Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Luca
Ikeep my eyes on the road. My thigh is screaming. The headbutt didn't help. Neither did the knee I dropped onto that fucker's chest. But the pain is useful. It keeps my hands steady on the wheel, keeps my thoughts from drifting to the backseat, to the shape of a child curled small in the dark.
"Where are we going?" She asks, carefully.
"He was alone," I say. "No one's following."
"That doesn't answer my question."
No. It doesn't.
"My place," I say. "For now."
She doesn't respond immediately. She lets a moment to pass. But I already know what she's going to ask.
"Why?"
I don't answer.
The truth is a knot in my chest. Tight, ugly and impossible to untangle. The truth is that I should have walked out of that motel room the second I got my keys back. Should have driven away and let her figure out her own shit. Should have—
The kid makes a sound. Small. A hiccup, maybe, or the tail end of a sob she's trying to swallow.
My hands tighten on the wheel.
"You got somewhere else to go?" I ask.
Silence.
"Didn't fucking think so."
I turn onto Ashland, heading north. The buildings here are taller, older, brick facades stained with decades of city grime. My apartment is another twenty minutes.
"I can find somewhere," she says. "You don't have to—"
"Yeah? Where?" I glance at the rearview mirror. She's looking out the window now, her jaw tight. "You got no shoes. No money. A kid. It's two in the morning and there's at least one asshole out there who knows your face, your name and where you work."
She flinches. Barely. Just a flicker of something across her features before she smooths it away.
"I'll figure it out."
"You already figured it out," I say. "You got in the car."
That lands. I can see it in the way her shoulders stiffen, the way her hand tightens on her daughter's back.
"I didn't have a choice."
"You had a choice. You made it."
She doesn't argue. Can't, probably, because she knows I'm right. She weighed her options in that parking lot and she chose.
Now she has to live with it.
So do I.
The light ahead turns red. I stop, and the car settles into stillness, engine humming low.
I turn my head.
I don't mean to. Don't decide to. My body just moves. And then I'm looking at her.
She's exhausted. Pale. Her hair is falling out of whatever she had it tied back in, loose strands sticking to her cheek. Her eyes are red but dry.
She's looking back at me.
Grey-blue eyes, the color of lake water under a cloudy sky. Steady. Wary. Not afraid, exactly, but not trusting either. Somewhere in between.
She's beautiful.
She's looking at me, still waiting. Still trying to figure out what I am. What I want and whether she made the right choice getting in this car.
But the truth is, I don't know why I'm doing this.
I only know that the kid is clinging to her mother like the world is ending.
A car horn blares behind us.
I turn back to the road. Press the accelerator. The Audi moves forward, and the moment passes.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I say. The words rasp out before I can soften them. I try again. "Or her."
Gemma doesn't relax. Her eyes stay fixed on mine in the rearview mirror, grey-blue and flat, giving nothing away.
"Then what do you want?"
The girl whimpers. Presses her face harder into her mother's shoulder.
Cazzo.
I'm scaring her.
"Look," I say. I pitch my voice lower. "That man at the motel. He's going to wake up, and he's going to be pissed as hell. Then he's going to come looking for you. You understand that?"
Gemma's jaw tightens. "I understand."
"Good. So you can't go back to wherever you were living. You can't go back to work. Whoever that bastard is, he knows where to find you, and he'll have friends."
"I know." Her voice is flat. No inflection, the kind of voice that's learned to deliver bad news without flinching. "I figured that out about an hour ago."
"Then you know you need somewhere to go. Somewhere no one can find you."
She laughs.
"Sure. I'll just check into the Ritz. Maybe order room service."
The girl shifts in her lap. Gemma's hand moves automatically to smooth her hair, her fingers gentle even while her voice stays hard.
"That's why you need my place," I say.
Gemma goes still again. Different this time. Wary.
"What kind of place is that?"
"An apartment. Pilsen. It's—" I stop. How do I explain this? It's a safehouse. It's a hole I crawl into when I can't be anywhere else. "It's mine. No one knows about it who shouldn't. You can stay there until you figure out what the fuck you're running from and what to do about it."
