Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gemma
The whipped cream is winning. Nina has a stripe of it across her upper lip and another dot on her nose.
"It's hot chocolate," she says, "but it's not too hot. The lady made it warm on purpose."
"She did. I heard you ask her."
"I asked polite."
"You asked very polite, baby."
The coffee shop sits under our building, which is the only reason we're here.
Nina spotted the striped awning from the car two days ago and has brought it up every morning since.
This morning Luca looked at her over his coffee and said, "Take her down there.
You two need some time, just the two of you. Go."
So we went.
There's a man in a gray car across the street who's been there since we sat down, and I'm pretty sure he's one of ours, because Luca told me there would always be one of ours. Also two of theirs, and that I should learn not to look at any of them.
Nina stretches her legs out across the bench seat, both of them, taking up the whole thing.
I sip my coffee.
Two days. That's how long it's been since the first time, and I've stopped counting the times after it because the number got embarrassing somewhere around yesterday afternoon, when Nina was at the compound with Lily. There's a bruise on my hip from the kitchen counter last night.
I keep finding it through my coat, pressing it with my thumb like I'm checking that it's real. This morning he kissed the back of my neck while I buttered Nina's toast and I nearly dropped the knife.
"Mommy." Nina sets down her cup with both hands, careful, and looks at me with her business face. "I need to ask you a question."
"Okay. Ask me."
"Can we have a dog?"
"A dog?"
"A small one. Or a big one." She's flexible on the details, clearly. "Lily doesn't have a dog either, so we could share him. He could live at our house and visit her house."
"You've thought about this."
"Since yesterday." She nods once, serious. "And also before."
When Oscar died, his food bowl stayed in the kitchen corner for two weeks because nobody could be the one to move it. My mom finally did it while I was at school. I came home and the corner was empty. I cried harder over the empty corner than I did the day he died.
I still remember the exact shape of that corner.
Nina is four. Nina has already learned to hide behind my legs and go quiet when men raise their voices. She has had enough.
"Baby," I say, and she hears it in my voice. Her shoulders come down half an inch. "I'm not sure we can have a dog in the apartment. Some buildings have rules about it."
"What rules?"
"Rules about pets. About what animals can live there."
"That's a bad rule."
"It might be. I'd have to check."
She picks up her cup again and drinks.
"Mommy." Nina leans across the table. "Are we going to live here always?"
"I think we're going to live here for a long time, baby," I say. "That's what I believe."
"With Luca?"
"With Luca."
She takes this in the way she takes most things, with a slow nod, then licks the whipped cream off her lip. "Okay. Then the dog could learn where everything is."
I don't say anything else.
With Luca.
I don't actually know what those two words mean.
There's a certificate somewhere with my name on it next to his.
There's also a contract underneath the certificate.
A year of appearances written into it, and none of the paperwork covers what's been happening in that apartment since the wedding night.
I could ask him what we are. The question isn't complicated. But the truth is I'd rather not hear him say it's the contract. So I don't ask. I drink my coffee and I tell myself the arrangement works fine without a name on it.
Nina hums to herself and drags her finger through the foam.
The gray car is across the street, a barista laughs at a delivery guy by the door, and I'm thinking about Luca's hands on me instead of watching around us.
That's the mistake.
There's a man standing next to our table.
I look up.
Vico Orsini smiles down at me.
"Mrs. Farro," he says. "What a coincidence."
Everything in me goes quiet. My hands settle flat on the table and stay there.
He's wearing a dark coat, open, and his hands are out of his pockets, loose at his sides, empty.
I check that first. Then his face. He's got the same look he had at the wedding, when he stared at me over the champagne and said I seemed familiar.
"Mr. Orsini." My voice comes out even.
"Vico, please." He gestures at the shop, the awning, the street, all of it, as if we're neighbors. "Small city. How are you? Married life treating you well?"
"We're fine."
His eyes move off me.
They land on Nina.
She's stopped humming. She's holding her cup with both hands and she's gone small in the seat, legs pulled back in, shoulders down, watching him.
"And this must be—"
"We were just leaving." I'm already moving. Coat off the chair, Nina's mittens off the table, her hat, my bag. "Nina, baby, coat on."
She slides off the bench and comes to my side of the table. I get one of her arms into a sleeve.
"No rush," Vico says. He hasn't moved. He's still smiling, but it never reaches his eyes. "I only stopped in for a coffee."
"Then I'll let you get your coffee," I say.
I zip Nina's coat to her chin and take her hand, and Vico Orsini steps back half a pace, just enough to open the path to the door, holding it open the way a person holds a gate.
"Give my regards to your husband," he says.
Luca
The pacing is the first thing I see when I open the door. Gemma crosses the living room, turns at the window, comes back. Her arms are wrapped around her own ribs.
I don't like it. Her pacing means something happened while I was out, and I was only out for two hours.
She sees me and stops. Then she's across the room and against my chest before I have the door locked behind me grabbing at my jacket.
"He was there," she says. The words come fast, stacked on top of each other.
"At the coffee shop. Vico. He just showed up at our table and he called me Mrs. Farro and Nina went so quiet, Luca, she went quiet the way she does, and he looked at her, he looked at my daughter, and I got us out but I keep thinking what if I did it wrong, what if I made it worse, what if I can't do this, I don't know if I can do this—"
"Gemma."
