it.”
“Handling it?” Veronika laughs. “How? What was your plan? Seduce your way into the Camorra? No questions asked? Did you think you could just shoot Santino D’Antonio without repercussions?” She grabs the gun from the nightstand and shoves it at her sister. “Get out. Go fuck up somewhere else.”
“I don’t think you really have the right to deem me as the fuck up here.”
“I never asked for your help, for your protection. I just wanted to run, but you told me to wait.”
Beatrix fiddles with the emerald ring on her left hand. After a moment of contemplation, she says, “We needed the money.”
“No! You wanted the money. There’s a difference. You were greedy. You were stupid. You wanted to fuck with the big boys. And now that girlfriend of yours is going to come after us. And she won’t stop until you’re riddled with bullets and torn into shreds.”
Beatrix wanted to ignore the truth. She wanted to ignore the reality of her mistakes and the desperation that has been fogging her sense of judgment. But she knew that Veronika was right. Ares is loyal to the Camorra, to Santino. Now that Beatrix has been marked as a threat, Ares will do whatever it takes to eliminate the target.
#john wick#ares john wick#ares#santino d'antonio#ares fic#ares x reader#ares x original character#ares x original female character#teaser#fic: hypnophobia
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Chapters: 21/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#john wick#john wick x reader#john wick x y/n#john wick x you#a03#fanfiction#fanfic#keanu reeves fanfic#original female character#black reader#skyline#update#john wick chapter two#john wick chapter 2#john wick chapter 3#keanu reeves#reader insert#black female characters
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Thanks to John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, we finally know more about John Wick's origin, and even what his real name is. The action-heavy franchise that revived Keanu Reeves' career in many ways is back in theaters with another installment, and while the action is top notch as usual, the third entry in the John Wick franchise also spends plenty of time exploring the larger assassin world.
This is especially true when it comes to John Wick, who has previously been a very mysterious hitman as far as audiences can tell, but a legend in this universe to many. The first film only explained that John used to be a prolific assassin working for The Continental who jumps back into this lifestyle after his dog is killed. John Wick teased more of a history for The Boogeyman through his back tattoo which reads "Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat" in Latin. This phrase, translated to say "Fortune Favors the Bold," is a motto of the Marine Corps. and many assumed that John was a military man before his days as an assassin. However, he leaves the assassin lifestyle behind by completing an impossible task for Viggo Tarasov, allowing him to become happily married for a few years.
When John Wick: Chapter 2 hit theaters in 2017, some more clues of John's past came in regards to that task. We learned that John actually received some level of help in this situation from Santino D'Antonio, which gave him a marker that he could use at his will to make John return the favor. The blood oath was reluctantly fulfilled by John and eventually results in him murdering Santino on Continental grounds, making John excommunicado and the biggest target in New York. That is where John Wick: Chapter 3 picks up, and after some heart-racing action, it dives deep into John's past and reveals some surprising things along the way.
John Wick's Real Name Is [...]
After John is able to fend off a few dozen assassins, he sets his plan to leave New York and escape with the hope of meeting the one man who is above The High Table so that he can be pardoned and continue to live. This plan takes John to a new location filled with new characters for the franchise, but all of this is familiar for John. It is during these scenes that a major revelation comes to audiences, as John proclaims that his real name is Jardani Jovonovich.
He says this in an effort to prove that he is worthy of being helped by the mysterious new group. Jardani means John in Romani, and since John reverts to calling himself this during the exchange, it appears that Jardani Jovonovich is his actual birth name. This would then indicate that he was Jardani as a child, but then changed his name to John Wick to embrace his assassin lifestyle. But, it also means that his new name isn't just random, but rather derived from his original one, where his last name of Wick is pulled from the end of Jovonovich.
The Director
John only goes back to his old name though because he is speaking to The Director, director of a new character for the series played by Anjelica Huston and head of the Ruska Roma where John grew up. She is another high ranking figure within this assassin underworld someone who works with the High Table, but is still below their laws and rules. Because of this, The Director shouldn't even be speaking to John based on his excommunicado status, but there is an implied long history between them that makes her go against her better judgement and help John.
This decision comes back to hurt her, as an Adjudicator from the High Table pays her a visit with a band of assassins. The Director is ordered to stick her hands out together and the Adjudicator orders a sword to go through them both, leaving her with a permanent reminder of the cost of helping John and betraying the High Table.
The School
The Director appears to be a vital part of the High Table's operation too, as she is in charge of a school that develops and trains young assassins. The front for the Ruska Roma's operation is a ballet studio and performance center, but the students are being taught much more than just how to dance. The boy students are shown training in combat, while the girls are shown perfecting their dance routines. However, the first scene at the school features one female dancer with bruises on her body (likely from the combat training), while a later scene includes male dancers too, so all of the attendees are receiving the same level of training.
This school is more important to the John Wick universe beyond its role in the overall system though, as it also appears to be where John Wick received his training. All of the students have the same cross tattoo on their backs as John is shown to have on multiple occasions, and this further explains why he knows of the location and has a connection to The Director. This wasn't just a place for John to go to get away, but may very well be how he got his started on this path to begin with.
The Key/Ticket Cross
With this history to The Director and her school of assassins, that further explains the cross necklace that John uses as the explanation for why he deserves their help, It is the latest important artifact to come from the John Wick universe. As an orphan and last member of his tribe, John carries an Orthodox crucifix and rosary, representing a debt owed to him by The Director.
The cross is John's ticket to escape New York and secure safe passage from The Director's forces all the way to Casablanca. This ticket only has a one time use though, as the acceptance of the cross by The Director then sees the ticket punched (in a sense) by the cross being put in fire and then branded upside down in the center of the cross tattoo on John's back, signifying that it has been used. The commonality of the cross tattoos with assassins at the school may further indicate that this is all part of this particular school's training and graduation.
—
These new details on John Wick's backstory ultimately leave fans with much more knowledge about Baba Yaga and his journey to become the man he is today. When it is all pieced together, John appears to have been trained as an assassin from a young age, possibly became a Marine (if the back tattoo is more than just symbolic), returned to the assassin world, left it to get married, and is now once again entrenched in this lifestyle. This all comes from three films worth of exploring the character, and with the ending teasing more adventures could come, new films could reveal even more about John Wick's past.
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⊱ NO TEMPTATION/NO GLORY MASTERLIST.
summary: euphemia volpe has never wanted for very much; a safe place to sleep, a soft place to land. to love someone, and be loved back. she has all of those things now, but it’s most unfortunate for her that she has fallen in love with a man who will never be satisfied with what he’s got.
rating: mature/teen
warnings: language, some depictions of a relationship that is not entirely healthy, extensive use of my very basic knowledge of italian (padded with google translate, thank you google!), and an unfortunate amount of endearments and pet names. this does not deviate from john wick chapter 2’s canon ending, so please bear in mind this will contain major character death. as a short fic (vs a longfic) this will also be much shorter than my usual works!
i: contact is crisis • ii: they whose lives do not taste of evil • interlude i • iii: tra i due litigante terzo gode • interlude ii • iv: we begin in the dark • v: and birth is the death of us • epilogue: fortis fortuna adiuvat
#john wick#santino d'antonio/original female character#santino d'antonion/oc#spilled ink#f: where there is no temptation there is no glory#c: euphemia volpe#c: santino d'antonio#x: senza tentazioni senza onore
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thought it was about time i got things all tidied up in here! all of my writings/one-shots/etc i THINK should be listed and organized under the cut. explicit content will be denoted with a *, with specific warnings prior in each individual oneshot/chapter. thank you! ♡
you can find my original masterlist posted on my archive here
—DEPUTY ELLIOT HONEYSETT—
MAIN UNIVERSE » ANCIENT NAMES » complete
masterpost
MAIN UNIVERSE » WITCHING HOUR » in progress
masterpost
OUTTAKES & DELETED SCENES » ANCIENT NAMES-ADJACENT
troublemaker • iloveyou • sinful • stay • animals
OUTTAKES & DELETED SCENES » WITCHING HOUR-ADJACENT
—JACOB SEED & ARDEN HALE—
my someplace is here • pareto optimal *
—ISOLDE KHAN X JOSEPH SEED—
let me sanctify you * • sanctify you, excerpt *
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » HERALD ELLIOT & THE UNHOLY TRINITY
love made me do it * • a venom dripping in your mouth • vicious traditions • blood on my name • heart of glass, mind of stone • this domain of hunger * • playing with fire, living in sin * • condemnation *
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » ELLIOT HONEYSETT x DIANA BAKER
loose cannon • a test of strength • listen before i go • i'm your man (feat. sharky) *
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » ELLIOT HONEYSETT x WESLEY BROOKS
too close to stars
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » ELLIOT HONEYSETT x LYRA FAIRBANKS
this can’t happen again
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » PRE/NO-CULT AU
—ELLIOT HONEYSETT x JOHN SEED—
wrap me around your fingertips * • hands all over * • fever * • just like magic • equitable exchange • domestic warfare • golden morning • blue, baby • honey lavender * • party favours
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » ISOLDE KHAN, THE BRIDE OF GOD
—ISOLDE KHAN & LYRA FAIRBANKS—
our muses are mistaken to be a couple by someone else
—ISOLDE KHAN x AUDRY ROOK—
sugar-coated, the most sweet • sweet little unforgettable thing *
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE » OUR CATHEDRAL IS THE BADLANDS
—ISOLDE KHAN x MICHAEL S. HUGHES—
dreaming of you • stained glass • parental disaster
—HELMI x DEPUTY JESTINY ELLEN—
devour
—ROMAN SIONIS x OFC! VARYA ASTAKHOVA—
MAIN UNIVERSE » CARRY YOUR THRONE
available only on ao3
MAIN UNIVERSE » THE LAND OF GODS & DEVILS
masterlist
ONESHOTS » CYT/G&D-ADJACENT
pavlovian * • damage done & damage made • danse macabre
—SANTINO D'ANTONIO x OFC! EUPHEMIA VOLPE—
MAIN UNIVERSE » NO TEMPTATION/NO GLORY
masterlist // read on ao3
ONESHOTS » NT/NG ADJACENT
pretty please * • i'm hanging up *
#spilled ink#honeysides masterlist#far cry 5#birds of prey#sorry to everyone who's seeing this now for the 1000th time#but it felt necessary to fresh post rather than rb#and thank you to everyone being patient w me <3#scheduled post#q#santino d'antonio/original female character
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WHERE THERE IS NO TEMPTATION, THERE IS NO GLORY.
