Chapter 23 #2
He ignored the question yet still answered it. “I didn’t realize Petrolino had a Christmas fetish. I have to admit, it makes him more interesting.”
Petrolino.
Right.
Of course this was mafia-adjacent, because my life had given up all pretense of normality weeks ago and was now committed to the bit.
“Well,” I said, keeping my expression as flat as possible, “Petrolino and I are no longer together, so you may want to update your information.”
His smile deepened rather than faltered. “Feisty too. I approve even more now.”
I stopped talking for a second, partly because he was clearly unhinged and partly because I was trying to decide whether yelling for help would make this worse or simply more public.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked at last.
“Yes. For starters, you can stop looking for exits. If I intended you harm, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in a room full of tired elves.”
It was fair, and I knew instinctively that he meant it.
“My name is Matteo Genovese.”
My breath caught. Pietro had mentioned him. Alessandro had too, and never in the tone people used for harmless men.
His mouth curved slightly. “Ah. I see you know who I am. I’m honored.”
I said nothing.
He leaned back in the chair as if we were discussing nothing more serious than the weather.
“Our Pietro was cheeky,” he said. “He really should have introduced us properly. The difficulty, you see, is that there are rules, and since you are apparently no longer with him, I wasn’t entirely sure how committed you might still be to our secrets. ”
That, at least, I could answer.
“Whether Pietro and I are together or not doesn’t change anything,” I said. “I’m a smart woman, and I know better than to talk about a world I have no part in. So you can leave in complete confidence, Mr. Genovese. I have nothing to tell.”
He watched me for a few seconds after that, long enough to make me wonder whether silence itself was one of his weapons. Then he gave a small nod, as if I had passed some private standard.
“Good,” he said. “I saw the video from the Albanian warehouse. You were brave. You didn’t bargain, didn’t beg, didn’t try to make yourself smaller. I liked that.”
The mention of the warehouse hit me like a blow I was not braced for.
My stomach turned so sharply I had to lock my knees under the table to keep the reaction from showing too clearly.
However brave I might have looked on the recording, whatever dignity I had scraped together in that place, the memory was lodged in me like a splinter under the skin.
“I’m not sure I care whether you liked it.” My voice came out cooler than I felt.
To my irritation, that seemed to amuse him.
“Good.”
I gave him a flat look. What could I even respond to that. What would I even want to reply to that.
“For all it’s worth, I think he made a mistake,” he added with a smirk that managed to look calculating.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Well, whether he did or not is irrelevant, because maybe,” I said, pushing my chair back, “he spared me one.”
Matteo watched me for one beat longer, then inclined his head.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I added, “I do, unfortunately, have a job to get back to.”
“Thrilling, I assume.”
“You have no idea.”
He smiled then, just enough to make me dislike how striking it was. “Go on, then, Edwina.”
I muttered something rude under my breath and left before he became any more conversational.
The rest of the day dragged far too slowly and with just enough irritation sprinkled through it to make time feel vindictive. By the time I finally peeled myself out of the elf costume and changed back into my own clothes, snow had started to fall again.
I pulled my scarf tighter, adjusted Sophie’s cane quote in my bag for what had to be the fiftieth time, and started the walk home telling myself, not for the first time, that I really needed to stop using alleys like some kind of Victorian heroine.
Which was perhaps why, when someone stepped out in front of me halfway down the narrow cut-through behind the pharmacy, my first reaction was less fear than pure, exhausted annoyance.
Then I recognized him.
Adam.
He looked worse. Not enough to satisfy me, unfortunately, but the cracks were showing. His coat was unbuttoned despite the cold, his hair damp with melting snow, his wild expression making it clear this was not a man interested in dignity.
“You,” he hissed, as if the word itself had been fermenting in his mouth for days.
I stopped walking. “This is becoming repetitive.”
His laugh was sharp and ugly. “You destroyed my life.”
“I’m pretty sure corruption and malpractice did that.”
He took a step closer. “You’re fucking a killer, but you broke up with me over a few slaps.” His face twisted. “Do you hear how insane that sounds? Do you hear the double standard?”
For one very quiet second, the whole alley seemed to go still around us.
Then I said, “The fact that you think that sentence helps your argument is honestly remarkable.”
Something in his face snapped. He moved toward me fast enough that I barely had time to tense.
He never reached me.
Matteo appeared lazily from the mouth of the alley and struck him once, so hard that Adam hit the ground before my brain fully caught up.
I stared.
Matteo adjusted his gloves as if knocking men unconscious between Christmas displays and trash bins was a normal Tuesday hobby.
Then he looked down at Adam, who was groaning faintly at his feet, and sighed.
“Can I have him?” he asked, glancing up at me. “I promised Petrolino not to touch him unless you agreed. Please. I haven’t played in a while.”
I looked at Adam. Then at Matteo. Then back at Adam.
“He’s no concern of mine,” I said. “Do what you want.”
Matteo’s smile deepened, slow and genuinely delighted.
“Bloodthirsty,” he murmured. “You are definitely more fitting than I first thought.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?” He tilted his head, still pleased. “A shame. I was beginning to enjoy the idea.”
Adam made a weak, miserable sound in the slush. Matteo glanced down at him in boredom.
“You see?” he said mildly. “Even unconscious he’s irritating.”
I should probably have been more alarmed. Instead I looked at Adam lying there in the half-frozen filth and thought, with a clarity that felt peaceful, that whatever happened to him next did not belong to me.
Matteo seemed to read that too.
“You’ve accepted his fate.”
I shrugged, then narrowed my eyes. “I do, but…wait. Were you following me?”
He placed a hand against his chest with elegant offense. “Consider me your fairy godmother.”
I stared at him. “A fairy godmother who wants to kill a man for fun?”
“Please,” he said. “Don’t insult me. I’m not going to kill him for fun.” He looked down at Adam with renewed consideration. “I’m going to torture him for fun, then kill him.”
Once again I looked at Adam sprawled in the slush and waited for guilt to show up. Or horror. For some reflexive need to intervene, to be the better person, to insist that no one deserved whatever Matteo Genovese was casually promising.
Nothing came.
“Fine,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”
Matteo’s smile broadened, slow and almost affectionate. “I will. And for all it’s worth, I think you’ll make a magnificent mafia queen.”
I snorted, shook my head, and walked away, leaving him there to do whatever he had planned.
The strange thing was that as I kept going, snow catching in my hair and boots crunching over the frozen pavement, guilt never arrived.
Adam’s choices had led him here. His cruelty, his entitlement, his certainty that I would always remain someone he could frighten, use and then shame for objecting to it, had finally brought him to a world more ruthless than he was.
And maybe that should have unsettled me, but all I felt was a slow, quiet awareness that something in me had changed too completely now to ever fit back inside the woman I used to be.
I didn’t know whether that coldness had always lived deep in my nature, waiting for the right pressure to crack it open, or whether this was simply what remained after pain, love, fear, and truth had burned away everything weaker. Maybe it didn’t matter.
What did was that I no longer mistook mercy for obligation, and no longer confused forgiveness with moral superiority.
By the time I reached the end of the street, with the city glowing dimly gold through the falling snow, I understood something that felt dangerous.
I had spent so much of my life being told to stay small, stay good, stay gentle enough to be loved.
But gentleness never saved me.
And perhaps whatever I was becoming now was not broken or cruel or wrong.
Perhaps it was simply powerful.
For the first time, the thought did not frighten me.
It felt like a crown.