"—because I don't know the rules, nobody told me the rules, and if I say the wrong thing to the wrong man—"
I take her chin in my hand. Her skin is warm and her pulse jumps against my fingers, quick as a bird's.
"Breathe," I say. "Then tell me what the fuck happened. Slow."
She breathes. I keep my hand where it is. She doesn't pull away from it, which still surprises me every time.
"We were having hot chocolate," she says. Slower now. "Nina and me. He came to the table. He was polite. He didn't threaten anything, he just stood there being polite, and then he said to give you his regards."
Vico Orsini walked up to them, in daylight, in the shop under my own building. Cazzo. They're pushing. The old man said his people would watch, and this is what watching looks like to a man like Vico. He wants to see if she cracks.
"His regards," I say. "Figlio di puttana."
"See, that's what I mean." Her hands twist tighter in my jacket. "What if he could see it on my face? That this is—" She stops herself. "That it's not real."
"There's nothing to worry about," I say.
"Luca."
"Listen to me." I tip her chin up. "The paper is fake. The reason is fake. You and me are not strangers, and any man with eyes can see that. Nobody who sees us together doubts it. Not him. Not anyone."
She goes still. The fast breathing slows and her eyes move over my face, back and forth. Nobody looks at me this long. She looks at my face like there's information in it worth having.
"You'll get tired of me," she says.
It comes out level, scrubbed clean, and it's so wrong that a laugh comes out of me before I decide to let it. Rough, short. Her eyebrows go up.
"Tired of you," I say. "Christ."
"I'm serious. A year is a long time and I talk too much when I'm nervous and I—"
"Where's Nina?"
The question stops her mid-list. "Asleep. The whole thing wore her out, she went down twenty minutes ago. Why—"
I kiss her.
My hand slides from her chin into her hair, pulling her against me, and I take her mouth hard. She makes a small sound, her fingers dig into my shoulders and she's kissing me back, up on her toes, pressing in.
I break the kiss an inch from her mouth. Her breath comes fast again.
"Tired of you," I say against her lips. "Not fucking likely."
I get my hands under her ass and lift. Her legs come around my waist before I've finished the motion, like her body decided ahead of her head. My shoulder pulls at the exit wound. I don't care.
"I need to taste you," I say against her jaw. "Right fucking now."
The moan she gives me is loud in the quiet apartment, and it goes straight through me, and it's also a problem.
"Quiet," I say.
She presses her mouth shut. Her hips shift against me instead, which is worse for my concentration, and I carry her down the hallway.
I close the bedroom door behind us and turn the lock.
The lamp on the nightstand is on. She reaches for it.
"Leave it," I say. "I want to see you."
Her hand stops above the switch. She pulls it back and stands there in the middle of the room, breathing faster than she was in the kitchen.
I go to her slow. Last time was fast. Tonight I want to know things. Where she's ticklish. What she sounds like when nobody's rushing her.
I take the hem of her sweater and lift it. She raises her arms, obedient, eyes on my face the whole time. Her bra is beige and plain and she goes red when I look at it.
"I didn't know," she says. "That this was — I would've worn the other one."
"I don't give a shit about the bra." I unhook it with one hand and drop it. "I care about what's under it."
Her jeans next. I go down on one knee to pull them off her ankles. From here I can see all of her.
Her left wrist hangs at her side. The burn scar sits on the inside of it, pale and puckered. I've seen it before and never touched it. I take her wrist now, turn it up and put my mouth on the scar. She makes a sound in her throat that isn't pleasure. It's closer to grief.
"Luca —"
"You don't have to tell me." I kiss it again. "But it's mine now too. Every fucking inch of you is."
She pulls me up by the collar and undresses me herself, button by button, slower than I've ever been undressed in my life.
When my shirt comes off she finds the exit wound at my right shoulder, still pink, still ugly.
Her fingers circle it without touching. Then she leans in and presses her lips to the center of it, soft.
Nobody has ever done that to any wound of mine. My hands come up to her hips and they're steady.
"Does it hurt?" she says against my skin.
"No."
We take our time in the bed. I learn her. The spot below her ear makes her gasp, the inside of her knee makes her laugh. She learns me back — her nails down my ribs pull a shudder out of me I don't authorize. She does it again, and watches my face while she does it.
When I finally push inside her we're face to face, and neither of us closes our eyes.
She's wet, tight and hot around my cock and I move slow, slower than my body wants, because her eyes are looking at me like I'm a man and not a tool.
I'd hold this position until my arms gave out to keep being looked at that way.
"There," she breathes. "Right — there."
"I know, amore. I've got you."
She builds under me for a long time. When she comes, my forehead is pressed to hers, our breath in each other's mouths, and she says my name twice. I follow her over with my face in her neck and her hands gripping my back like I might leave.
I don't leave.
After I clean us up, she lies against my chest and picks up my right hand. She traces the ink across my knuckles, one letter per finger, both hands together.
"What does it say?"
"Così sia." My voice comes out rough. "So be it."
"So be what?"
"Everything. Whatever came. I signed off on all of it."
She thinks about that. Her thumb keeps moving over the letters. Then her breathing slows and lengthens. Her hand goes heavy on mine, and she's asleep, just like that, naked and trusting in the bed of a man who kills people for the Sartoris.
I stay awake. The lamp is still on. Her papers are on the kitchen counter, everything that proves she exists, and none of it says the truth.
She sleeps on my chest like the truth is simple.
I watch the ceiling, holding her, and think I'm going to destroy this.