Chapter 16 #2
I look at her eyes. Blue fading to green around the edges, ringed red from crying and whatever was in her system burning off. I have built my whole life around watching exits and watching threats, and for some reason I can't stop looking at hers. I don't know what to do with that.
"They didn't hurt you," I tell her. "Not the way you're afraid of. From what I could see when I came in, they didn't get that far. You understand what I'm telling you?"
Her thumb moves over a split in my knuckle, slow, tracing the ridge of it. As if she's trying to memorize every scar.
"I don't remember," she says. "I remember a slap." Her voice is flat, stripped clean of panic. Like she's repeating a fact she's already exhausted. I hate it because this is not Amanda. "And I remember his mouth. The rest is a blur of lights. Then your face."
I keep my expression neutral. The anger that flares when she says it is sharp and immediate, but it isn't for her to carry. I force it down and focus on her instead. But jaw tightens anyway. I take a slow breath and keep my hand still beneath hers.
"Okay," I say. "That's okay. You don't have to remember more than that."
"You sound very calm for a man with another man's blood on his hands."
"I'm calm."
"You're not." Her thumb stills on my knuckle. She's looking at me now the way she looked at the blood, reading past the surface to the thing underneath. "Your jaw clenches so hard a muscle jumps when you're holding something in."
I let out a quiet breath.
The one woman in the world who actually notices these things had to be Amanda.
"You see a lot," I say.
"It's the only useful thing I do." She says it lightly, but for once she doesn't reach for a joke to cover it.
"Listen to me." I turn my hand beneath hers, slow enough that she can pull away if she wants to.
She doesn't.
Her palm settles into mine. Her fingers are cold. They're trembling, not from fear alone but from exhaustion, the strain finally catching up with her.
"The man I killed was the son of a very powerful man. Aldo Basile was Don Enzo Basile's youngest son."
She blinks slowly.
"He's Sicilian. Mafia. That man is going to come looking. Not for you. For me. But you were in that room. Until this is handled, you're a ghost. You don't post. You don't call. You don't exist anywhere anyone can be found."
"For how long?"
"I don't know yet."
She takes that news without arguing. The reality of it passes across her face in quiet stages, each one sinking a little deeper than the last.
Everything waiting for her outside these walls. Everything she has to walk away from for now.
"Valentino." Her fingers tighten around mine. "Do I need to know anything else?"
"Not tonight." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "Tonight you sleep. That's the only job you've got."
She doesn't let go of my hand.
And I don't make her.
Amanda
"Mafia," I say. "You think I don't know what your family is?
" The words don't come out with quite the bite I'm aiming for, but they're close enough.
"You think Vittoria and I spent years as best friends, and she never once mentioned how quiet everyone got when a phone rang?
Or why she needed Elio to guard her wherever we went? "
A muscle jumps in his jaw.
There it is.
His tell.
The man locks everything down so tight most people would never notice it.
"She never said the word," I admit. "Not once. She's too smart for that. But she talked about it. Over years. In pieces." I shift against the pillow. "The way you talk about something you love and are afraid of at the same time."
I swallow.
"Riccardo dying. Bruno in that chair. Pietro running things then. The men who always seemed to know where everyone was supposed to be. You don't have to say mafia for me to know I'm sitting in a safe house because someone out there wants me dead."
He doesn't deny it. "She kept you out of it on purpose," he says finally, full of caution. Almost as if he's afraid I'll break.
"I know." I let my head fall back against the pillow.
Holding it up is starting to feel like more trouble than it's worth.
"I kept myself out of it on purpose. That was the deal.
She got one friend who treated her like a person instead of a princess, and I got to love her without having to understand what any of it really meant.
" A humorless laugh slips out. "Turns out ignorance only works until the bullets start flying. "
He's still watching me. He hasn't really stopped since I woke up.
"You keep doing that," I say.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like you're trying to solve me."
"Not you. The night." He says it flat, without apology, and the corner of his mouth twitches. "You weren't supposed to be in that room. None of it adds up the way it should."
"Romantic." I almost laugh. "You really know how to make a girl feel special, Conti. You're a math problem. Put that on a card."
He doesn't laugh.
I close my eyes because looking at him is taking more energy than I have.
"When I'm not drugged," I say, and I'm pleased with how steady my voice sounds, "we're going to have a real conversation.
You and me. About all of it. What this means for me.
What happens to my life. Why a man I've known since I was a teenager flew to Milan and ended up carrying me out of a palazzo. "
I open my eyes and hold his gaze.
"Not the version where you protect me from the truth. Not the version where you decide what I can handle. The real one."
"Okay," he says.
"Okay," I repeat, mostly to make sure it's real.