The Killing #2
“Miss Brennan,” Alessandro says. “You shouldn’t remain here.”
“Because I’m grieving?”
“Because men are watching.”
“I noticed.”
“Yes,” he says. “You did.” He gestures toward the waiting car. Not insistently. Not gently. Simply indicating the next available structure. “My home is secure. You’ll be protected there until arrangements are made.”
Rory makes a sound like an oath being strangled. “No. Absolutely not.”
I agree with him. Which is unfortunate, because agreement has never stopped a bad idea from being useful.
Alessandro’s offer isn’t protection. Not only that, at least. Protection is the velvet word men use when they want containment to look civilized.
At his estate, every door will have a purpose.
Every servant will report something to someone.
Every hallway will teach me what they’re afraid I might find.
At Rory’s, I would be safe. At Alessandro’s, I might become dangerous.
Rory steps close enough now that I can feel the heat of him through the rain. “Evie. Come home.”
Home.
The word lands wrong. Home is a place where my father is alive downstairs, pretending not to care if I eat dinner. Home is peat smoke and wet fields and men outside doors who cannot read but are loyal.
Home is already dead. What remains is geography.
“I will,” I say.
Relief breaks across my uncle’s face. Poor man.
“After,” I finish.
“After what?” Rory asks, frowning.
I look at Alessandro. “After I understand what happened.”
Rory’s expression hardens. “You think he’ll give you that?”
“I don’t think I have any choice.”
Alessandro inclines his head once, as if I’ve confirmed something he was already beginning to suspect. “Then come.”
I turn back to the ambulance. The rain has softened the blood at the edge of the street. It runs thin now, pink in the water, almost delicate.
My father would despise that. He preferred mess to be contained.
I step closer to him one last time, touching the edge of the sheet, not his face. I cannot touch his face here. Not with all these men watching, weighing, recording grief as if it might become useful later.
“I’ll find it,” I say to him under my breath.
Not justice. Justice is a word for courts and fairy tales and people who believe systems exist for the wounded.
Truth, perhaps.
Leverage, definitely.
I let go.
Then I walk away from my father’s body toward the car of the man who knows why he’s dead. That feels like betrayal, but then I remind myself it’s not. Betrayal is emotional.
This is strategy.
The car smells like leather and cold air. Luca holds the door. I get in before anyone can help me.
Assistance is just control with manners.
Rory catches the door before it closes. His face is wet from rain, not tears. “Evie. Don’t do this.”
“I already am.”
“You don’t know what you’re walking into.”
“No,” I say. “But I know what I’m walking away from.”
His gaze moves past me to Alessandro, who hasn’t entered the car yet. “Your father wouldn’t want this.”
“My father wanted a great many things that turned out poorly.”
Rory flinches. I’ll be sorry later, though. There’s no room for it now.
The door closes. Sound changes immediately. Rain becomes a soft tapping against reinforced glass. Men become shapes. The street becomes a scene through a window, already less real because I’m no longer standing in it.
Alessandro enters from the other side while Luca gets into the front.
The car doesn’t move, waiting for instruction. Everything waits for him.
I turn my head. “Did Dante kill my father?”
Luca goes very still.
Alessandro doesn’t. “No question you ask in this car will help you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“Is it meant to frighten me?”
“No.”
“Then what is it meant to do?”
“Keep you alive.”
I almost smile. How thoughtful. “You’re assuming I prefer that.”
His gaze shifts to me. “You do.”
I hate him a little for being right.
The car begins to move. Outside, the ambulance remains. Police lights smear blue across the wet glass, then fall behind us.
My father disappears by increments. First the stretcher. Then the alley. Then the street. Then the city swallows the corner, and there’s nothing left to look at except my own reflection in the window.
I don’t look like someone whose father just died. I look composed.
“Your uncle will be allowed to visit,” Alessandro says.
“You’re very generous with other people’s family,” I say.
His expression remains unchanged. “You’ll be safer at the estate.”
“And more visible.”
“Yes.”
At least he doesn’t insult me by lying.
“Visible to whom?” I ask.
“To everyone who needs to see you protected.”
“And everyone who needs to see me contained.”
A pause. “Yes.”
There’s no satisfaction in the admission. No apology, either.
I turn from the window to look at him properly.
He’s older than my father by less than I expected and more than I want to notice.
Controlled in a way that feels less like discipline and more like architecture.
Men like him are not built around desire or fear or guilt.
They build rooms for those things and lock them in when company comes.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Your father’s body will be returned according to your family’s rites. His people will be contacted through appropriate channels. The announcement will be managed.”
Managed.
My father’s death, reduced to a schedule. A statement. A sequence of acceptable reactions.
“And Dante?” I ask.
His hand rests on his knee. No ring except the one that matters. No nervous movement. No visible crack.
“Dante isn’t your concern.”
“My father is dead,” I say. “Everything connected to that is my concern.”
“Not everything you claim can be held.”
“That sounds like advice from someone holding too much.”
His gaze stays on mine.
Good.
I may be powerless, but I’m not decorative.
The car turns through iron gates.