Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Valentino
The sound stops me halfway down the corridor.
A woman, muffled. Like someone pressed a hand over her mouth, but not tight enough. Then men laughing.
My feet move before my brain catches up.
The door is heavy old wood. I turn the handle slowly. Tell myself I don't know what's behind it. That's the lie I keep so I don't lose my mind in the half-second before I'm proven right.
I push it open and step halfway in.
Three men. A balcony beyond the glass doors, and on the floor between them—
Amanda.
I text Elio without looking down. Back. Car. Now. The phone goes back into my pocket. I reach under my jacket and close my hand around the gun.
Her dress is rucked up wrong. Her head lolls, loose. One of them crouches over her with a phone in his hand. Another wipes his mouth with the back of his fist like he just finished a meal.
Something cracks open in my chest.
No plan. No calculation of angles and exits. Nothing in my head. Just white, just static, the boy I was finally breaking loose.
Aldo turns. He's faster than he looks. His hand goes to his waist. There's a flash of metal, small and black. He lifts it.
I shoot him first.
The shot fills the room. He folds at the middle and goes down hard, gun skittering away under a velvet chair.
The other two throw their hands up so fast it would be funny on any other night. Palms out. Eyes wide. As if to say we were just watching.
As if watching makes them anything other than what they are.
I raise my gun, and the first one's mouth falls open to bargain. Wrong move. I was never going to listen. The second lunges for a door he'll never reach. Two shots. Clean. I've killed for the family, for money, because I wanted to. Never for a person. It should scare me, but it doesn’t.
Aldo's not dead. He's pulling himself across the floor toward the chair and the gun underneath, leaving a dark trail behind him, breathing in wet little hitches. He gets a hand on the chair leg.
I cross the room, putting my gun away. A bullet would be too clean. Too painless. He doesn’t deserve that. I grab his collar and haul him up. The sound he makes is high, surprised, a boy who's never had to take a hit in his life.
"You put your hands on her," I say.
Then I hit him. The first breaks a bone in his face. The second is worse, and after that I stop counting. My knuckles split open against his teeth.
His hands come up, weak, batting at my arms like he thinks he can push me away.
When it's over, he's not moving, and I'm breathing hard and heavy. Not from exertion. From fury and rage. For a second, I hover over what’s left of him, taking in the destruction.
Amanda makes a small sound from across the room, and I forget my anger, remembering why I came in here.
I'm on my knees beside her before I have time to think about it. Her eyes are open, rolling like she can't get them to focus on anything. Her pupils are blown out black, almost no color left, swallowing the blue-green whole.
Drugged. I’m not surprised. She didn’t stumble in here by accident or of her own accord. She was carried. It only makes sense that she was drugged.
"Amanda." I say it quietly. Like she might break. "Amanda. It's me. It's Valentino."
Her gaze drags toward my voice and snags on my face. Her cracked lips move, and no sound comes out, but I read it anyway.
You.
"Yeah," I say. "Me."
I shrug out of my jacket. My hands shake. I fumble the buttons for a half-second. I've never had hands that shook.
I get it open. I wrap it around her shoulders. She's cold. I pull it tight, keeping my hands there for another second. I smell myself on her, covering what they left, and I'm glad of it, even if I shouldn't be glad of anything right now.
"I've got you," I tell her. "You hear me? I've got you. Nobody's touching you again."