15. Anthony
— ? —
Anthony
Now - After the Arrest
I told myself I wouldn’t come.
Two weeks now since the arrest, and I’ve kept my distance the way her lawyer asked me to, the way Euridice’s silence made very clear I should.
I lasted until the noon news showed the crowd outside Euridice’s building - rows deep with cameras on their shoulders, satellite vans blocking traffic, reporters shouting questions at anyone who walked in or out.
Then they cut to a shot of Alessia’s face pressed to an upstairs window, and something in my chest cracked wide open.
So now I’m standing on the sidewalk in the middle of it.
The crowd is worse than it looked on television. Bodies packed tight together, elbows and shoulders and the hard edges of cameras jabbing into my ribs. Everyone is shouting - questions, accusations, demands for statements - and the noise is so loud I can barely hear myself think.
Then the lobby doors open, and she walks out.
She’s wearing sunglasses and her chin is up, and she’s alone. No security, no friend beside her, nothing between her and the crowd except sheer force of will. She heads for a cab that can’t get within fifty feet of the curb, and the mass of people surges toward her like a wave.
Someone shoves a microphone into her mouth hard enough that her head snaps back.
I don’t think.
I shoulder through three photographers and I don’t hear what they call me. I get my body between her and the lenses and my hand on the back of her neck. Not her waist. Her nape, under her hair, the way I have moved this woman through every room she ever hated.
“Eyes on me,” I tell her. “Don’t look at them. Car. Now.”
She goes rigid under my hand.
“You don’t get to-”
“I know. Move anyway.”
I walk her through the crush with my coat up over her head and my palm on her neck, and she moves, and some animal part of me that has no business existing today files that away.
People are screaming both our names. Mr. Stallone! Mrs. Stallone! Is it true you turned your father-in-law in? Is it true you didn’t know? Is it true-
A camera clips my cheekbone, and I feel the skin split.
The pain is sharp and bright, but I don’t stop moving.
I put her in the passenger seat harder than I mean to, and shut the door, and then I have to walk the whole length of the hood with four men shouting into my face, which is the only reason none of them gets my fist through his lens.
The wanting to break something is old. It used to belong to her father.
Today it belongs to anybody who puts a microphone in my wife’s mouth.
I don’t look at her until we’re moving.
I press the back of my hand to my cheek, and it comes away red. The cut is small but deep, still bleeding sluggishly down toward my jaw. I can feel Alessia watching me, her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses, her whole body coiled tight against the passenger door like she’s ready to bolt.
“You don’t get to rescue me from the thing you did,” she says finally.
I don’t look at her. I keep my eyes on the road, on the traffic, on anything except her face.
“I’m not.” My hand is still unsteady on the wheel. “I’m getting you out of a crowd. That’s the whole of what you get from me today.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Driving you wherever you want to go.” I signal a lane change, merge smoothly, focus on the mechanical actions of driving like they can save me from this conversation. “Then I’ll get out of your way.”
She stares out the windshield. Her hands are fisted in her lap, knuckles white, and I can see her pulse hammering in her throat. I remember pressing my mouth to that exact spot, feeling her heartbeat against my lips, thinking I was the luckiest man alive.
I was a fool. I’ve always been a fool when it comes to her.
I want to say you’re still mine. I want to say it so badly that my teeth ache with it. Instead, I swallow it, and it sits in my throat the entire drive.
“My father says you came back for him,” she says, and her voice is flat, toneless. “He says I was the door.”
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. “Your father is right about how it started. He’s wrong about everything after.”
She laughs, and it’s an ugly sound - bitter and broken and nothing like the laugh I fell in love with. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to hear you explain the difference.”
“That’s okay.” I make myself say it, even though the words feel like glass in my throat. “I’ll wait.”
“You’ll be waiting forever.”
“Then I’ll wait forever.”
The car falls silent again. Traffic crawls through midtown, brake lights stretching ahead of us like a red river, and I can feel her presence beside me like a physical weight.
Every breath she takes, every shift of her body, every tiny movement registers in my peripheral vision.
I’m hyperaware of her in a way I’ve never been able to turn off, even when I wanted to, even when it would have been easier.
At a red light on Park, she opens her door without warning.
Horns blare around us. The cars behind us are too close - if anyone rear-ends me, she’ll be crushed by the door. I reach for her arm, but she’s already half out of the vehicle, one heel on the pavement.
“Alessia-”
“I’m going to the house tomorrow to get the rest of my things,” she says, not looking at me. Her voice is clipped, businesslike, like she’s talking to a stranger. “Don’t be there.”
“I won’t be.” I let go of her arm, even though every instinct is screaming at me to hold on. “Simon will let you in.”
She goes white.
I watch the color drain from her face, watch her hand freeze on the door frame, watch her whole body go still. For a second I don’t understand - and then I do, and it’s like the ground dropping out from under me.
“Simon knew?” she asks, and her voice is barely a whisper.
“Simon knew everything.”
She stares at me. The light turns green. Someone behind us leans on their horn, long and angry, but neither of us moves.
“Everything,” she repeats.
“He was there when I found out about my uncle. He was there when I decided to go after your father. He was there-” My voice breaks. “He was in the room when I asked the detective to pull the case. He knows all of it.”
Her face does something I can’t read. Then she slams the door so hard the window shudders, and she’s gone, disappearing into the crowd on the sidewalk, and I’m left sitting in traffic with my cheek bleeding and my heart in pieces and the green light turning yellow above me.