Chapter 16
BEA
My apartment feels tighter than it used to. It always does after I’ve been in that building—like the walls shrink in retaliation. Three hundred and forty square feet of cracked linoleum, mismatched furniture, and a radiator that treats warmth like a suggestion.
The bed frame still holds together, somehow, from that one evening I spent wrestling with an Allen key. Tonight, though, the whole place looks… cheap. Worse—exposed. And I hate that the thought isn’t even mine. I’m seeing it the way he would.
My heels come off first, abandoned near the door. My bag follows, dropped without care onto the counter.
I just stand there after that. Coat still on. Not moving.
The cab ride lingers in my body. Twenty minutes of watching the city blur past through glass, forehead pressed against it like I might melt into it.
I didn’t let my mind circle back to his office—to what happened there—because that would mean deciding what it meant. And I’m not touching that tonight.
Tomorrow can deal with it.
Right now, I just want heat. Water hot enough to drown everything out. A space that still belongs to me, untouched.
The bathroom light flickers and hums before settling. I turn the shower knob all the way, and the pipes complain in the walls before finally giving in. Steam creeps up, softening the mirror until my reflection starts to blur.
Clothes hit the floor one piece at a time—blouse, skirt, bra—left in a careless heap for later. I wrap myself in the one decent towel I own and glance up just long enough to regret it.
Cold water stings my face as I lean over the sink.
Behind me, the door opens.
I go still.
A footstep on the loose board near the doorway. Breathing that doesn’t belong to me.
Slowly, I straighten. Turn.
There’s a man standing in my bathroom.
He’s solid—broad enough to fill the doorway, his jacket straining like it lost an argument with his shoulders. Not as tall as the ones from earlier, but heavier. A short beard, no expression worth reading. Not familiar.
He shuts the door behind him.
“Bea Mendez.”
My blood runs cold.
“Who-who…” The words won’t come out. Then, somehow, I swallow the shock and the fear. “Who are you?”
“Boss wants a word with you.”
Anger bubbles up beneath everything else. No. I’m done with bosses for the day.
“I don’t know who your boss is, and I don’t care. Get out.”
The demand comes out surprisingly strong.
Not that it matters. He moves a step closer. The bathroom isn’t big enough for that to be nothing. My back is against the sink already; there’s no actual distance to lose.
“He said you’d be like this.” He sounds almost pleased about it. “Little bit of fight in you. I like that.”
He tilts his head.
“See, I’m what the boss would call an investigator.
That’s what I do. I ask people questions, and I find out things they didn’t want me to find out.
And the thing about that kind of work”—he lets it sit—“is it comes with perks. Company perks. You get to decide how you get your answers. And afterwards, if the night’s still young, you get to help yourself to whatever else is lying around. ”
His eyes slide down me once and come back up.
“Anything I want. That’s the rule, sweetheart.”
I grip the edge of the sink behind me. The water is still running in the shower; steam is thickening between us, and the sound of it covers the sound of my breathing, which is good, because my breathing is not where I want it to be.
“So,” he says. “What are you to D’Amico.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m-I’m his assistant.”
“Assistant.” He repeats it like he’s trying it on. “You his spy? Is that why he’s got you sitting in that office? Feeding you the good files?”
“What? No.”
“You running with someone? Someone out of town? One of the West Coast people?”
“I’m his assistant.”
“Keep saying it.” He pushes off the doorframe. “Maybe one more time it’ll mean something.”
“It’s the truth.”
“See, that’s where you lose me, sweetheart.
” He takes another slow step into the room.
“Because I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know how these floors work.
Assistant—that’s a job on six. That’s a girl who answers a phone and types up a calendar and goes home at five.
What the hell does an assistant do on the executive floor of a law firm that cleans money for half this city?
You pouring his coffee? That what we’re doing? ”
I don’t answer.
“Tell you the truth, that’s why boss picked me for this.
Said he needed somebody who could smell bullshit from across the room.
” A small tap against his temple. “I smell bullshit from across the room. And everything about you—the floor you work on, the girl you replaced, the fact that you’ve got no family in this life and you’re still sitting six feet from D’Amico’s office—every piece of that is bullshit. ”
He stops in front of me.
“So, I’ll ask you one more time, and I’ll ask you nice, and then we’ll be past the nice part. What are you to him.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“He—” My voice cracks. I start again. “He took a liking to me. That’s all. I work for him. That’s what I am to him. He took a liking.”
He smiles.
“There we go. That wasn’t so hard.” His eyes travel down, drinking in the towel, the wet ends of my hair, the bare feet on the tile. “See, now we’re getting somewhere. Now I can go back to my boss with something useful.”
His hand comes up.
It lands on my bare shoulder, just where the towel ends.
“Don’t touch me.” I try to shake off his grip.
“Yeah, about that.”
He reaches slowly into the inside of his jacket with his free hand. He isn’t rushing. He wants me to watch. What comes out is a folding knife.
He holds it down at his side.
“This part’s been complicated,” he says. “I’ll be honest with you. My boss has a boss. And his boss is a lot less patient than my boss, and my boss is not what I’d call a patient man.”