⊱ a santino d'antonio / oc short-fic
pt. iii: tra i due litigante terzo gode ( read on ao3 ) ( masterlist )
words: 3.6k
warnings: mentions of animal death (canon-typical), clown on clown violence.
rating: m/t
notes: putting this little project of mine up on the internet for strangers to see was incredibly nerve-wracking, but i have been so lucky to be received so kindly by folks! thank you to everyone who reads, it really means the absolute most to me.
i don't know if i mentioned this before, but you can find translations for the (google-translated) italian at the bottom of each chapter on my ao3. i know it's a hassle, i'm sorry!! just can't find an easy place to put them here without spoiling what's going on in the chap ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ
thank you as always to my lovely beta @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife; this could not be done at all without you. ♡ and to @belorage, who loves euphie enough to send me the cutest message that managed to kick my ass into gear to get this chapter edited!!
Two days after the engagement party, when Santino has finally made up for his delay and lateness, is when he ruins it all again.
Later, Euphemia will think that he can’t help it—he is destined to be a wrecker, a ruiner, even if it’s for himself. It’s not his fault, not really, she’ll say. Ignoring that he is a perfectly autonomous adult means that she can excuse his thoughtlessness and not call it selfishness.
One of Santi’s men tries to tell her that he’s busy as she strides through the museum, heels clipping the floor with a strict, stark cadence. The smell of the doctor’s office is still stuck in her palette. She feels a wad of anxiety, anticipation, coiling deep in the pit of her stomach, a black stone dropped there to torture her with its heaviness. Santino will be happy, she thinks absently, chewing the inside of her cheek as she moves. He’s always wanted this.
The man is keeping pace with her well enough, despite her long legs and the purpose with which she walks to one of the back rooms of the museum.
“Bella,” he says, reaching to stop her, “per favore, he is in a meeting.”
The words put a sour taste in her mouth. Busy, the man is trying to say, too busy for you, for this, right now.
“Trust me, Gianni,” she replies dryly, “he’ll want to make time for this.”
She takes two steps into the room past the other guards, who don’t bother trying to stop her. The room is marked primarily by a high ceiling, which allows all of the paintings to be hung in it in their varying degrees of size. Euphemia recognizes Santino sitting on the bench first, and then another man that he’s talking to. The man looks like he’s just come off of the streets, his hair dark and the scruff that she can see on the side of his face manicured enough to look like he just hasn’t bothered recently.
It takes Euphemia’s brain a few seconds to register the facial features of the man who turns to look at her over his shoulder. He would be nothing, mean nothing, to her if she didn’t see the way his expression flattened, his gaze sweeping over her—calculating. Measuring. Identifying.
He looks dirty, unshowered, covered in soot, and she thinks back to two nights ago when Santino showed up to their engagement party smelling like fire and gunpowder.
Santino stands abruptly. He might be angry, or perhaps worried; it’s hard to tell the difference with him. But she can’t look at him, anyway, her gaze fixed on the stranger who is not much of a stranger at all, who she knows because of the scary stories. The rest of the world may as well be melting down around her, some sick Van Gogh painting, and she can’t look away.
John Wick has dark eyes. Shark’s eyes, she thinks. Black, soulless. Like the glass eyes on a teddy bear. She feels her stomach lurch as fear washes over her in a slick, wet wave, reminding her that she’s already received one bout of stressful news this afternoon.
He watches her. She’s sure he’s sizing her up—that is what John Wick is made to do—but after a second, he glances to Santino, gauging his reaction. If he thinks she's any kind of a threat, he's not letting it show.
“I told you not to let anyone in,” Santi says angrily to Gianni, helpless behind her—because Gianni would have never dared to grab her arm to stop her, would have never thought it acceptable to handle her like street rabble.
“Santi,” Euphie says, feeling very small and very far away and somewhere that her body isn't, “who is that?”
She knows, but she wants to hear him say it.
He steps around the bench, excusing himself from his conversation with Wick and crossing the space between them to guide her out of the room with his hands on her arms. She lets him, not because she isn’t burning with rage but because if Santino doesn’t show her where to go, Euphemia will just stand there, fear driving icy-hot spears through her chest.
He takes her as far as around the corner of the room, maybe to put as much space between her and John Wick as he can afford, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She starts to shrug his hands off of her, and oh, there it is—the shrieking, panging fear, and fury, boiling inside of her. Venomous, indignant. Her mind is a mess of color and noise and she’s vaguely aware that maybe she should be working hard to keep her voice down, but it no longer matters.
A lot of things shouldn’t have happened that did. What’s one more?
“You brought him here?” She can feel her voice bordering on hysteria. “Are you a fucking idiot, Santi? What part of I don’t want John Wick near my life—”
“Euphie, Euphie, Euphie,” Santi says, trying his sweet-talk; condescending, like he’s speaking to a child. “Lower your voice, tesora, and we’ll talk about it.”
Her hand moves of its own accord, a knee-jerk reaction to Santi sweetly telling her to shut up, and she slaps him. Hard. As hard as she can manage. The second her palm connects with the side of his face, and the needles start stinging in her palm, she thinks that she regrets it: but all she can really think about is the pure fear and rage coursing through her body, pummeling adrenaline through her bloodstream until she feels like she’s going to be sick.
And, a little, too, a warmth blooming in her chest: satisfaction.
Santino's head doesn't turn back to her right away. There is a heartbeat of a moment where only silence reigns, where his fingers reach and touch the place her palm had made contact with, like he can't believe she did it. Maybe he can't, but then he'd be a bigger idiot than Euphemia thought.
He turns to face her again and holds up a hand—perhaps to call for a moment of inaction, or to be prepared for a second blow, she’s not sure and she doesn’t care. Santi begins, his voice a low threat, “Do not do anything else you're going to regret, Euphemia.”
Anything else you’re going to regret, he says, as though she will regret having done this.
“Fuck you,” she snaps, her voice rising in volume further yet. The poison reverberates on the high, smooth glass ceiling, bouncing off of the marble walls until it’s all echoing around them. “He knows what I look like, what—what I sound like, he knows my name, Santi, you—”
She's pushing him, hitting his chest; an impatient and weak battering. She wants both to get him away from her as much as possible and keep him close. Santi catches her wrists with bruising force, trapping her and making her look at him.
“Euphemia, basta—if you had waited,” he bites out, “then—”
“I’m pregnant!” The words leave her in a visceral, furious shout, her heart thundering in her chest, her flight or fight demanding one or the other. She rips her wrists from his grip. It feels like her entire body is vibrating. “You fucking idiot—I was late, I just got back from the doctor, and—and you’re not supposed to have him here anyway! You promised me, Santino D’Antonio, you promised me!”
There is a heartbeat of time, of space, where her fiance stares at her like he doesn’t quite think that she’s real. Red blooms on his cheek where her hand made contact and the dark of his pupils has all but swallowed up the beautiful green of his irises. Finally, something seems to kick the gears back into motion, and he plunges on, catching his footing.
“Euphie,” Santi says, reaching for her again, “Euphie, listen to me. John came to me, I didn’t—”
“I don’t need a fucking history lesson, Santino!” Euphemia spits, brushing his hand away from her arm. Blood is rushing through her head, louder and louder, demanding she raise her own volume to be heard over it. “I told you to leave him alone. You insisted, and I thought that was the end of it—you came late to the party that night because of him, isn’t that right? So why is he here, Santi? Why is John Wick near me and my baby?”
Santino stares at her. She can see the flex of his jaw when his teeth clench, trying to maintain what shred of control he has. He swallows, lifting a finger, to indicate one minute, and it takes all of her self-control not to scream at him that he doesn’t get any more minutes. But there is some pleasure in seeing him a little ruffled; to see the way his eyes dart over her face, trying to keep everything collected neatly in his mind, filed away for premium use. She wants to shake him until he is really rattled.
“It may have taken more persuasion than I anticipated,” Santi says finally, at last.
Euphemia makes a sound something like wrecking, like grief, because she knew this was going to happen and he told her it wouldn’t but here they are anyway. It’s a death knell, ringing in her ribcage, in the cavity of her chest. Dead, dead, dead, we’re all fucking dead now, don’t you see it? You, and me, and now our baby, dead like stones.
He continues quickly, over the sound of her agony, “But that doesn’t matter—cara mia, listen to me, it doesn’t matter because now John will do what I ask him to, and we don’t have to worry about anything else. Euphie, Euphie—come here, we'll talk about this.”
She’s going to be sick. The doctor’s words are still rolling around in her head; avoid stress, make sure you sleep and eat well. Can’t be worrying that baby, can we, Miss Volpe? Make sure your fiance does all the work, hm?
“It does matter. It matters the most, Santi, I—I told you to leave him be, I told you, and you said that you would only ask and that would be it—”
She’s grieving, now, lamenting the loss of her happiness, the hysteria taking a melancholic edge in her voice as the sorrow sweeps over her. Santi keeps reaching for her, to try and ground her back to him, and for the first time since she met him she just can’t stand to feel him touching her, saying her name, trying to sweet-talk her. His hands sweep her shoulders, coming up for his thumb to brush the nape of her neck; instinctively, her shoulders scrunch up to disembark them, arms shoving his off of her.