The girl makes a small sound. Gemma's hand keeps moving through her hair, steady, rhythmic.
"Why would you do that?"
It's a fair question. I don't have a good answer.
"Because I can," I say.
Gemma studies me. I can see her thinking, weighing options that are all bad, trying to find the one that's least likely to get her killed.
"And what do you want in return?"
"Tell me what you're running from." I meet her eyes in the mirror. "If I can help, I'll help. If I can't, at least you'll have somewhere safe to sleep while you figure out your next move."
The girl's crying has stopped. She's still pressed against her mother's chest, but she's quiet now, her breathing evening out. Exhaustion, probably. Kids that age crash hard when the adrenaline wears off.
Gemma's hand stills in her daughter's hair.
"You don't know me," she says. "You don't know anything about me. Why would you—"
"I know someone's after you. I know you've got a kid and no money and nowhere to go.
I know that asshole at the motel wasn't your husband, whatever bullshit he was selling.
" I pause. "And I know you're scared as hell but you're still thinking clearly enough to ask the right questions. That's more than most people manage."
She doesn't respond. Her eyes stay on mine, searching for something. I don't know if she finds it.
"The apartment," she says finally. "Is it safe?"
"As safe as anywhere in this city. Reinforced door, good locks. No one's going to come through that door unless I let them."
"And you? Are you safe?"
"No," I say. "But I'm not going to hurt you. Or her."
The girl stirs. Mumbles something I can't hear. Gemma's arms tighten around her, and the hardness goes out of her. For a moment she's just tired, just raw.
"Okay," she says. The word comes out quiet. Defeated. "Okay. Take us there."
Gemma
He pulls into a space behind a building I don't recognize and cuts the engine.
Nina is asleep.
She went under between Eighteenth and wherever this is, the hiccups slowing first, then the breathing, then the small fist she had in my collar going loose. Her head is heavy on my shoulder. Her cheek is wet against my neck.
"Three floors," he says.
I turn my head to look at him.
"Can you carry her up?"
"Yes."
He looks at her in my arms for half a second.
Then he is out of the car and around to my side and opening the door before I have the seatbelt off.
He waits while I work it one-handed, the buckle stiff, the strap caught under her leg.
I get it free. I slide out with her against my chest and her legs dangling.
He shuts the door behind me. Quiet. He doesn't slam it.
"This way."
I follow.
The lot is small and dark. He goes ahead of me up a short flight of concrete steps to a back door. He has a key in his left hand. He opens the door without looking back at me and holds it with his shoulder so I can pass through with her.
The stairwell is narrow. A single bulb on each landing. He goes first. I keep my eyes on his back because the stairs are steep and I have a child against me and the back of his coat is the closest thing I have to a railing.
I don't know why he is doing this.
I have not had a minute to think about it. I was supposed to figure out what this man wants from me, and I have not.
What does a man like him want from a woman like me.
I know the shape of the answer.
But he hasn't touched me. He hasn't looked at me the way Dominik's friends looked at me.
He looked at me at the red light and it was not that look.
It was something else and I do not have time to name it because I am climbing a stranger's stairs with my daughter asleep on my shoulder and my feet are bare.
Second floor. He keeps going.
Nina is heavy. My arm under her thighs has gone numb at the elbow. I shift her higher. She makes a small sound against my collarbone and settles.
Third floor. He stops at a door at the end of the hall. He puts the key in. He turns it. He pushes the door open with his good hand and steps in first.
He flips a switch.
The light is low. A lamp somewhere, not the overhead. The room is one room, mostly. A couch. A small table. A kitchen against the far wall with two stools at a counter. A door on the left that is open. A door on the right that is closed.
It is clean. It is empty in the way a hotel is empty. There is nothing on the walls.
"Through there." He nods at the open door on the left.
I carry Nina across the floor. My feet are silent on the wood.
The bedroom is small. A bed against the wall, made. A lamp on the floor by the bed because there is no nightstand. A closet door. That is all.