He tilts the knife slightly, catching the bathroom light on the flat of it.
“So, we decided on an experiment. Real simple. Someone roughs up the pretty new assistant a little. Leaves a few marks. Maybe a little more than a few. And then we all sit back, and we watch what happens. Does the famiglia make a noise? Does D’Amico lose his shit?
Does somebody show up at a sit-down asking questions?
” He shrugs. “Or does it turn out to be nothing. Unfortunate incident. Shallow grave in the river park. Firm sends flowers. Life goes on.”
The thumb of his other hand has moved. It’s tracing the top of the towel slowly, almost idly, not seeming to care that I’ve gone rigid.
“That’s what we’re figuring out tonight, sweetheart. Which one it is.”
His fingers hook into the fabric. Fear pulses through me, fast and frantic.
“Don’t take this personal. It’s just research.”
“Don’t—”
“Or what?” The knife comes up a fraction, not at me, just enough to make sure I’ve seen it. He’s still smiling, small and private. “You’ll scream? This building? Three of your neighbors run benzos out the front door. Nobody in this hallway’s calling anybody.”
“Please—”
“Easy way,” he says, “or the other one. Doesn’t change my night either way. Changes yours. So—”
Then, suddenly, there’s a dull, cracking sound. Wet and heavy. It shuts him up.
His whole body lurches forward. His weight shifts suddenly, and he stumbles into me. I flinch back against the sink, and something warm hits the side of my neck and my jaw.
He stays upright for a moment. One hand still on the towel. The other raised, halfway to his head, as if he’s trying to figure out what just hit him.
Clumsily, he turns.
My breath catches in my throat.
Raffaele is standing in my bathroom doorway, a pistol low at his side. His knuckles are covered in blood.
Did… did he just punch this guy? Pistol whip him?
The brute is trying to figure out the same thing. Albeit, with a concussion.
“D’Amico,” he slurs. The man takes an awkward half-step back. “Shit,” he mumbles, eyes glazing over.
His hands come up slow. Palms out. The knife is still in his right one; he realizes it halfway through the motion and makes a small, stupid production of setting it on the edge of the sink. Slowly. Very slowly. Like he’s at a traffic stop.
“Listen, man. Listen... I’m just—”
Raffaele shoots him.
I turn my face away a fraction of a second too late.
The sound in the bathroom is worse than any sound I have ever heard anywhere else. It bounces off the tile. It bounces off the tub. It’s still bouncing after the man has already gone down, and I realize some of it is in my head, and some of it is in my ears, and I don’t know which part is which.
When I open my eyes, there’s a man on my bathroom floor.
Blood on my tile. Not pooling yet, but starting—a creeping edge of it moving toward the grout line. My bathmat is going to be ruined. That’s the thought my brain offers me. My bathmat is going to be ruined. I know I’m in shock, because that is a shock thought, and knowing it doesn’t help.
Raffaele lowers the gun.
He looks at me.
There’s blood on him too. He hasn’t bothered to wipe any of it.
“You-you killed him,” I hear myself say.
“He was dead the second he touched you.”
My knees want to give. I lock them.
“Bea.”
I don’t answer.
“Look at me.”
I do.
“You should never have had to explain yourself to a man like that,” he says.
“Not tonight. Not ever. You don’t owe them a single word.
When one of them asks you what you are to me—if any of them ever asks you that again—you tell them you’re with Raffaele D’Amico.
Full stop. You don’t qualify it. You don’t soften it. ”
“I don’t—”
“They’ll know soon enough. I’ll make sure of it. But until they do, that’s your answer. You are mine. That’s what they hear. That’s all they hear.”
He crouches next to the body.
He goes through the man’s pockets without ceremony. Phone. Wallet. A second piece tucked in a belt holster he checked for on the way down. All three go into his own jacket. He takes the knife off the sink too, folds it closed, adds it to the collection.
He’s looking at the man’s face now.
“This kind,” he says. “This is what you send when you’ve decided you don’t need the body back. This is a guy who handles the jobs the ones with names don’t touch. His boss knows that. Sent him anyway.”
He pulls out his phone, types something short with his thumb, sends it. Pockets it again.
“Someone will be here in an hour. Don’t worry about the floor. Don’t touch him. Don’t touch anything of his. I’ll have the towel and the mat and the shower curtain replaced in the morning. You won’t have to look at any of it ever again.”
I’m still clutching the towel. The water is still running behind me. Steam is rolling into the little room.
Raffaele sets the gun on the edge of the sink.
Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing.”
“Washing the blood off.”
“Raffaele—”
“Unless you’d prefer I stay like this.”
The shirt comes off and drops onto the tile, and under it is everything I’ve been pretending I didn’t spend two nights memorizing.
He unbuckles the belt.
I don’t stop him.
The pants come off. The rest comes off. He steps over the body like it’s a piece of furniture in his way, and he reaches past me to pull back the shower curtain. Steam pours out.
He steps under the water. Pink rinsing off his chest. Pink running down his arm and off his fingers. Pink at the drain at his feet.
He turns and holds out his hand.
“Come here.”