He says, “Tesora, we can talk about this—”
“You did exactly what I asked you not to,” she manages out, taking a step back from him. “I ask you for two things, Santi. Helping my mother, and not putting yourself at war with John Wick. I do not—you should not have asked him at all!”
“Euphie—”
By the time Santino reaches for her again, she’s turning and walking away, her steps unsteady. She’s sure that she’s sweating, or crying, or maybe both or neither and her body is just kicking into overdrive with gut-wrenching sweeps of grief rocking through her body now that she’s got Baba Yaga fifteen feet from her. From her and her baby.
“Euphie!” Santino’s voice echoes down the main hall of the museum, lighter now. Almost like they never argued at all. “We’ll talk when I get home, si? Mi amore?”
Euphemia is certain she’s never heard a sentence more infuriating in her entire life. It sparks something violent in her. It had been dormant, had stepped aside for her mourning, but it catches fire the second Santino says, we’ll talk when I get home.
Incensed, she turns and slides the engagement ring off of her finger, throwing it as hard as she can at him. Gianni had been trailing her, certainly at Santino's behest, and he tries to stop her—but it's too late, the fury inside of her forcing her to move more quickly than Gianni anticipates.
He catches her around the waist and she considers, briefly, the logistics of wrenching Gianni's arm off of her to go and slap Santino again; instead, she watches the expensive engagement ring bounce off of the front of Santino's jacket and clatter on the floor.
The way he tilts his head, as though expecting her to lob it at his face, and the irritated expression that comes over him is almost as good as actually having hit her original target of that pretty face of his.
Then, it’s pure, sheer, furious indignation that crosses Santi’s face, but she has no time to think about what that means for her.
“Fuck you, Santi,” she bites out venomously. “Fuck. You. Don’t fucking bother coming home.”
“Bella,” Gianni says, “we should get you back.”
Euphemia debates slapping Gianni, too, but it would be unfair; in his defense, he did try to keep her out of the room. She turns and marches her way out, the doors slamming shut behind her and the cold air of New York in the fall washing over her. As Gianni speaks on the phone and calls the driver around, she glances up at the sky; gray and soft as wedding silk, it stretches, endless, cut in pieces by the skyscrapers parsing it out.
A fool, she thinks. Santino has always made a fool out of me, and this is no one’s fault but my own.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
Two hours later, Euphemia hears him enter the loft. He lets the door click shut softly behind him, not slamming it, not storming through. She expected no less; Santi so rarely lets the anger really take hold of him, so rarely lets himself scream or yell or throw something. I’m marrying a fucking sociopath, she thinks, but there’s no heat to the thought; only exhaustion, only a tiredness that goes bone-deep
Even now, she still thinks of it as present tense: she’s marrying a sociopath, as though she didn’t try to hit him in the face with the engagement ring he picked out for her just hours ago, as though in the end, she will still be his. She will.
“Are you calmed down?” Santino asks, in the way that only he could manage—condescending, and soft. Euphemia can’t withhold the vicious scoff that rolls out of her the second he talks.
“I told you not to come home,” she replies tartly, “but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You are apparently as deaf as you are stupid.”
“So no, then.”
“What do you want me to say, Santi?” Euphemia demands, looking at him now. She’s got a suitcase out but there’s nothing in it; she can’t bring herself to pack, to think about going back home to Tuscany where her mother is waiting, barely sober because she can only stay sober for about a month at a time before she falls back to her old habits. “Why don’t you invite our friend John Wick up for dinner, hm? I’m sure he’d like that, after you did whatever you did to make him show up here. Perhaps you took a page out of that idiot Iosef’s book and killed his new dog?”
“He owes me,” Santino insists, glossing over her needling, “and I will get what I am owed.”
She has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Do you know how fucking stupid you sound?” she asks, incredulous. “If I die before telling you how incredibly, disgustingly stupid you sound when you say that, then I will—”
Santino kisses her. He does it because he knows that she’s not expecting it, and it has its desired effect; she stills, all of the furious energy like bottled lightning capped again. He kisses her softly, with no rage, but she can feel it woven into the sinew of his posture.
She thinks about slapping him again. But he probably knows that, because he grabs her hands, gripping them in his; the pressure is more relaxing than it is infuriating, which almost drives her mad, but it does what Santino always does. It pulls her apart until all that’s left is the hurt, the fear, welling up inside of her like a tidal wave crashing into the shore.
“He’s doing what I asked,” he murmurs. “And then we’ll be done with John Wick. Mia piccola volpe, look at me.”
“No,” she says, trying to sound angry but it comes out an agonized sound; she’s crying before she can stop herself, tears burning the edges of her eyes and a big, wet gasping breath necessary for her to keep going. “No, I don’t want to look at you anymore, Santi—”
“He’s doing what I ask, and then I promise, you and I will be done with John Wick forever.” His voice is urgent and insistent. “The three of us, tesora. Isn’t that right? You weren’t just saying that to get back at me?”
She nods, numbly. They had been careful, because she’d said she wasn’t ready—but mistakes happened. Pills got forgotten. She wishes that she could have lied about it and kept it secret. Maybe he’d be acting differently now if she wasn’t carrying his child; maybe his face would be something else.
“Euphie,” he whispers, taking her face in his hands. “My perfect, gorgeous Euphie—my greatest piece of art.” He kisses her cheeks, her nose, her forehead. “And the one with the most bite, too, even when you are so ungrateful for the things that I do. My face still hurts.”
“Good,” Euphemia manages out, her voice wobbling. “You deserve it. Idiota.”
“Maybe,” Santi replies. He tucks her against his chest and kisses her hair. “I never thought I would piss you off enough to get you to hit me—and you did cause quite a scene in front of Wick.”
“Stop.” Just the sound of that monster’s name makes her stomach churn. “Stress is bad for the baby.”
He laughs, the first real laugh in what feels like days since he’s decided on this path with John Wick. “Fine, I will not mention him again. But know that after this, it will be done. Permanently. Forever. Si? Tell me you understand, Euphie.”
She’s so tired. She’s so tired down into her core, the kind of tired that doesn’t go away with a nap or a cup of coffee. “Si,” she replies, closing her eyes. “Capisco, Santi.”
Somehow, Santi’s words that things will be done “permanently” with John Wick only manage to make her more uneasy.
She can’t remember what exactly carries her through the rest of the evening. She remembers calling her mother to check on her, to ask if she’s keeping up with her meetings. She can’t bring herself to come clean about the surprise pregnancy; it’s early, anyway, and her mother would only stress her out more.
“Sei la mia stella più preziosa,” her mother says. “Ti amo, Effie.”
“Yes, mama,” Euphie sighs, unable to say the words back. “Buona notte.”
She hits the red end call button on the phone screen, setting it face-down on the countertop and leaning her palms against the marble. God, she knows that she’d fucking kill a man for a drag of a cigarette—but she could never. Not now. Not when she has—
The sound of paper on the countertop stirs her from her half-bent position. Santino slides it across to her, setting a pen down next to her hand. It’s their marriage certificate. He’s already signed it, and while she stares at it numbly, he takes her left hand and puts the engagement ring back on her finger, but this time with the diamond wedding band he’d picked out as well.
“Santi,” she starts, but he tsks his tongue, quieting her. She’s too tired to be offended.
“Sign the certificate, amore,” he says. “Do not fuss. You’re going to stop throwing this ring at me, yes?”
There are a million reasons not to sign it: but the words that came out of her mouth are, “We don’t have the witnesses or the officiant.”
“Do we need a witness or officiant greater than God himself?” Santino replies. He leans against the counter from the other side, watching her. He is polished, pristine. Any remains of her earlier transgression against him are now completely gone, at least the physical marks. She’s sure that he won’t forget very soon that she raised a hand against him. “Sign it, Euphie, and be my wife.”
She stares at the paper. She feels like she’s melting; her life can’t be real anymore, not when John Wick was, just hours ago, feet away from her, and she’s pregnant, and now Santino is asking her to sign their marriage certificate right now.
The implications fill her with dread. What’s the rush? If nothing’s wrong, if they’ll be done with John Wick, what’s the rush?
“You said that you had nothing before me,” Santino says, breaking her out of her eerie, absent-minded disconnect. He brushes the hair from her face. “You will never have nothing again.”
Euphemia signs the certificate in a haze. It doesn’t feel any different after; she doesn’t feel different and neither does Santino in relation to her, and the realization that they had felt married for a few years now sinks down on her.
Santino rounds the counter to her, taking her face and kissing her; her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, the corner of her mouth and eventually just kissing her. His hand smooths over her stomach, admiring, and he brushes their noses together.
“Perfetto e tutto mio,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible. “Isn’t that right, Euphemia?”
She replies, without thinking, “Si, sono tuo.”
Always, she thinks, always yours, whether I like it or not.
#santino d'antonio/original female character#john wick oc#santino d'antonio/ofc#john wick#spilled ink#c: euphemia volpe#c: santino d'antonio#c: john wick#x: senza tentazioni senza onore#oh yeah baby real good love the SUFFERING#ugh i wish i could convey how much it means to me to have people reading and enjoy this#alas i can only!!!! cry in the tags#thank you everyone <3
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WHERE THERE IS NO TEMPTATION, THERE IS NO GLORY.
⊱ a santino d'antonio / oc short-fic
pt. v: and birth is the death of us ( read on ao3 ) ( masterlist )
words: 4.4k
warnings: mentions of murder/patricide, lots and lots and lots of sads, major character death. but u knew that.
rating: m/t
notes: well,
thank you @shallow-gravy for proofing this bad boy for me, thank you @starcrier for being my og cheerleader/proofreader/lore expert/euphie stan, thank you everyone who has read this far or read at all or thought about reading. this has been a lovely little passion project/thing to post for my dopamine only, but without your love and such it probably wouldn't have gotten posted at all.
Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil.
But if some god shakes your house,
Ruin arrives.
Ruin does not leave.
Euphemia hates the lake house. It used to be her favorite thing; once the weather in the city turned and started getting hot and muggy, they’d head upstate until they got to the lake. She’d spend almost all of her day in a swimsuit, sunbathing on the dock or goading Santino into the water with her. Some of her fondest memories are here: Santi, carrying her piggy-back from water to the house; the way he’d lean in to steal a piece of fruit from her, humming and licking the pads of her fingers with a sly glimmer in his eye; the way they’d sit around the fire at night, her legs hooked over his lap, and how he would still smell like woodsmoke the next day.
Now, the house is empty, and cold, and there’s five men that she barely knows the names of lingering around the edges of the property outside.
It’s pointless, she thinks, absently. It’s not me that Wick wants. It’s not me that harmed him.
It should be unforgivable, what Santino’s done. It is unforgivable; he’s left her in a position to feel alone, to raise their child alone. It should be, and all she can think to do is cry.
She spends most of the evening wandering aimlessly, trying not to think about what it is that Santino’s doing. If Wick has come for him, there is a chance—a very small chance—that Santino could survive. A small, minuscule chance, riding purely on the idea that Santino would be capable of ever saying he’s sorry to a man like John Wick.
Euphemia knows he would not. Why would he? He did what he thought was necessary. Whatever that was.
Briefly, the idea that Gianna might have sent John Wick back to them crosses her mind. But she knows that can’t be what it is; he is Baba Yaga. He would never leave a job undone. If John Wick gets called in for a debt he owes, he finishes the job, or he dies. The only thing that could stand, then, is that Santino has done something. That Santino has done something to John Wick that is not calling him to fulfill a debt.
There are pictures of them, littered throughout the house. Hung on the walls, on hallway tables, in the bedroom and the living room. The kitchen is fully stocked despite the fact that the house is technically out of season, for them—a luxury, she thinks, that her husband must have been willing to indulge in case she decides she wants to come up, for whatever reason. Because he knows she likes to cook.
Santino calls her a few hours after she’s arrived, when she’s tucked herself into one of his old shirts and curled up in the bed on the second floor. The shirt still smells a little like his cologne, and the sheets have the faded smell of her favorite fabric softener, but nothing feels good. Nothing feels comfortable, or happy.
“Euphie,” Santi says, his voice feeling very far, “are you all settled in?”
He sounds breathless, and a little stressed. It makes her stomach plummet.
“Yes,” she whispers. “But I want to come home, Santi. I want—”
“Do not argue with me,” he says firmly. There it is; it’s a different edge to his voice, a strange fervor lingering beneath the timbre of his words. “Are you listening to me? I will get everything fixed here, and then you can come home.”
She wants to tell him he is wrong. She wants to tell him that he is stupid—that John Wick is, well-known, a man of perpetual neutrality; that he does nothing that is not done unto him. That John Wick wants nothing of her, for her, from her. That John Wick perhaps does not even factor her into his equation.
She says none of these things.
“Would you at least tell me what’s wrong?” she asks instead, her voice catching some wind. There is a sick part of her that wants him to say it to her. “Let me know, so I can—”
Do nothing. She knows there is nothing she could do; nothing in her power. He has crippled her, sending her away.
“—so I can know.”
“Euphie, Euphie,” Santino says, in that way he always does. “I don’t want you to have to worry about it, cara mia. Hey.”
It feels, almost, like he’s there. But there are no hands to take her face, no kisses to wash away her stress. Only the cold, faint white noise of the phone call when silence stretches between them. Euphemia swallows thickly, closes her eyes and wills the image of him, laying there next to her in bed, away.
“Are you listening to me?”
Euphie swallows. “Yes, Santi.”
“I love you, Euphemia D’Antonio.”
She feels the sting and burn of the tears at the edges of her eyes, and reaches up to push at them with the sleeve of Santino’s old shirt. It’s sitting there, locked just in her jaw, in the cavity of her chest; all of the things she wanted to tell him. That she thinks she loved him from the minute she laid eyes on him. That she wasn’t as soft with him as she would like to be, so maybe if he would like to stay a little longer, she could be.
That she thinks she knew all along he was going to ruin her, ruin her, ruin her.
“Mio amato.” She whispers into the phone the affectionate term she so rarely uses with him, her voice hoarse, thick with unshed tears. “Please, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t cry, cara mia. Say it back.”
There is a spiteful, vicious part of her that doesn’t want to. Suddenly, the wedding ring on her finger and his shirt on her shoulders feel heavy, like they’re pulling her down, down, down, and she wishes that it would so that she could fold up and disappear.
If she says it, she will be accepting something terrible.
Santino’s voice comes through the call, urgent. “You know I hate to ask twice.”
She does.
“I love you, Santi,” she manages out, and it’s pushed and pulled out of her; this is high-tide in their love, now, the waves full-throttle and raking her beach clean. “I love you, I love you—Santi, mi amato, I love you—”
“Good girl.” His voice sounds tight. It sounds fraught, in a way that it never is, with her.
He pauses a moment; the words sit there, in her mouth. I love you, I love you, I love you. She has never been good about saying it. She has never thought, really, that she would need to. She has always known what he is, but has never acted better for it.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, when I’m on my way to pick you up. Si?”
For a second, it almost feels normal. It almost feels like she really is just away, at the lake house, getting some time alone after a stressful few days. And then tomorrow, she’ll eat her breakfast out on the porch facing the lake while it’s still a little chilly outside, and Santi will come and pick her up; he’ll tease her about wearing his shirt, and lean over and kiss her, and say, don’t you feel a little ridiculous, Euphemia, worrying about me? Don’t you, now?
“Okay,” she says, on autopilot. “Okay, Santi, if you promise to—”
“I promise, more, I promise. I love you. Euphie?” Another pause. It’s almost too heavy to bear. “Get some sleep, yes? And tell baby Viola I said goodnight.”
Gutted. Emptied. Hollowed out.
“We don’t know the baby is a girl,” she protests weakly.
“I can tell.”
She laughs, the sound bleak and ringing empty when it comes out of her. Euphemia closes her eyes tight and breathes in deep. “Okay, yes. I will tell baby Viola goodnight from her daddy.”
“Goodnight, my darling.”
The call clicks off before she can answer. As though she would have anything to say; a moment longer, maybe, I love you, perhaps you could just say it again, once more, one more time for me.
Euphie tucks herself under the blankets with the phone pulled against her chest and rolls his words over and over again in her head.
I promise. I love you. Tell baby Viola I say goodnight. I’ll call you tomorrow, when I’m on my way to pick you up. Goodnight my darling.
I love you
I love you.
Goodnight, my darling.
She wishes his goodnight did not feel so much like goodbye.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
When she wakes up in the morning, it’s to the sound of a knock at the front door.
That’s how she knows, really, that it’s something bad; it’s just a knock. Once, twice. Knock knock. There are no voices, there are no sounds of gunfire, nobody is calling for her. For a second, upon waking—in that special realm where sleep still clings to the edges of her vision, willing her back under the covers—she might trick herself that it’s Santino knocking at the door, waiting patiently for her to let him in.
But Santino would let himself in. He would walk upstairs, and kick off his shoes, and snake under the covers with her; bury his cold hands beneath her shirt, his face into the base of her neck. Piccola volpe, he would say, against the back of her neck, you’re wearing my shirt. Did you miss me so much?
Hurriedly, she looks at her phone, thinking—once again, foolishly—that Santino must have called her and she’s slept through it. But her phone is empty of notifications. The screen glows a luminous mockery at her: a photo of them, in Italy. That last night. Il destino, Santino had said.
Euphemia pulls herself out of bed, despite the overwhelming desire to pull the covers over her head. For a tiny moment in time, there is only the sound of her footfalls against the wooden flooring of the master bedroom and her own heartbeat. Peaceful. Tranquil. As the lakehouse is meant to be.
But then she hears the door open—it always creaks—and the sound of murmured voice a floor below. She puts her hand on the doorknob to the hallway, and stops.
If she opens it, it will be real. If she opens it, whatever is on the other side will be precisely what it is. Right now, in this moment, it can be anything. Santino. Baba Yaga. Her mother. Schrödinger's Cat, as the case may be. As long as she stays right here, and the door stays closed, she is perfectly unaware of the state of things—
That’s not true, something inside of her says. We know.
Euphie turns the doorknob and heads downstairs. Methodically, she moves; step after step, one foot in front of the other. Ten seconds, and then another ten seconds, and another, forcing her body’s natural processes to function as normal instead of come to a grinding halt the way they want to. As she descends the stairs—into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice—she is painfully aware of every physical sensation: the chilly wooden flooring beneath her feet, the brush of Santino’s shirt against the back of her thighs where it stretches past her shorts, the blood bounding through her body, begging for relief. Begging to see her husband when she reaches the bottom.
Please, she thinks, turning the corner to the landing. Please, please, please be my Santi.
It’s Winston.
He stands there, talking in hushed tones to Charon, and when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, he turns and looks at her.
There is something very grim on the man’s face. Euphie’s legs carry her off the final step and to where the two men are waiting for her, patient; as though they would have let her take all the time in the world to make her descent into Hell, with them. And it feels like a dream—some kind of feverish nightmare, goosebumps prickling along her skin in the early morning chill and her heart fluttering in unsteady, uneven bouts.
“Winston?” She swallows thickly, setting her phone on the counter. “Where’s Santino?”
