Chapter Nine
I LET THE PHONE RING twice before I pick it up. My guts are already telling me it's going to be bad, but just this once...I want to be wrong.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Sestini.”
But I'm not.
And the pause that follows...that only means it's worse than I can ever imagine.
“Mr. Pascual escaped.”
And I'm right. Again.
Juan Pascual. El Carnicero. The very reason I signed up for witness protection. He was supposed to stay behind bars because of my testimony, while I built the case against the rest of his lieutenants. But now that they've let him slip?
“How long ago since he's escaped?” It must've been recent, since no one's reporting it yet.
“Forty minutes.”
“And do you have any leads?”
Another pause.
“Zero then.”
“I'm sorry, sir.”
I look at the wall. Good quality, as it should be for the hotel's penthouse suite. But is it good enough for what I need?
Three floors above me, my wife is finishing whatever a bride finishes in the bridal suite of a hotel in Como, Italy, and on the other side of the Atlantic, Juan Pascual is loose.
“Mr. Sestini, I want to assure you—”
“There's nothing you can say that can change my mind, and you can tell that to your superior, too.”
Agent Dodd gulps audibly. “Sir—”
“I told you what I'd do, remember?”
Another gulp, which tells me he does remember. The bridge at the edge of town. Away from the crowd. Just before I signed up for witness protection. Pascual had just been nabbed because of the lead I personally fed them.
You lose him, this deal is over, and I'll do it my way.
“I'm sorry, Agent Dodd. Don't say I didn't warn you.”
I hang up.
And then I get moving.
I pull a drawer open, with its built-in industrial grinder, and drop my burner phone in it. One push of a button, and it's ground into dust. There's nothing of it left, just like there's no longer anything that binds me to the United States government.
From here on out, it's my way.
I walk back to the wall I was studying earlier. Should be good enough. Right? I just need something right now...just one.
PUNCH.
I pull my fist back. My knuckles are bloody, but the wall has it worse. It's actually not as tough as I thought it would be since I've now left an embedded imprint on its surface like I want it to bear my autograph for eternity.
Pain starts to register, and I welcome it.
Pain is a good reminder of why I need to do what I'm about to do, and a glance at my watch tells me I don't have much time left.
I feel sick to my stomach as I make the necessary calls.
Going alone to kill an entire warehouse of gang members is easier than this. Anything is easier than this.
Rollo knocks on the door. “Sir, there's someone—”
“Let her in.”
A pause.
“Let. Her. In.”
Rollo doesn't answer, but a moment later, a woman walks in, and she's exactly what I ordered. Beautiful and brash and bitchy. She's even snapping bubblegum as she looks at me from head to toe.
“Honey, if I knew you looked like this, I'd have given you a discount—”
“You have one job, and it doesn't include you talking.”
She makes a face. “Spoilsport.” She looks around. “Where do I set up?”
“In the bedroom.”
“Are you sure? In my experience, it's a lot more painful if we set up in the kitchen—”
“Don't make me repeat myself again.”
“Okay, okay, sheesh, you're touchy, aren't you? Do you need me to have my clothes on or off?”
“I need exactly what I paid for.”
“Naked then.”
She saunters away while I walk to the powder room and wash the blood off my hand in cold water. I watch the water run pink down the drain, but I avoid looking at the mirror. I have a feeling I'd start punching my own face again if I see my reflection.
My chest starts to tighten as I prepare myself.
I take off my jacket. My tie. The cufflinks come out of my cuffs and onto the marble counter, and the shirt comes off after them, and I do all of this in the methodical order of a man getting dressed, except in reverse, because there's no other way to do it that wouldn't undo me.
I look at my left hand.
The wedding band is still there. The metal hasn't had time to warm to my skin yet.
I take it off.
I set it on the bedside table where she'll see it. Where there's no way she won't see it. Because if she's going to see what I'm about to make her see, she's going to see all of it. The ring stays where I put it. The placing of it is the only honest thing in this room.
I start feeling sick again as I slip under the covers.
She rolls toward me immediately...but stops the moment she feels the cold of the barrel against her naked belly.
“Don't even think about it.”
She pouts. “You've already paid for it.”
I cock the gun.
