Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
ANNA
Es demasiado… estoy perdiendo la cabeza.
This is too much… I'm losing my mind.
I struggled with my new reality. Eight days in, and I was a glorified mess. My plans to end him had one gaping hole after another. Useless as a child’s drawing of a floor plan.
My research into him had been fruitless, so I was counting on fate intervening again. One last time.
I wasn’t an assassin. Didn’t want to be one either.
I just wanted three fucking asesinos dead.
One down. Two more to go. But I’d be happy with just another one.
For an amateur, it wasn’t bad. Then I’d rest. Unless I figured out who the third man was who’d been in Papá’s office on that all-defining day.
My plan had been simple. Poison him and get back home.
I had Mamá and Mara to take care of. But the longer I stayed, the more I felt the roles switching.
I was his prey. There was a shift happening, and I couldn’t control it.
The urge I had buried was resurfacing. Why was Papá killed?
You’re a fucking thief. I quelled that thought immediately.
I untucked the sheets of the guest bedroom in his killer’s home while my mind piled with one question after another.
He was just an accountant. Why would the Mafia want him dead?
I’d known I would never have closure. Never find out what had happened or why.
I wasn’t even entirely sure if I wanted answers.
But Niccolò Martello was stirring poison in my mind, bringing up questions, and instead of avoiding them, I wanted answers.
Somehow, it felt as if he knew everything.
Sesame.
That would be the death of me.
Why would he tell me that? Was it a trick? Or maybe he wasn’t allergic to sesame. Maybe it was a test?
My head throbbed with the million questions rioting inside it. The more I thought about them, the more agitated I became. Behind it all, another fear had made an ugly appearance.
Am I turning into Mamá?
Magda was in the other room giving instructions to Isidora on how to deep clean the mattresses as if she were making a live YouTube video of a complicated manual for dummies.
Nothing brought her down. Not even the beginning of a flu she clearly carried.
She was both calm and stressed. Something that could apply to Magda alone.
El gilipollas had taken off four days ago, and no one knew where he’d gone. Maybe Magda did, but she wasn’t sharing.
She emerged at the door, as if I’d summoned her.
Her keen gaze took me in as I worked the mattress on my hands and knees, sprinkling baking soda onto it.
I dusted my hands on my jeans and slipped my headphones off.
Magda nodded approvingly. “Don’t forget to vacuum underneath the bed after you’re done. ”
As if I would dare to forget.
She turned to leave, and I blurted one of the questions in my head.
“When will Signor Martello be back?” Also, where is he? Why did he leave? How allergic is he to sesame? Is he even allergic to sesame? Did you take my underwear?
She let out a long-suffering sigh. Her gaze was almost maternal. “Allora, I like you, Anna. You’re hardworking and easy to work with. But if you have questions about Signor Martello, you should ask him yourself. Unless you don’t want to?”
I popped my mouth open to answer, then closed it again. I didn’t like the shrewd expression on her face. Realization dawned. My face turned the color of bougainvillea.
“I’m not thinking of him like that,” I exclaimed.
“Then why do you ask me these questions every day?”
Because I want him dead! I have a ninety-day visa. A mother whom I want to see. Instead, I looked away before answering, “I was just curious.”
“Don’t be.”
I bit my frustration, blinking back tears that were building up to a catastrophic release. I was losing my mind. Inhale. Hold it in. Release.
When I turned back, Magda was gone, and Isidora had taken her place, a devilish grin on her face.
“You’ve got the hots for our boss.”
“Ew… no!”
“Come on.” She strolled into the room, looking over her shoulder and pretending to fluff the pillow in her hand. “If you don’t think he’s hot, then you’re playing for the other team.”
Eyes that turn the shade of cold metal or the shallow depth of the Mediterranean, depending on his mood.
I got off the mattress and picked up the linen on the floor. While walking past her to the hallway, I told her casually, “I haven’t noticed his looks.”
“Right.” She scoffed. “Like you didn’t notice the Statue of Liberty yesterday.”
I dropped the sheets into the linen basket in the hallway and walked back. We’d gone sightseeing the day before. Instead of killing the man or looking after Mamá, that’s what I’d done on a Sunday.
“We were sightseeing, and we went looking for it.” I stopped in confusion. “Why are we even comparing him to a statue?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because they are both majestic, cold, and attract all the attention.”
I shook my head. “You’re weird.”
“Besides, you’re single. You’re always,” she held up her hands and air-quoted, “sightseeing.”