Euphemia sees the way that Winston grimaces, like he’s bracing himself, and she knows the answer. She thinks she probably knew the answer when Santino called her last night. She thinks she probably knew the answer when she saw John Wick sitting in the museum.
It doesn’t make it any easier, and as if working to make herself suffer more—to keep up this impossible dream—her mind pushes the words out of her mouth, against her better judgment: “He’s supposed to be picking me up.”
Winston watches her with a quiet, careful gaze. She feels her throat tighten.
“He wanted me out of town,” she explains, her voice wobbling, “while he was finishing up some business. He thought—it would be better. For—for—”
For the baby, she wants to say, and the words will not come out of her. Silence lapses, tense and strung tight, binding her over and over, pulling pulling pulling. She thinks, I always knew. She thinks, I always knew, Santi, that you were going to—
The older man says, very gingerly, “I am sorry, my darling.”
Euphemia feels the nausea wrench iron-hot in her stomach. I always knew, Santi, that you were going to ruin me.
“I tried to tell him not to play this game with Wick.”
Somewhere, from deep inside of her, there is a rabbit. That rabbit she used to be. Tap-tap, that little rabbit heart says, tap-tap-tap-tap. We’re alive, but at what cost? That rabbit is snared in the steel jaws of a trap named agony, and it is screaming.
Alive. But at what cost.
My Santi, she thinks, my beautiful boy, sick to death with your own magic.
Winston doesn’t have to say it aloud for her to know what he means, and that confirmation sweeps through her, violent and unforgiving. She feels very suddenly as though she’s far away from herself, as though she’s not the Euphemia that Winston is reaching for, taking into his arms as though she were his own grandchild, as though she’s not the Euphemia that swallows a deep, stuttering lungful and then lets out a vicious, wrecked noise that emanates a bone-deep grief.
Against her hair, Winston murmurs, “I would have called ahead, Euphemia, but it didn’t feel right—”
She thinks maybe she is screaming, or moaning, or crying—it’s a guttural tear in her sternum that echoes hollowly in the cavity of her chest. Winston holds her very tight and says things like I wanted to be sure I could tell you in person and my girl, take a breath, won’t you, and she wants to die.
Euphemia closes her eyes.
She thinks about Santi, tasting like red wine when he kisses her; she thinks about the way that he would pick her up before they even made it through the door, growling playfully into her neck and kissing her and saying, look what I’ve caught, a gorgeous little fox, and all mine.
Santi, kissing her stomach and whispering to the baby in Italian, humming against her skin. Putting the stupid apron over his Versace suit to cook the sauce. Grabbing her around the waist, still wet from the shower, and telling her that he won’t be able to finish his shower alone and won’t she stop this cruelty and join him, already?
Santi, taking her hands when she feels like she’s breaking apart because she has to talk to the therapist about the feeling of the rope burn on her knuckles and the look on her father’s face as he struggles for breath, and he says, Euphie, Euphie, Euphie, don’t you know? I love you, all of you, all of this about you.
She is guided to the couch. She sits down on autopilot, and Winston takes her hands in his. That agony is still etching its way into her marrow—and it will be there forever, she thinks; she will think of this always, this moment in time precisely—and he does the kindness of letting her suffer through it, pulling the blanket off of the back of the couch and gathering her up in it. It feels, a little, like her chest might be collapsing over and over again; the way that a star burns out and dies in the great, blistering explosion.
“Take a breath,” Winston says, his hands on her shoulders. “In and out. Good girl.”
Lungs fill, and empty. Oxygen offers her a moment of visceral clarity.
“I have to kill him,” Euphemia manages out, biting the words between shallow, hazy breaths. Her fingers are clutching at Winston’s arms through his coat, desperate to anchor, but if it bothers him, he doesn’t say. “I have to—I have to kill John Wick, Winston, I—my Santi, he took my Santino away from me—”
“No.” Winston barks out the word so abruptly that it almost feels like a slap, firm and quick. “I don’t want to hear you saying that.”
She blinks, rapidly, the focus in her eyes fading. “You—what?”
“Look at me, Euphemia,” he says, and she blinks again, forcing the exhaustion from her vision to bring him back in to her eyesight. “John Wick did not take your Santino from you. Do you hear me? You banish the thought from your brain.”
The words are ludicrous, coming out of his mouth. She stares at him, and she wonders, for a second, that he’s here to tell her that John Wick is coming for her now—her, and Santino’s baby. To effectively wipe out the last of the D’Antonios.
Would he?
“What. Do. You. Mean, Winston?”
She punctures the words like a balloon; lets the feel of them swell in her mouth, bites down until they pop. The sadness is metastasizing inside of her, squirming and writhing before it latches into the slats between her ribs, sinking its fangs down until the sting becomes familiar, comforting. Anger, not sadness; that is fine. Preferred, even.
Euphemia feels more than she hears the way her voice rises in volume when she demands, “Tell me how it isn’t John Wick’s fault my Santino is dead?”
There is a tightness in Winston’s expression. He is trying to figure her; she knows the look. He is trying to figure her, conjure up some image of her that he is comfortable with, the way that Santino always does.
(Did.)
But he doesn’t know her well enough. Her background is a mystery to him, as far as backgrounds go; fake names and fake leads, all little threads woven into a sweater for a girl who can disappear at any moment. She has never wanted to have to try very hard, to disappear.
“You and I both know,” Winston murmurs, his voice pitching low, “that John Wick would have left him be.”
“Baba Yaga,” Euphemia grinds out, “would have left him be.”
“You didn’t hear him, Euphemia,” he tells her sharply. “You didn’t hear Santino, in the Continental. He was gloating over a victory he didn’t have. He was—”
“He is,” she snarls, “dead, Winston!”
“And you have the High Table to thank for that,” Winston snaps.
The words are effective enough to stop her rage in its tracks. Just for a minute. Long enough that the little rabbit inside of her stops screaming, long enough that wounded thing that wants to go on a warpath halts.
He is right, something inside of her says. He is right. Santino always wanted more. He always wanted what he thought he was owed. And we always knew it. We said it. Sick to death.
“I’ll tell you, it wasn’t John Wick who killed your man,” Winston reiterates, his voice ironclad, “it was the High Table, and what they did to him. What he was willing to do for them.”
So many times in the last few days, she has felt hollowed out. This time is different; she feels full. Bursting at the seams with some inexplicable, primordial rage that has just been sitting inside of her, all this time, waiting for someone to ignite it. She knows Winston is right, and still, she wonders: how will John Wick look, at the edge of death? Will there be anything, behind those shark-gray eyes, will she see a glimmer of the thing—the person—that the woman he loved had cultivated inside of him?
It is a comfort, to think maybe she would not. That maybe he would be a monster in death, too.
“Euphemia,” Winston says, “are you listening to me?”
She takes in a long breath. “I am so very tired, Winston,” she murmurs, “of listening to men.”
“I know.” He gives her hands a squeeze. There is empathy in his voice, she thinks, but it’s hard to identify for sure. “But you know that I’m right. Don’t you?”
She remembers how furious Santi was the night that his father named Gianna his successor. That seat at the High Table is mine, he had said. I deserve it, and I will take it back. Think of what I could do, Euphie, for the Camorra. For us.
She had never, ever cared about it. Euphemia had always told him that if he didn’t have it, what did it matter? They had each other. He had her. Wasn’t she enough? Didn’t she make him happy?
Winston says her name, very quietly. Her lashes flutter and she lifts her gaze from the cushion of the couch to where the older man is looking at her.
“Did you finalize the marriage?” he asks. “You, and Santino, with the paperwork?”
Her fingers curl and uncurl absently; the crescent-shaped marks her nails leave on her palms are a dull sting, but she wants them to be louder. To hurt more. To bite and sting until she can be sure she’s real. Winston smooths her hands flat, watching her patiently, not once rushing her answer.
He has always been kind to her. Before she was married to Santino, after, and now. In the wake of her husband’s death.
“Yes,” she manages out, at last. “We did. Three nights ago.”
“Good,” Winston murmurs, sounding relieved. “That’s good. And—it may have been mentioned...”
Euphemia blinks, hard and slow, trying her hardest to remember to do the things that keep her alive; blink and breathe, push blood through her veins, stay conscious. “I am pregnant, yes.”
He nods again. He’s silent for a moment. “You, Euphemia D’Antonio,” he begins, taking in a little breath, “have a seat at the High Table. The Camorra is yours.”
The words wash over her, but they land flat. These things don’t matter. They’re unimportant to her. She has never had any designs on some mythical seat, or ideas that she should be leading the Camorra instead of someone else. She has never cared anything about it; Santi has always been the one who wanted these things, and she was more than happy to support him.
And now, here it was. Sitting in her lap.
“We can get revenge for your Santino, my darling.” Winston’s voice is soft, gentle; it pushes and pulls, filtering through a sieve of light and color that she can’t quite cut out. “I can help you. You, and your baby. All you have to do is take that thought—that John Wick is to blame—and bury it somewhere deep inside of you, and hope that one day you die and that’s the end of it.”
I miss you, Santi, Euphie thinks, desperately, the tears stinging again at her eyes now that the target of her fury is no longer a man, but an entity; one that she’s a part of. One that seems so nebulous that she isn’t sure she will ever pin it down. This was always what you wanted, not me. How am I supposed to do this without you?
He’s right. If Santino hadn’t been hungry, starved for that seat at the High Table—if he hadn’t been seduced by the idea of the things that he believed were owed to them—he would be alive now.
She always knew that he would do something to put John Wick at war with him. She always knew it, and John was just a tangible, easy person to hate for what Santino had done to himself.
My Santi. Desperate and hurt and needing, sick to death with your own magic.
“Euphemia,” he murmurs, leaning down a little. “Do you want my help?”
