Chapter 12
GIANNI
She’s asleep when I wake up.
Violet’s curled on her side, one hand tucked underneath her chin, the other resting on the spot where my chest was just a moment ago.
Her red hair is fanned across the pillow and her glasses are folded on the floor beside the pull-out couch because the end table is too full of empty mugs and drinking cups. The morning light peeps in through the thin curtains and falls across her bare shoulder.
I lie still for a moment, watching the rise and fall of her breathing.
I've slept with women before. Plenty of them. I’ve slept with beautiful women, powerful women, women who understood the arrangement and never expected more than I was willing to give. I've woken up in penthouses and hotel suites and once, memorably, on a yacht anchored off Capri.
Not once did I feel what I feel right now, lying on a pull-out couch in a one-bedroom apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, watching this woman sleep.
I should leave, but I don’t.
I want to stay.
And that’s a problem.
I want to stay in this bed that isn’t actually a bed, in an apartment that would fit comfortably in my bedroom’s walk-in closet. I want to lay next to this woman whose real name I might not even know.
I want to pull her against my chest and feel her breathe and tell her that last night changed something I didn’t realize could change.
But I’m not a man who makes decisions based on what he wants.
I make decisions based on what’s necessary, what needs to be done.
What’s necessary right now is clarity, which can only be possible with distance.
I ease off the couch quietly. She stirs, mumbles a little as if speaking in a dream, then settles again. It’s goddamn near impossible to resist the urge to watch her longer. It’s a different kind of beauty than what she possesses waking—more vulnerable. Innocent, even.
I pull on my pants, find my shirt draped over the back of a kitchen chair, and button it while scanning the apartment in daylight. It's different in the morning—smaller. I’d noticed details last night, but I’d been too distracted to really process them.
Now, in the light of morning, I give them a second look.
I notice the double locks, the Cheerios on the counter, the sippy cup in the dish rack.
I noticed it last night but didn’t consciously register it.
I look at it again. It’s small, made of blue plastic.
Nothing at all like an adult would use, the small handles designed for little hands.
My gaze moves to the closed door at the end of the short hallway. I spot a bedroom. She sleeps on the pull-out, which means the bedroom belongs to someone else. Someone small enough to need a sippy cup and a box of Cheerios placed where they can be easily reached.
I don't open the door, but I stand in the hallway and look at it for a long moment. The pieces snap in place and I can’t believe I didn’t put it all together sooner.
She has a child.
I pause right in the middle of tucking in my shirt as it dawns on me just as someone knocks on the door
Violet jerks awake on the couch, as if someone told her what I just realized. Her eyes find me standing in her hallway, half-dressed, and for a second she looks disoriented, like she's trying to place me in a context that makes sense.
Then the knock comes again, and her expression shifts. It’s not fear, it’s more practiced than that. More like alertness.
Without saying a word to me, she grabs a robe from the back of the bathroom door, wraps it around herself, and checks the peephole. Her shoulders drop with relief. She unlocks the door then looks at me over her shoulder to make sure I’m fully dressed.
I nod, finishing tucking in and adjusting my belt and zipping up. I quickly step into my loafers before reaching down to grab my socks, slipping them into my pocket.
Violet opens the door. An older woman stands in the hallway. She’s in her sixties, with a round face, kind eyes, and a warmth that radiates off her like she was built for the express purpose of making people feel at ease. She's holding the hand of a small boy.
Red curls. Green eyes. He's wearing little blue pajamas with rockets on them and carrying a rubber dinosaur in his free hand, and he's rubbing his eyes with the back of his wrist in the universal gesture of a child who's been woken up too early and isn't happy about it.
"Buenos días, mija," the woman says. "He woke up asking for you, so I figured—"
She stops, her eyes on me. Her eyebrows rise exactly one quarter of an inch, condensing about five different emotions into that one gesture.
"Rudi, this is—" Violet starts.
"Mama." The boy cuts her off as he lets go of Rudi's hand and wraps himself around Violet's leg, pressing his face into the fabric of her robe.
She bends down and scoops him up in one fluid motion, settling him on her hip.
He buries his face in her neck, one arm slung around her shoulder, the dinosaur dangling from his fist.
"Hey, bug," she says softly. "Did you have fun with Rudi?"
He nods against her neck. Then he lifts his head and looks at me with his mother's green eyes. "Hi."
"Hi."
"That's my dinosaur." He holds up the rubber stegosaurus. "His name is Dragon."
“That’s a fine name for a dinosaur.”
“He looks mean, but he’s really nice.”
“I bet he is.”
Violet is watching me. I can feel the weight of her gaze, can feel that she’s sizing me up and trying to determine just how close she wants me to him, or if she even wants me near him at all. I can sense she’s not quite sure how to reconcile the sudden collision of these two worlds.
"I should go," I say.
My voice is even and professional, the same tone I use when I want to keep how I really feel buried where no one can see it.
The boy—Patrick, Rudi calls him, says something quietly about his breakfast before lifting his head from Violet's shoulder. He looks at me with an expression that is entirely too perceptive for a young child.
"Do you want breakfast?" he asks.
The question has an effect on me I wasn’t prepared for. I clear my throat as it moves through me.
"I can't," I say. "I have to go to work."
"My mama goes to work too." He considers this, as if establishing common ground. "Do you have a dinosaur?"
"I don't."
"You should get one. They help when you’re scared.”
Violet presses her lips to the top of his head, closing her eyes for just a second, her hand tightening on his back as if he might slip away at any moment.
I turn to Violet. Reset. Walls up, expression neutral, every trace of last night locked behind the face I show the world.
"It was good speaking with you, Miss Wolfe," I say. "I'll see you at the office."
The expression of slight but sudden surprise that flashes on her face makes it clear the shift was noticed but perhaps not understood. Her mouth opens just a bit, as if she wants to say something, to make something clear. But then it closes. Maybe she gets it. Maybe she doesn’t.
She has a child in this apartment and last night the FBI tailed me to her door. I led federal surveillance directly to the building where her son sleeps.
I won’t let that happen again.
I nod at Rudi, who gives me a look that says she has already sized me up and doesn’t like what she sees. Or, at the very least, understands the type of man I am.
"Bye!" Patrick calls over Violet's shoulder.
I don't look back. If I look back, I'll stay. And if I stay, I'll put them both in danger.
I take the stairs, not the elevator. Each step adds distance between me and the woman and the boy, important distance—distance I need to maintain.
By the time I reach the street, my phone is already in my hand.
Spackman. The Violet Wolfe file. I need it today.