“Whatever. He just gives me the creeps.”
“What’s creepy about him?” She gave me a sly grin. “Is it the muscled torso he’s obviously hiding behind all that clothing?”
“Just the way he watches me.” All the time.
Isidora threw the pillow on the floor. “He watches you? He looks at me like I’m a piece of his furniture. No…” she corrected herself. “More like a cobweb Magda missed.”
All my doubts sent a shiver down my spine.
I felt like he was watching me. The static in my hair, the heat on my skin…
I wasn’t always brave enough to look. But sometimes when I did, I found his stare on me.
From across the room, standing on top of the staircase.
One time, I’d rushed across the room to stop the music, and when I’d turned, he’d been standing in the doorway.
A flicker of emotion had passed through his eyes.
Almost as if he understood why I couldn’t bear to hear it.
Other times when I looked, there was no one around.
“I don’t mean watching me. I just feel like…” He knows me. Better than I do myself. “He sees everything.”
She looked at me with pity in her eyes. “You know what I think?”
I’m being paranoid? Turning into my mother?
“You need to get laid.”
I didn’t see that coming. In spite of myself, a smile tugged at my lips.
She walked back to the next room. The girl might be right.
I do need to get laid. I missed sex. It wasn’t that I’d had a lot of it in my life, but Dios mío, I could enjoy it when I did.
When all the things I loved had been yanked away from me…
music, friends, Joel, although he took himself out of my life…
the only thing left behind was sex. The release of dopamine the only way to fill the hollowness in my chest, even though afterward, it became worse.
The dark pit, deeper. Bottomless. The loneliness never-ending.
Maybe that was why I thought so much about him.
Niccolò Martello. If he’d not been a fucking murderer…
if he’d not taken Papá away from me… Isidora yelled that she was going downstairs, and I answered something back automatically.
I imagined I would have found him hot. What was there not to like?
The tattoo that teased below the cuff of his shirt.
The poker face that left a girl wondering if he sustained it when he fucked.
“Damn it, that’s enough!”
Exasperated with myself, I put on my headphones and plugged in the vacuum with enough force to rattle the outlet.
I just wanted to move on. I couldn’t because there was nothing left.
Papá was gone, and with him, Mamá. She was alive physically.
Sometimes I watched her breathe to see if her chest moved up and down.
But she wasn’t the Mamá I knew anymore. And Mara was…
just Mara. Ten years younger and na?ve. She didn’t remember much, and her life, compared to mine, was a path of pink roses.
She had her education, her friends, her life.
She didn’t understand what it had been like to see Papá bleed out.
To have a boyfriend disappear from your life when you were at your weakest. She didn’t have to make life-altering decisions at eighteen.
Work with the responsibility of three mouths to feed.
I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t. I was the one who had shielded the truth from her.
But sometimes, despite myself, I resented her.
I wanted to be carefree like her. Have someone who understood me, like the boy she was dating.
I was just me. Alone. Lost. Stuck. Angrily, I brushed my face. Why is it fucking wet?
I slid under the bed, vacuum tube in hand. Instantly, I was reminded of how I had crouched under his desk. Touching my hair, I tried to recall how it had felt. It had almost felt like… I crawled out from under the bed and my ass hit something hard.
“?Qué demonios?”
I whipped back and Papá’s killer stared down at me. I didn’t hesitate. I clutched the tube and took a full swing. The sharp crack resounded as it slammed into his forehead.
A strangled gasp escaped me. He didn’t utter a single sound. He stood as solid as a brick, his forehead coloring red the only evidence I’d whacked him. Then a thin drip of blood threaded down his forehead.
?Joder!
The tube crashed to the floor. My panicked gaze found his shoes. Crimson still gave me nightmares. If I had to witness it again, I’d lose my sanity.
My breathing heaved. Panic cartwheeled in my chest. He still hadn’t moved. I was done for.
“You scared me,” I choked out.
The silence was like a held breath. But he must have believed me because his dry tone wafted over my head after some time. “Not half as much as you do.” His feet moved away, and the door shut behind him.
“Eres un cabrón… y te odio por lo que hiciste.”
NICO
“Eres un cabrón… y te odio por lo que hiciste.”
I’d never heard more deserving words before.
“You’re a bastard... and I hate you for what you did.”
ANNA
July 21st
Hazlo mejor, Anna. Es un misterio. Un misterio que acabará enterrado con él.
Do better, Anna. He’s a mystery. A mystery that will be buried, along with him.