“Yes.” Her voice feels like a stranger’s coming out of her body. “Please, Winston, help me get revenge for my Santi.”
He nods, and straightens up, turning to tell Charon to get the car started outside. Once the door closes, he shifts to face her again, a small, sad smile quirking the edges of his mouth upward.
She’s not quite sure, now, if she’s real—if what she’s done will mean anything, if she has an impact on the world around her. Winston’s hands on hers don’t ground her, the way that Santino’s did; she still feels very far away from herself, her soul and mind somewhere that isn’t this nightmare of a life she has now.
Winston says something, coming to a stand, and Euphie follows instinctively as she slides her sandals onto her feet and trails after him out to the car, her phone clutched loosely in her hand. When she gets back to the city, it will feel real, she thinks as she climbs into the car when Winston opens the door for her. When she gets back to the loft, where the reminders of her one greatest love will be everywhere, in his clothes and his papers and his cologne and the apartment that they decorated for the both of them, to be equal parts Euphie and Santi both, it will feel real.
But for now, she is somewhere else, very far away from this nightmare world that has become her life; her mind and soul are somewhere that she kisses her one greatest love, drenched in the gilt-gold burnish of his mortality, and she tastes the red wine on his lips and he says, Euphie, my gorgeous girl, perfetto e tutto mio.
Yes, she thinks, agony fresh and hot and wet in her chest. Sono tuo, Santi, always. Always.
“Well, my darling,” Winston murmurs from his seat next to her in the back of the car, “let’s get you home, shall we?”
She glances out the window, seeing the figures of Santino’s--her men, slipping into the house to lock up behind her. “Yes,” she says quietly, “home.”
Euphemia doesn’t know what that means, anymore, what it means to have one. But she also doesn’t think that it matters anymore.
She doesn’t need a home to get revenge.
#spilled ink#f: where there is no temptation there is no glory#santino d'antonio/oc#santino d'antonio x original female character#c: euphemia volpe#c: santino d'antonio#honorable mentions to grandpa winston & charon u da real mvps#john wick oc#i wanted to write like a big long thank you thing and wax poetic but instead i think perhaps i will lay on the floor
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WHERE THERE IS NO TEMPTATION, THERE IS NO GLORY.
⊱ a santino d'antonio / oc short-fic
pt. iv: we begin in the dark ( read on ao3 ) ( masterlist )
words: 4.9k
warnings: brief and fleeting allusions to patricide, liberal use of a very basic understanding of italian.
rating: m/t
notes: not me coming here after months of not touching the editing of this thing (ಥ﹏ಥ) i suppose i have been putting it off just because i know where it's going....we ALL know where it's going......anyway i love u guys. losing myself in editing this has been really, really nice.
i think i mentioned this early on, but i am taking some liberties with world-building around the camorra. so if you see me doing that....no u didn't.
as always you can find translations on ao3, where it’s easier to store them in a place that doesn’t get in the way. sorry tumblr!
Santino is in an exceptionally good mood the next morning. Euphemia, however, struggles to find comfort in anything.
It’s worse because Gianna calls. The second she sees her sister-in-law’s name show up on the caller ID of her phone, she thinks she’s going to puke—but Santino raises his eyebrows expectantly at her.
“Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Santino asks, flipping through some paperwork that he’s been reading, bent over the kitchen’s island counter. It’s as though he’s not just cashed in a favor with Baba Yaga to kill his own sister. For one split, brief second, Euphie can feel normal.
But she knows that’s not the case.
Hitting the green accept call button on her phone, Euphie lifts it to her ear. Her mouth feels dry. “Ciao.”
“Buongiorno, Euphemia. I hear there’s good news to celebrate!”
Her stomach wrenches. Santino, polished and perfectly postured as Michelangelo’s David, scribbles something on his notepad. She can feel the insistent beat of her heart—tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, let me out—against her ribs, until it’s not a tapping anymore. It’s hammering. Pummeling the skeletal bars of its cage, demanding to be set free.
“Pardon?” Euphemia asks, even though she knows exactly what Gianna is talking about, even though the sly little smile on Santino’s face tells her everything she needs to know.
“The baby, Euphie! My future niece or nephew? Santino called and told me last night.”
“Oh,” she says. “Yes. Mi dispiace, it still doesn’t feel real. It’s still—early.”
A lot of things don’t feel real anymore. The longer Euphie stays awake, the longer she feels disconnected from her reality. Santino spent all night meticulously piecing her back together, but this morning it feels like the glue’s dissolved and she’s falling apart again. If she moves too fast, takes in too deep of breath, she will go crumbling apart again.
“We will have to have a baby shower, si? I will even come to New York. Are you doing the wedding before or after?”
Her lashes flutter. She grips the edge of the counter as her stomach lurches and twists. “Before,” she whispers.
“Che?”
“Before,” Euphie says again, louder this time, ignoring the way her voice cracks. “We want to get married before.”
“Good, good. I know our papa would have been most happy with that. Euphie…”
She can’t take it. It’s too much, Gianna’s kindness—they’ve never been close, not even close to close, but Gianna is not an unreasonable woman. On the contrary; she’s exceptionally reasonable (more so than even Santi), and in the week that she and Euphemia spent around each other, it felt good. It felt good to be around a family, any family, that wasn’t brimming with dysfunction. Not the kind you could see on the surface level, anyway.
“Santino has told me you don’t have a very good relationship with your mother—”
Please, Euphie thinks, feeling faint. Please don’t.
“—but I think you will be a lovely mama, Euphie. If you can bring my brother to heel, you will have no problem with a baby.”
Sick. She is going to be sick. She doesn’t care that Santino has contracted a killer to dispose of his sister—she shouldn’t care, anyway—but of course it is the purest irony that Gianna expends all of her kindness the second that the contract has been signed, sealed, and delivered.
She is hollowed out, gutted like a Halloween pumpkin, all of her insides scooped out and dumped somewhere and now she is nothing, empty and cavernous and waiting to be filled so she can feel whole again.
“Thank you,” she says, “sorella. I am sorry—” I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “—to rush off of the phone, but I feel a bit unwell.”
“Of course, I will not keep you. We will plan the baby shower, yes? In time. In bocca al lupo, Euphie.”
“Yes.” Euphie swallows. In bocca al lupo, Gianna says, and what she means is, you are one of us, now. Frantically, Euphemia searches her mind for the proper response. “Crepi il lupo.”
She ends the call and sets the phone on the counter. Santino says her name—something like concern in his voice—but she doesn’t want to look at him. Her legs carry her from the kitchen to the bedroom, to the bathroom, closing the door behind her and locking it. Euphemia slides against the door until she’s sitting, bringing her knees up to her chest and burying her face into them.
“Stellina,” Santino says, “open the door.” He does not rattle the doorknob. It would be beneath him, to try, when she ought to just do what he wants.
Euphemia closes her eyes tightly. Tap-tap, tap-tap, her heart mocks her. She is alive. She is alive, and she is carrying another life inside of her, and by this time next week Gianna will be dead.
Tap-tap.
Dead.
Tap-tap.
Dead.
A death is one thing. Everyone has it, their little deaths, sitting in the hollow of their jaw—hot and swollen and waiting to burst. A death is one thing. But to carry your death, and another’s, and another’s—to know that you carry the life of one inside of you, that you have the ability to stop someone else’s death from bursting viscera in their mouths—is entirely another.
“Euphemia.”
“Why did you tell her?” Her voice comes out sounding like a stranger’s, breaking and hitching, grinding laboriously in her chest. “Why would you tell her?”
His voice comes through the door, muffled: “Euphie, Euphie—”
“Don’t,” she bites out viciously, “condescend to me, Santino.”
A pause. He is considering, she thinks—considering her nature, her tone, all of the careful pieces he has fitted back together in the wake of her fresh agony. He is considering, and she is thinking about how her life has become this: a series of flashes, memories, fleeting and slipping through her fingers like sand.
No, she thinks, Gianna is sand. John Wick is ruin.
After his careful consideration of his next words, Santino says, “She deserved some happiness. Before.”
Ruin arrives. Ruin does not leave.
Inevitable.
“Our life will be so good, Euphie.” His voice is softer now, and feels closer, like maybe he’s knelt down. She can hear the shuff of his hand against the heavy wood of the door. “It will be so good, you know?”
“I know,” Euphie whispers, and she doesn’t think he hears.
“Ours, and the baby’s.”
“I know, Santi—”
“I just want to make sure,” he says.
She knows what that means.
I want to make sure you don’t have a weak stomach, is what he means to say. I want to make sure you aren’t going to squirm out of this. It’s the first time that Euphemia feels like he needs her, rather than he just wants her; the realization that maybe he thinks he couldn’t endure this alone sitting heavy over her.
“Because I know you, my Euphie, I know what you—”
“Stop,” she whispers. “Don’t, Santi.”
“I just want to make sure,” Santi says again, even though he knows; if ever there had been an idea that she would leave him—and there wasn’t, not really, not in the way that has legs—it’s gone. They’re bound together now, irrevocably. Where would she go? Would she even want to? Santino knows everything about her.
He knows about her work, and how she has lifted from the pockets of some of the most awful under the Table. He knows about her nightmares. He knows about her father, and the little death of his she held in her hand, and the way she crushed it, like dust.
He knows, and no one else does, and no one else will ever love her the way that Santino loves her—in spite, in spite, in spite.
Tap-tap. A cloud of death, following her, and new life inside of her.
She turns, reaching up in the dark of their bedroom to unlock the door. She uses the cool metal to pull herself to her feet and opens the door. Santino is standing, like maybe he knew she was going to acquiesce to him. He probably did. She is predictable, that way.
“My Euphie,” he says again, reaching up and skimming the backs of his fingers against her cheekbone. “Are you really so cross with me for telling her? I only wanted her to have something.”