“Jeez.” She flips onto her side. “You're so damn boring.”
“So boring.”
For her, obviously.
But for me, all of this just means the end of everything.
Five.
I remember seeing her for the first time, my Tuesday-afternoon-in-the-cemetery girl.
Stone bench under a maple, V.C. Andrews open in her lap, a sweater the color of a sweater that has been washed too many times.
I'm really not scared of you. And she'd pointed up at the CCTV camera I'd walked under without checking.
I had walked away. It had cost me. I had not been a man who could afford anything that might cost him, that day, but she had cost me anyway.
Four.
I remember the second time we met. Six months later, a hotel conference room in Chicago, Mr. Coates apologizing for being two minutes late.
Simons Holdings, LLC. My alias on the intake form.
Francine pawing at my arm under the table.
She'd been pawing at my arm for six months, for the cameras and the witnesses and the men who needed to believe in Nate Simons.
Juniper had walked in behind her boss with a notepad and a cardigan and the same sensible glasses, and her eyes had done the thing they had done to me at the cemetery, and I had looked away from her like she was nothing, because Francine was watching, and the rest of the room was watching, and Sara had been the lie I gave back to her in the parking garage after, when she chased me five flights down a stairwell I hadn't even told her existed.
Three.
I remember our first kiss. My name's Juniper, she'd said in the parking garage, with her shoe in her hand and her hair coming undone, and I had pretended not to know and she had not let me.
Are you trying to make me jealous? I had snarled at her in the elevator three minutes later, when she'd told me she'd find another guy by the end of the day, and her yes had been the last word she'd gotten to say before my mouth had been on hers and the rest of her sentence had died there.
I didn't want it to be this way, Juniper.
I had said it against her mouth. I had meant it. I had also not stopped.
Two.
I remember the way she started crying the moment she walked into the judge's chambers and saw her mother waiting.
Five secret months of rehab. Weaning Ronna off her alcohol and off her addiction to bad guys, every dollar and every favor and every quiet flight to the facility I'd hidden under five layers of paper companies—all of it worth it, just for the way Juniper's whole face broke open in that doorway.
Her mother stood up from the bench. Juniper stopped breathing.
And then she turned to me with a teary smile, her eyes saying it all.
I love you so so much.
Never thought that would be the last time she'd say it. With or without words.
One.
Footsteps.
Her footsteps, in the corridor outside the door. She's finally coming back from the bridal suite, where she and Odessa did whatever girls did in the hour after the wedding reception and before the wedding night.
“Show time, honey.”
The woman turns to face me again, but she doesn't make the same mistake again. She doesn't inch close, with the gun still between us.
The footsteps stop.
The door handle turns.
I fight the urge to turn around as I hear her open the door.
I hear her take one step in. Then nothing. Then her stumbling back. Footsteps. The click of the door.
My heart feels like it's turning into stone by the second.
She doesn't make a sound. Doesn't have to. Because the silence of my marriage falling apart is the loudest thing I'll ever hear.
And once I'm sure she's completely gone—
I don't waste time sitting up. “Get out.”
“Are you—”
“I said get out!”
“Asshole!”
She's not wrong about that. But I still want her out.
I wish I had the luxury of just punching the wall again and again and again.
But I don't.
Mi dispiace.
Mi dispiace, moglie mia.
Because it's at that moment I also realize.
Ti amo.
I have no choice.
I love her and that's why I had to do this.
IT'S RAINING.
I'm at the window of my apartment, and outside the window is the lake, and on the lake is the rain, and in my hand is a stack of paper I have been holding too long.
The papers are signed.
I signed them an hour ago. I signed them Nicolo Sestini on every line where it was required, and I signed them with a hand that did not shake, and I set the pen down, and I have been standing at this window since.
The rain is loud against the glass.
The papers are quiet in my hand.
Ti amo, Ti amo, Ti amo.
The phone rings.
I let it ring twice. Long enough to know who it is. Short enough that he doesn't have to wonder whether I knew.
“Sì.”
“Signore.” Rollo's voice is the voice he uses when he has bad news to deliver to a man he respects. “I—”
“There's no need to choose your words, Rollo. I have never had any delicate sensibilities you need to take care of.”
“Signore—”
“Will she be happy with him?”