6. Tristan
TRISTAN
It’s been three days since I’ve seen her, and my knuckles still look like raw meat.
The skin across the first two on my right hand is split and swollen, bruised deep purple. The left isn’t much better. It doesn’t matter how carefully I washed away the blood. The evidence is still there.
The guy deserved it. He owed money he didn’t have and ran his mouth when he shouldn’t have. What I did to his face was business. The kind I don’t think about afterward.
That’s not the issue. The issue is letting Stella see my hands like this, which I cannot do.
Hence, the three days since I said goodbye to her in that tiny apartment.
Three days that in some ways feel like months and in other ways only minutes.
I keep expecting to smell her on me, keep catching hints of the taste of her at the corners of my mouth.
My imagination, no doubt, but imagination is a powerful thing.
The sound of buzzing makes me lunge for my phone, sitting on my nightstand. Normally, I would know exactly what to expect. Who to expect. There’s nothing normal about my life lately.
Stella: Okay but what’s your opinion on turtles?
It’s been this way for days now. We have an ongoing conversation; dozens of texts exchanged late into the night and first thing in the morning.
She’s doing her damnedest to get to know me better, and I’m trying like hell to keep her education safe.
Limited. No matter how much I find myself wanting to share, wishing for maybe the first time in my life that I could be normal.
Me: Not a fan.
Stella: Thank you! Everyone acts like I’m crazy!
Now she knows I don’t like turtles. She also knows that for some inexplicable reason, I don’t care for penne.
I don’t know why. There’s something about the shape I don’t like.
I enjoy lemon on my seafood but can’t stand lemon-flavored pastries or pie.
The very small, inconsequential pieces of a person’s life.
She’s been gathering them, probably keeping a list of my likes and dislikes.
I lower myself to the edge of my bed, blinking against the morning sunshine that insists on flooding every corner of the room.
My house is small, but I don’t need much space, situated on the east corner of Dorian’s property.
It’s mostly empty since I don’t own much and have never seen the point in hoarding possessions the way some people do.
I barely use the kitchen since Ms. Beaumont provides most of my meals, the ones Quinn doesn’t cook herself.
The sightlines are good. I can see the front gate from the kitchen window and have a clear view of the back access road from where I’m currently seated, directly across from the window.
For the first time since I moved in—maybe for the first time ever—my home feels empty, rather than just being empty. For the first time, I wish there was someone else here to fill it with light and life.
Stella: Also, when am I seeing you again?
Stella: Not to be weird about it.
Stella: Okay, it’s a little weird.
She texts the way she talks: fast, no filter, jumping between subjects.
Yesterday, she sent a picture of the painting she’d started working on before I left her apartment.
It was finished, or close to it, and she wanted to show off.
The day before, she sent me a picture of Socks chewing a lettuce leaf and looking deeply pleased with himself.
And what was I doing when that text came through? Something that left me needing to wipe the blood off my hands before I pulled my phone from my pocket. Let’s put it that way.
When she isn’t asking pointless questions, she’s asking very pointed ones. What part of the city do you live in? How long have you worked in security? Do you ever get days off?
She’s putting pieces together. The picture she’s building has gaps in it, though, and she’ll notice eventually.
I’ve been dodging, giving her just enough to keep her satisfied without actually telling her anything.
It’s a skill I’m good at. Misdirection. Giving people the answer they want instead of the one that’s true. I’ve done it my whole career.
And until now, it’s never bothered me.
I put the phone down. Pick it up. Put it down again. Finally, I settle on a reply.
Me: Soon.
She deserves more than one word, but giving her more than a single word means I would have to explain why I haven’t come over. The explanation is sitting on the ends of my fists in split skin and purple bruises.
Stella: You better mean that, Gray!
Stella: Socks is starting to forget what you look like.
Stella: He asked me who that large man was the other day. Very sad.
I almost smile until I look at my hands, and the impulse dissolves.
I know what I am. Who I am. I also know I held her face in my hands three days ago before using my hands for other things that made her fall to pieces. I also know I would like very much to make her do that again.
But what I don’t know is whether she would want me to touch her if she knew where the damage to my hands came from.
I pocket the phone before heading across the property to the main house.
It’s a clear morning, cool, the gravel crunching under my shoes.
Two of the guys stand by the garage, smoking, and they nod when I pass.
I nod back. This is how it works. Everybody knows their place; everybody does their job.
I’ve been part of this machine for ten years, working my way up, and I’m good at it.
I understand it. It makes sense in a way the rest of the world doesn’t.
Stella doesn’t make sense. That’s the problem. She showed up, and now there’s a part of my day that doesn’t fit inside the machine, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Dorian’s study is at the rear of the house, past the entryway which Quinn has filled with plants that are somehow still alive even though she forgets to water them.
I’m sure Ms. Beaumont has something to do with that.
I hear Lillie upstairs singing something off-key, the way she does every morning.
I’ve known the kid since she was a baby and would kill for her without thinking about it.
I’d kill for Quinn, too, though she would probably prefer I didn’t phrase it that way.
Dorian is behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, reading something on his laptop. He doesn’t look up when I enter. “You’re late,” he announces.
“I’m not late.” I check the time on my phone. “It’s barely past ten.”
“Which is late for you.” He glances at my hands, taking in the damage. “Sit. Let’s catch up.”