“I know,” she replies. The words ring hollow. Tap-tap. A mockery of her, bringing life when death is so close at hand. “I am sorry, Santi.”
She doesn’t know why the words I’m sorry come out of her mouth, why it is that she feels compelled to apologize for his wrongdoing—and it is wrong. He should not have told her. He should not have said anything to anyone about the baby, with John Wick at their doorstep.
But if some God shakes your house, Ruin arrives. Ruin does not leave.
Two years ago, if someone had told her that she would be married to and pregnant with the child of Santonio D’Antonio, she would have laughed.
Two years ago, they’re dating, so—maybe marriage is in the cards, but Euphemia doesn’t have a great picture of what a functional and practical marriage is, and that’s the cornerstone for her. Functional. Practical. An even and proportionate business transaction between two consenting adults. But childbearing? That is not something that Euphemia ever pictured for herself.
Two years ago, Santino does sometimes bring it up, in the early days. He’ll carry her into the loft, tipsy on expensive champagne, and set her down on the kitchen island countertop with no regard for the pricey dress he’s put her in and kiss her anywhere he can reach—her mouth, her cheeks, her jaw, her neck. It doesn’t matter until she’s laughing and swatting him away. He’ll say, with all of his soft reverence, “You will be a beautiful mother, Euphie,” and that he says you will be instead of you would be is not lost on her.
She doesn’t have the heart, then, to tell him that she doesn’t think she’s cut out for motherhood. She doesn’t have the heart now, either.
Too early she discovered that all things, love included, are a zero-sum game for Santino in which the amount that he wins is directly and perfectly proportioned to what his opponent loses, or it isn’t a win at all. That is why he says things in absolutes; you will be a mother, you are perfect and all mine, Wick owes me and I will have what I am owed.
He kisses her forehead and leads her to the bed. In moments like these, all of Santi’s quick, cold cruelty is tucked away, the condescension packaged for later, and instead he just is; he’s a man that she loves, that loves her, and as he pulls her under the covers of the bed and cradles her against his chest, she might almost be able to fool herself that they’re a regular couple. Just two people, in love—laying in the bed first thing in the morning, intertwined.
“We are closer than lovers now, Euphie,” he whispers into her skin as the deep-dark of sleep begins to crawl over her; she has only just woken, and yet it permeates over her, threatens to drag her down. “You know that saying? The same sin binds us.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━
The day passes in a blur and into the next. She hears nothing of it—of John Wick, of Gianna—and she prefers it that way. It feels even more wretched and awful, to prioritize herself in such way; to say, the less I know, the better, because she knows that if Santino makes even a passing comment about it, she will need to know. A horrifying, dreadful curiosity that she cannot abide.
“We should have a party,” Santino announces, one evening. Euphemia stretches, shoving her arm beneath the pillow as she watches him undress—buttons of his shirt first, then his watch, deposited on the vanity beside her jewelry box, then his belt, hung over the back of the chair; he moves methodically, deep in thought. There is a gentle furrow of his brows.
Euphie says, “We just had a party.”
“Yes.” He smiles, turning once he has sufficiently undressed enough to climb into bed beside her. “For our engagement.” Santino pushes the blankets back, settling himself that he can press a kiss just above her belly button, through the silk fabric of her camisole. “But now we are married.”
She shifts onto her back at the behest of his hands on her hips, combing her fingers through satiny curls. “You overindulge.”
“Si, si,” he murmurs against her tummy, “gluttony is my greatest vice. When it comes to you, anyway.”
Settled between her legs, Santino pushes the fabric of her camisole up, skimming his fingers across the slope of her abdomen and tracing the shape of her hip bones where her sleep shorts have ridden low. He takes his time, burying his face against warm skin and trailing kisses wherever he can reach.
He glances up at her through his lashes. “Would you deny me, my Euphie?”
Her breath catches in her throat. No, she thinks, not when you look at me like that.
“I don’t want to worry about planning it,” is what she says.
He flashes her a wicked grin. “I will take care of everything. Worry not, sweet Euphemia.”
“Mhm.” She gives him a hard look. “‘Worry not.’ Please.”
“Luce della mia vita,” Santino murmurs, returning to his lavishing of attention against her skin. “When are you going to tell your mama, hm? Now that you have ceased your cruelty towards me?”
Euphemia lets out a long sigh. The last thing she needs to think about right now—while she is managing her stress—is her mother. She doesn’t know if her mother will be happy that they are married or not; she has always said she wants it, but also cannot stand that she’s found a life outside of their tiny home in Tuscany. Maybe she will be furious, even, that they got married and denied her the attention of being the mother of the bride.
He sidles back up, nosing past loose hair collecting in the dip of her shoulder, his hands gliding up the back of her thigh.
“Another time, then,” he ventures lowly into the crook of her neck.
“Was it so obvious?”
“Nothing about you goes without my seeing it.” He pauses, kisses the hollow of her jaw, and she feels the flutter of his lashes against her skin. “Now tell me you love me.”
She tilts her head so that their noses can brush, their eyes meeting in the dim, warm lighting of the bedroom. His fingers dig playfully into her skin, dragging her leg up around his hip to bring her impossibly closer.
“You know that I do,” she whispers, “Santi.”
“Yes.” He grins. “And I like to hear you say it anyway. So, I will ask again—would you deny me, my Euphie?”
She could never.
━━━━━━━━━━━━
Santino has a particular talent for throwing parties on short notice.
He thinks it might be one of his finer skills—polished and refined perfectly for years of use—but he is sure that Euphemia would argue that if asked, she would think first of his ability to yank her between the realms of infuriated and infatuated as easily as breathing.
He hadn’t intended for their marriage to happen so quickly, of course. But the important thing, he keeps telling himself, is not necessarily sticking strictly to one plan, but being able to change on the fly. This quick little celebration, speeding along the public timeline so they could announce, formally, their marriage, would happen in perfect time with his ascension to the High Table.
Married. A father. In his seat.
“What are you thinking about?”
It’s Euphie’s sweet voice that beckons him out of his thoughts—thoughts of John Wick, and whether he’s dead now or has been dead for quite a while, if his sister was easy to kill or if it even matters because everyone is easy to kill for John Wick—and he turns to look at her.
She is beautiful, as always, in the white dress with silver stars scattered across it, the plunging neckline and gauzy fabric suiting her. Always so beautiful, he thinks, reaching out and tucking a flaxen strand of hair behind her ear, my gorgeous little fox.
“You, of course,” he replies. Even now, even after years together, she blushes when he says things like this. It’s one of his favorite things about her; she always feels shiny-new, like she will never grow tired of him. Like she will never stop blushing when he catches her off guard with his sweetness. “Vieni qui.”
Euphemia does as he asks, closing what little distance is between them with a few steps before her arms are sliding around his neck.
“What are you really thinking about?” she asks, smoothing her hand along the lapel of his jacket. Santino can’t help but think she looks absolutely perfect like this; a little sly, her eyes glimmering with a sweet amusement that had been missing in the last week. It’s his fault that it’s been gone, but in the long run, she’ll be grateful for this time, this hardship.
Santino buries his face into the crook of her neck and growls playfully, “I am always thinking of you, my Euphemia, belladonna.” He kisses her neck, her shoulder, the spot just below her ear. “That you are the loveliest, most cunning little fox I have ever had the pleasure of trapping.”
“Oh?” She seems pleased. There is still a look to her eyes—on-edge, incensed, the energy vibrating just beneath her skin—but it’s softened now. “We are already married, Santi, you don’t need to sweet-talk me so much anymore.”
“On the contrary,” Santino replies, hands running along the dropped back of her dress, “I will sweet-talk you as much as I can, now that you are my wife, and the mother of my child.”
The blonde laughs delightedly, squirming under the attention of his hands before pulling away from him. “Stop staring off into space, then,” Euphemia says, “and dance with me, Santi.”
He thinks about the look on John Wick’s face that day in the museum, when he’d asked how John would kill him—how Wick had said, with my hands. A chance that had sat there, and Wick had not taken. For a man like John Wick, Santino knows, there are no “chances”; every moment is an opportunity, blending into the next and the next, until that’s all his life was. A single, blurred, stream of opportunity.
It will work in his favor.
Santino plants one hand on her waist and takes hers in the other, kissing her wrist and then her palm before interlacing their fingers together. Yes, it really is like nothing has happened; thousands of miles away, his sister will be dying, or dead already; here in a gorgeous ballroom, under glimmering lights, Santino takes his freshly minted bride onto the dancefloor and kisses her.
“I have a new favorite word,” Euphemia says, drenched in the golden light of longing and the chandelier, reflected in the green of her eyes. Santi hums inquisitively, giving her a gentle turn before drawing her back close to him again.
He kisses her, slow. “Tell me.”
Her breath catches as if it’s the first time, and it might as well be—each time with her is electric.
“Mine,” she breathes out, fingers curling into the hair at the nape of his neck. “That is my new favorite word. Mine.”
Santino thinks about the promise that he made her, to not go to war with John Wick, and about how relieved she’ll be when John Wick’s death becomes news.
Anything. The thought permeates, dreamy and hazy, through his mind; ever-present, clinging to him like a cloud. I would do anything to keep you and our baby, forever.
“Funny,” he says, “that is my favorite word, too.”
━━━━━━━━━━━━
“I like the name Viola.”
Euphemia is three-fourths of the way through her book, sitting cross-legged at the table in the breakfast cafe that she and Santino frequent, when he says this. She glances up from her reading, dog-earing the page and then settling her chin in her palm to look at him.
He gives her a boyish grin from across their little table, setting his napkin down. “For the baby,” he continues when she looks at him expectantly. “If it’s a girl.”