"There's only one room," he says behind me. Not an apology. A fact.
"It's fine."
"Put her down. I'll be out here."
He doesn't come in. He stands in the doorway for a second. He finally steps back and I hear him move into the kitchen.
I lower Nina onto the bed.
I do it slowly. Her arm has been around my neck for so long that it stays in the shape of my neck for a second after I set her down, curled in the air, and then it falls and she makes the small sound again and rolls onto her side. Her mouth is open.
I pull the blanket up to her shoulder.
I tuck it under her chin the way she likes.
I stand there.
I take a breath. I take another one. I make myself take a third because two is not enough.
My hands are shaking. I press them against my thighs until they stop, or until they stop enough that I can put them somewhere else.
I look at her face. I look at the fan of her dark lashes against her cheek. I look at the small pulse at her temple where the hair is damp.
I cannot stay in this room.
I have to go out there and talk to him. I have to find out what he wants. I have to hear him say it before I go to sleep in a stranger's bed in a stranger's apartment.
I straighten up.
I walk to the door.
I pull it most of the way closed behind me, leaving a sliver so I can hear her if she stirs, and I step out into the room where he is.
He's by the counter.
His coat is off. It's folded over the back of one of the stools. His back is to me. He's pouring water into a glass from the tap. He uses his left hand again. The right one stays at his side.
He turns.
I see his throat.
I haven't seen his throat until now. The coat had a collar that came up to his jaw and I never saw past it,
The tattoos start from under his shirt and go up.
They are black. They are dense. There is a script along the side of his neck that I cannot read because I'm not close enough, and underneath it a pattern that looks like it could be a saint or could be a knife, and a line of something that runs up behind his ear into the hair.
The tattoos go around. They don't stop at the front.
There is more under his jaw on the right side.
A small mark at the corner of his throat. It moves when he swallows.
He is wearing a black shirt. The sleeves are rolled up past his forearms. There are tattoos on his forearms too, lower down, but it's the throat I am looking at.
Oh.
He is —
I make myself stop.
He is a stranger.
He is also the most beautiful man I have ever seen up close.
That isn't useful information.
It's strange, though, that I'm not afraid of him.
I should be. I have every reason. I am barefoot in a stranger's apartment with my child in his bed and I do not even know his last name. Every part of this is the kind of thing I have been told my entire life not to do.
I am not afraid of him.
That is not the same as trusting him. I don't trust him. I trust nothing. I haven't trusted anything since I was twenty-two and sitting in a kitchen with my mother across from me telling her I was going to marry a man I already knew was lying to me.
But I am not afraid.
It is probably because of the throat. It is probably because his face is beautiful and beautiful things make you stupid. Men can be beautiful and monsters at the same time. I know this. I married one and he was not even all the way beautiful, only enough.
Stop.
He's watching me.
I have been standing in the doorway of the bedroom looking at him for too long. He has the glass of water in his left hand. He hasn't moved.
"Sorry," I say.
"For what."
"I don't know." It comes out flat. "Standing there."
He doesn't answer that. He sets the glass down on the counter. He waits.
I cross the floor.
It isn't a decision exactly. My feet move because standing in the doorway is worse than walking. The wood is cold under them. I stop on the other side of the counter from him with the stools between us.
"I haven't —" I start. "We haven't done this part."
"What part."
"Met."
He looks at me. He doesn't say anything.
I put my hand out across the counter.
It feels stupid as soon as I do it. We are not at a dinner party. I have been in his car. He has seen me cry.
But my hand is out. So.
"Gemma," I say. "Holt. Gemma Holt."
He looks at my hand.
He looks at it for a beat longer than a person normally looks at a hand. Long enough that I almost pull it back. I don't. I keep it there because pulling it back would be worse.
He lifts his eyes to mine.
He puts his left hand out and takes mine.
His palm is warm. His fingers close around the back of my hand. He doesn't squeeze. He doesn't shake it the way men shake hands. He just holds it for a second the way you'd hold something you were checking the weight of.
"Luca," he says. "Farro."