We go through what’s coming up this week.
There’s a shipment arriving Thursday, a meeting with the Castellanos that needs handling in the aftermath of their ill-advised kidnapping of Quinn and Lillie.
A property dispute in the south end has been escalating.
I take notes on my phone the way I always do, though I keep them vague—reminders that will serve as a roadmap.
We’re wrapping up when my phone buzzes with a new text. I ignore it, continuing to pull together a list of tasks for the week. It buzzes again, then again.
I glance up from the screen to find Dorian staring at me, wearing a frown. “You’re popular today. Anything I need to know about?”
“No, nothing,” I tell him, keeping my tone neutral.
“What’s her name?”
Son of a bitch. “Who?”
Something behind his eyes goes hard. “Don’t do that.”
This is pathetic. Hiding the truth, denying what’s so obvious.
“Stella,” I admit, sitting back in my chair with a defeated sigh.
He waits—something he’s good at, something he’s perfected over the years he’s run his family.
Patience is a virtue, especially for men in his position.
He’ll sit in silence until you fill it, and then he’ll use what you said.
“I met her outside a grocery store off Ninth,” I explain with a shrug. “Some guy was following her. I dealt with it. She asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend until he ran off.”
“And?”
“And... that wasn’t the end of it.”
He nods slowly. “Does she know what you do?” He has a talent for driving to the heart of a matter without seeming to make much of an effort.
“She thinks I’m in personal security.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“It’s not exactly a lie.”
“It’s not exactly the truth, either.” He says it flat, no judgment. I could push back on judgment, and he probably knows that, so he gives me nothing to push back against instead. “How much does she actually know about you?”
From anyone else, the question would make me bristle at best. But this is Dorian, someone I’ve worked with for years. We’re close enough to practically read each other’s thoughts in tight situations.
This is also a man who knows what it means to become involved with a woman before giving her the full picture of his life. That’s where his interest comes from. It’s what makes it possible for me to sit through his questions with a straight face.
“She knows my name and my phone number,” I tell him. “She knows I don’t do social media. That’s about it.”
“So this is just a casual fling.”
It doesn’t come off as a question, and it’s not something I can easily answer in the affirmative. I wish I could. I wish things were neat and orderly, the way my life was before I took a shortcut through that alley, and a girl with waist-length red hair ran into me like she was fired from a cannon.
I also wish neat and orderly looked as attractive as it used to. It doesn’t anymore. It’s like someone flipped a light switch on a room that had been pitch black for a very long time. I can’t bring myself to turn the light off again.
When I don’t say anything, he nods as if he knew the answer in advance.
“The longer you wait, the worse it gets,” he muses, fingers tented under his chin.
“Every day she doesn’t know is another day you’re building something on a lie.
When the lie breaks, she’s not just losing you.
She’s losing the version of you she thought was real. That’s what will hurt her.”
After a silent moment, he adds, “She deserves to decide for herself with real information. Not the cleaned-up version you’ve been feeding her.”
“What if she can’t handle it?”
“Then she can’t handle it, and you deal with it, because that’s what you do.” He holds my gaze, eyes narrowing. “But you don’t get to make that choice for her. That’s not protection. It’s cowardice. You’re a lot of things, but I’ve never known you to be a coward.”
My phone buzzes again.
Stella: I was trying to paint Socks today. He literally turned his back on me. Art critics, man.
Stella: When are you coming over?
Stella: I miss your face and I’m not even sorry about it.
I stare at the messages for a long time before looking up from the screen. He seems sympathetic. That might be what bothers me most. His sympathy. “Go,” he murmurs, turning his attention back to the laptop. “We’re finished here for now. Take care of business.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. I remind myself of it through every minute of the drive to Stella’s neighborhood, which feels like the longest and shortest fifteen minutes of my life. I need to give her the full picture. She deserves that much.
It doesn’t make it any easier to climb the stairs up to the second floor.
The hallway smells like someone cooked garlic last night and burned it slightly.
I take the stairs two at a time, hands trembling.
That never happens. I’ve done things with these hands I’ll answer for someday, but they have never once trembled.
Yet here I am, trembling outside a door with a lock I could break with my shoulder, because the girl on the other side of it is the only good thing I’ve touched in years, and I’m about to give her every reason to tell me to leave.
I knock. It rings out much too loud. There are footsteps, then the turning of one lock, then another.
The door opens, and there she is. There’s paint on her forearm and her hair is in one of its messy buns.
Over her shoulder, I have a clear view of Socks on his cushion, gazing at me like a disapproving chaperone.
Her face glows. “There you are!” she chirps, like I’m something she misplaced for a short while and found under the sofa.
“I need to tell you something.”
The smile fades. “Okay,” she says slowly. “Do you want to come in?”
I do, but I can’t. Not until I get this out.
“I don’t work in personal security.” I hold up my hands, showing her the knuckles, the bruises.
“I work for a man named Dorian Moretti. He runs one of the most powerful organized crime families on the coast. I’m his enforcer.
When someone needs to be threatened or otherwise convinced to cooperate, I’m the one who does it.
This is why I haven’t come to see you, because I didn’t want you to see these.
You deserve to know all of it, though, before we go any further. ”
The hallway is dead quiet. She looks at my hands, studying the bruises, before her gaze moves to my face.
All I can do is wait for her to deliver judgment.