“Mm.” Euphemia closes her book and tucks it beneath her leg, stirring her tea absently. “And if it’s a boy?”
“Luca,” Santino says without hesitation. “I’d want to name him Luca.”
“Well,” Euphie replies, playfully, “it’s nice to want things, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. D’Antonio, are you threatening to usurp naming rights?”
She laughs, and when Santino reaches across the table to take her hand, she lets him. It’s been a few days since he talked her off the ledge of leaving, since she signed the certificate, since John Wick was sent off to kill Gianna. For those few days, she almost feels normal again; like they really are just any other married couple expecting their first baby.
“I like Luca too,” she murmurs, when Santino kisses her fingers and rests his cheek against them. “And Viola.”
“Good.”
He relinquishes her hand—and it is a relinquishment, because if he had it his way he would be touching her forever—and finishes his coffee before coming to a stand. He drops some bills on the table to pay their tab and then snakes his arm around her waist, walking her out of the cafe.
“I think I will cook dinner tonight,” he announces, and the way his hand squeezes her hip and he turns his head to kiss her temple feels so terribly domestic that her heart aches with the sweetness of it. “What do you think?”
They step up to the curb, a soft drizzle of Fall rain coming down on them, but Euphie doesn’t care; she takes Santino’s face in her hands and kisses him sweet and soft and lets it linger. This, she thinks, damp and tasting the rain in her husband’s kiss. This, always, forever.
“I think it is the least you can do for me,” she replies playfully, pulling away from him when the car pulls up to the curb. He laughs, opening the door for her to slide in—but he doesn’t follow after right away, instead watching someone down the sidewalk approaching.
Euphemia scoots back close to the door having moved in further to make room for him. “Santi?”
“Just a minute, cara mia,” he says, flashing her an extraordinary smile. “Warm up in the car.”
He closes the door without waiting for her to answer and takes a few steps away from the car. Through the rain streaking the window, she can’t see exactly what’s going on; but if the lithe, sleek shape of Ares is any indication, things aren’t going well. She is almost never a bearer of good news when she shows up unannounced.
Something is wrong. Euphemia can feel it inside of her, a chill that goes bone-deep, into the marrow of her skeleton.
After a few minutes of silence, Santino walks back to the car. He opens the door, and before Euphemia can say anything, he leans down and kisses her. It’s a normal kiss, the kind he would give if he were running to the museum for something, unhurried and patient.
As soon as the kiss breaks, she says, “Santi...” but he’s already straightening up.
“It’s only business, cara mia,” he assures her. “I will meet you at home.”
“What business? Santi, please—”
He closes the door to the car and steps away from her, taking off at a casual pace with Ares falling into step beside him. The car pulls out and away from the curb, taking her in the opposite direction of him, carrying her away and away until she is back at the loft, by herself.
It’s cold, she thinks, without Santino. Even though he’ll be back—he said that he would—it still feels cold. She draws a bath that’s a little less hot than what she normally likes and sinks into it, waiting as the silence ticks by. It strikes her that time is passing excruciatingly because he won’t tell her what’s going on; when Satino is gone for anything else, it doesn’t matter. She’s happy to be alone, then.
But this? This is different.
An hour passes, maybe a little more, before she drags herself out of the bathtub feeling like her limbs have become lead. Wrapped in her towel, Euphemia steps out into the living room again and checks her phone—but there is nothing. No text, no call, not from Santino or Gianni or anyone.
The door to the loft clicks open. For a second, her heart drops—but when she goes to foyer, she feels relief flood her. Santino hangs his coat on the stand and glances up at her. He’s closing the space between them, shrugging out of his suit jacket.
“Isn’t it a little early for a bath?” he asks playfully, indicating the bathrobe and her flushed, damp skin.
“I was cold,” she replies. “Santi, what’s going on? Where have you been? I was worried—”
“Shh, tesora, don’t fuss,” he murmurs, pulling her to him by the tie of her robe. It should be romantic, but the movement only sets her on edge. “Everything’s fine. Come here, I want my wife.”
This close, she’s sure she can feel a strange vibration under his skin, bloody and unkempt. It buzzes just beneath the surface of him, under the rain-damp curls and dark jade eyes and she wants to ask him what it is—what’s happened that has him worked up—but then he’s leaning in and kissing her. Hard, and impatient, his teeth dragging along her lower lip punishingly as he walks her back, far enough that she hits the kitchen island.
“Tell me,” she demands between breaths, her fingers knotted in his hair, half to anchor herself and half to make sure he can’t run away from her, “what it is that has you upset—”
“I’m not upset,” he replies evenly, but his breathing is shallow, his eyes darting over her face like he won’t get another chance to look at her.
“I am not stupid, Santi.” Euphemia can see that her insistence on the matter is beginning to irritate him. “Tell me.”
Santino pulls away; she doesn’t have the heart to keep her grip on him, so he paces to one end of the kitchen, passing a hand over his face. He does look agitated, now, like the cracks are finally starting to show, like he’s peeling his mask off piece by piece. Santino has only taken his face off in front of her a few times over the course of their relationship, but enough that she felt confident in agreeing to marry him, like she knew who he really was under all of the polish and glimmer.
Her husband is staring absently at a spot on the counter, like he doesn’t want to say the words that come next. Maybe he’s thinking of a way that he could get out of it—talk a circle around her, the way that he likes to—but for a brief moment in time he looks too tired to do that. It’s worse, she thinks, to see him tired, than if he were just to be bothered by something inane.
She waits with her arms crossed over her chest before she tries again, “If it’s business, I don’t mind listening—”
“You have to go,” he says abruptly. It’s as though her gentle insistence seals the deal for him. “Upstate, to the lake house. You have to go, Euphie, and I don’t want you to.”
Her heart clenches and twists in her chest. Suddenly, she does mind; she doesn’t want to know that anything is wrong, if it will mean that Santino won’t tell her she has to leave.
“Why?” she asks, sounding petulant, like a spoiled child. “Santi, what is going on?”
“It’s just—” Don’t, she thinks, don’t you say it. “—business. There are some things that I need to tie up, and it’s safer if you are not in town while I’m doing it.” He pauses. “For you and the baby.”
Euphemia feels her lower lip wobble. She hates it. She never cried this easily before being pregnant. Blinking rapidly to stay the tears, she steadies herself on the counter.
“Tesora, don’t cry,” Santi sighs, crossing the kitchen, and somehow that he says it makes it harder to stop crying. “It’s just a day, maybe two. That is all. I don’t want you to go, but you are—you are my greatest treasure, and I just want you to be safe.”
“I can stay,” Euphemia whispers. “I can stay, Santi, I’ll--I’ll stay here, and I won’t go anywhere unless you say--”
“No.” He takes her face, smoothing the tears away. She reaches up, gripping his wrists, desperate to keep his hands on her now. Anything for touch, for affirmation. “I cannot risk it. Not you, not the baby. Okay? So you will go upstate for a little while, and then I will come and get you and we’ll go back to life as usual.”
She nods, numbly. Her stomach churns, and she thinks, it’s John Wick. Santino did something to him, and now John Wick is coming back to get what he is owed.
“Tell me you understand, Euphie.” There is something firm, hard about his voice now, and it fills her with dread.
“Yes, Santi,” she replies. “I understand.”
And I wish I did not.
#spilled ink#santino d'antonio x original female character#santino d'antonio/oc#f: where there is no temptation there is no glory#c: santino d'antonio#c: euphemia volpe#i am once again begging god to give euphie a break#(i say)#(to me)#john wick oc#i am trying not to think about What's Happening
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Chapters: 20/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#fanfiction#fanfic#keanu reeves fanfic#ao3#original female character#john wick x reader#reader insert#black female characters#skyline#john wick#john wick x you#john wick x y/n#john wick chapter 2#john wick chapter three#keanu reeves#update#smut
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Chapters: 16/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#new chapter#update#skyline#john wick#john wick x reader#john wick x you#john wick x original character#fanfiction#fanfic#ao3#black female characters#reader insert#keanu reeves#smut
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Chapters: 19/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#fanfiction#fanfic#keanu reeves x reader#reader insert#black female characters#john wick#skyline#john wick x reader#john wick x you#john wick x y/n#hitman#keanu reeves
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Chapters: 18/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#fanfiction#fanfic#ao3#update#reader insert#black female characters#john wick#skyline#john wick x you#john wick x y/n#john wick x reader#hitmen#hitman#keanu reeves
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Chapters: 17/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#john wick#john wick x you#john wick x reader#skyline#update#fanfiction#fanfic#smut#assassin#a03#keanu reeves#black female reader#black female characters
30 notes
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Chapters: 15/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#john wick#skyline#update#fanfiction#fanfic#smut#black female characters#reader insert#ao3#john wick x reader#john wick x you#keanu reeves
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Chapters: 14/?
Fandom: John Wick (Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: John Wick & Original Female Character(s) of Color, John Wick/You, John Wick/Reader
Characters: John Wick, Winston (John Wick), Original Female Character(s) of Color, Viggo Tarasov, Santino D'Antonio, Bowery King (John Wick), The Adjudicator (John Wick), Marcus (John Wick), Ms. Perkins (John Wick), The High Table (John Wick), Continental Hotel Doctor (John Wick), Iosef Tarasov, Helen Wick, Aurelio (John Wick), Charon (John Wick), Zero (John Wick)
Additional Tags: Violence, Reader-Insert, Assassins & Hitmen, Murder, Sex, Smut, Oral Sex, Hand Jobs, This is nasty NASTY, John doesn’t play about his girl
Summary:
Your simple world is turned outside down when you become the object of affection for the World's Deadliest Assassin after crossing paths.
#update#new chapter#john wick#original female character#reader insert#john wick x you#john wick x y/n#black reader#fanfiction#fanfic#ao3#smut#skyline
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