Chapter Four
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
The AUSA across the table has been sliding photographs at me for the last two hours, and I've named what I can name.
A signet ring on a finger that's no longer attached to anything.
A wristwatch I gave one of my father's lieutenants for his fortieth birthday last March, the one with the engraving on the back that I told the jeweler to make in his wife's handwriting.
A tattoo I've seen across someone's shoulder blade in the steam room at the club.
By the fourth box of photographs the AUSA has stopped asking me to identify by person and started asking me to identify by thing.
It's an improvement, in a way.
Things at least don't have widows and grandchildren and Sunday dinners I'm now going to have to attend without them.
But it's over finally.
I sign the document and shake the AUSA's hand. I walk out into the afternoon, and as the warehouse door swings shut behind me, my body realizes something my brain hasn't gotten around to admitting yet.
I'm not human anymore.
Not by choice.
But that's just how this fucked-up world works, and so I just get rid of the thought and focus on what's in front of me.
A car with federal plates.
A Crown Victoria, actually, which is the kind of car a man like me wouldn't even let one of my drivers be seen in.
Is this some kind of joke?
A Crown Victoria?
It's a thought that invites incredulity and humorless smiles, but it's also a safe thought so I keep thinking it while I get behind the wheel and start driving.
Anything to keep my brain thinking about something other than the photographs.
And I only stop driving when I find what I didn't realize I was looking for.
A cemetery, just past the edge of the city, off some county road I don't remember turning onto.
Italian-coded, by the look of it. Having 'Buon riposo, Madre amata, Riposa in pace' on the gates also gives it away.
It's the kind of place a person could come to read a book or eat a sandwich on a bench if a person could forget what the stones underneath are.
The grass is freshly cut, and someone's left a candle in a red-glass holder on a grave near the gate, the wick burned all the way down to the wax. Whoever lit it lit it days ago and hasn't been back. A few rows over, someone else has left wilted carnations. Then nothing.
Cemeteries in the afternoon are doing exactly what cemeteries do in the afternoon, which is nothing, and that's what I'm here for. Nothing.
I park. I walk in. I'm here because the dead don't ask questions and I don't have any answers ready in case anyone living tries.
There's a stone bench fifteen feet ahead, set off the path under a maple, and I'm three steps from it when I see her sitting on the matching one across from it.
Fuck.
She still hasn't looked up from the book she's reading even with my footsteps grinding against the path's gravel.
For a second I consider turning around. Walking back to the Crown Vic. Picking another cemetery, of which there are several within the metro area I've already memorized for exactly this reason.
So just do it, Sestini.
But against all logic, I remain there, and I have no fucking idea why that is. The part of my brain that I usually trust to answer that kind of question for me has gone very quiet.
I sit on the bench across from hers. I'm thinking I should at least look at the stones to figure out which dead person I'm pretending to visit, but I don't bother. I just look at her.
Short hair, a bob, tucked behind her left ear and not the right.
Sensible glasses, the kind a girl wears because she stopped pretending she could see without them.
A long skirt and a sweater that's been washed enough times to lose the memory of its original color.
The cover of the book is creased so many times the title has mostly gone, but I can still read the author's name.
V.C. Andrews.
That almost makes me question if she's real. Italian cemeteries, Tuesday afternoons, and a girl on a stone bench reading V.C. Andrews. If I were as superstitious as my deceased father, I'd be making the Sign of the Cross by now.
But since I'm not...
Who can you be, signorina, that you'd choose to spend your spare time in a cemetery?
She's not visiting anyone. That much is easy to tell since there are no flowers nearby, no candles, no anything except that book she's still reading.
"Why are you here?"
I'm not sure which of us is more surprised that I'm actually asking this, the words causing her to look up. Her eyes widen when she sees me...and then she swallows hard.
Ah, signorina.
It was only at that moment I realized a part of me was hoping she'd be different. That her reading V.C. Andrews would actually make her immune to my looks.
I know how arrogant this sounds even to my ears. But it is what it is. Because women who knew what I was, what I have done—I have seen how they didn't care at all because of how I fucking look.
And this girl...
I expected her to disappoint me even more. To stammer like all the others did, to release a laugh that's a little too loud, to shift in her seat restlessly because she hasn't yet decided whether to flirt with me or be afraid of me—
But instead she says, "Why do you ask?"
Interessante.
"I wanted to be alone."
"So do I."
"I was here first."
"I'm sorry. Is this private property now?"
I'm more amused than offended when she goes back to reading right after she speaks. She obviously thinks she's put me in place, but too bad for her, what she's accomplished is worse.
"Why not move to another area?"
Because now, I realize I was wrong about her.
"Good idea." She turns a page. Doesn't look up. "I hope you find somewhere suitable, sir."
Mannaggia.
You are making things so much worse, with how everything you say and do only makes me more interested than offended.
She clearly isn't afraid of me...even if I can tell by the pulse on her neck that she is subconsciously aware I'm not like other men. I can tell that she knows.
I'm dangerous.
But here she is still, reading and ignoring me as she pleases, not knowing that every second she lingers in my presence, she's just making it worse. For the both of us.
"What's your name?"
"Sara."
You are such a beautiful liar, signorina.
Foolish, too, but foolishly brave at least.
I can't even remember the last time anyone has lied to my face like this, and so her lie has me doing something I haven't done in who knows how long.
I actually find myself smiling, never mind if the muscles in my face need extra effort to negotiate the new posture.
"If you're Sara, then I'm the pharaoh."
The book goes down, and she looks at me with visible surprise. "You don't look the type to know..."
Her voice trails off awkwardly, and I keep smiling even as something inside of me grows cold.
"I don't have to believe in God to know the stories. And they're good stories. There's a thing or two to learn from all of them."
"Like what?"
"Like sometimes, a beautiful girl can be offered to a scary man like me."
She shakes her head.
"I'm really not scared of you."
She points up.
"Because of that. We're being broadcast live."
The direction of where she's pointing makes me stiffen and swear in my mind. I know what she's pointing at without looking up, just like I know that this girl...
She made me lower my guard, made me skip protocol, such as looking for security cameras on lampposts.
And that makes her as dangerous to me as I am to her.
I leave without looking back or a single word of explanation.
It costs me a lot to walk away.
But I do what I have to do. I can't afford getting traced and gunned down until I've avenged my father.