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Finally, she’s really considering the offer, thinking it over. It’s as though it pains her, jumping from one thought to the next, back and forth, her desires on either end of a scale that she just can’t level out. I hold my silence and let her come to the decision on her own. Even I can’t say which side of the deal she’ll land on.
“I’ve never seen anyone die before,” she finally admits, as if it’s a personal failure on her part. “It felt like it was happening all around me when I was growing up. Every couple years, there’d be another funeral. Someone in a box I didn’t really know. But I never saw it. My father made sure of that.”
“He coddled you.”
Contessa’s unhappy laugh catches me off guard.
“No. My father did a lot of things. Coddling isn’t one of them.
“Like what?” I ask. She’s never really mentioned it before, and it may be good to know how Gio failed so that I can avoid his mistakes.
“He just…he wanted to make it seem easy. Killing, I mean. When he was still convinced that I could be trained, he would bring me these pictures, two or three men, and he’d tell me everything about them that he knew. Their lives, their jobs, how they had wronged him. He said it was up to me to decide which one he killed. If I didn’t pick, he said he’d kill them all regardless. We’d go over it and over it for hours until I finally gave him an answer. I never even knew if it was real, if there were any consequences at all. I still don’t. But that was his point. An order is just words. You say the words, and the problem goes away. So simple, even someone like me could do it.”
“Someone like you,” I repeat. She utters those words with so much contempt.
She shrugs, but she wears her indifference like an ill-fitting mask. It doesn’t cover enough, revealing what she’s trying to hide. It upsets her, this admission. It means something to her.
“Someone soft.”
I can see that, Gio trying to raise another ruler that hides behind a desk, never risking his own neck. I drag my thumb against her skin, pulling her out of those thoughts so that she’ll listen.
“Your father’s always been a coward about doing his own dirty work.”
She shakes her head.
“I’ve heard that, but I never really believed it. I always thought he was so merciless. But then, I was a kid, I guess.”
“Did he hit you?”
The possibility hadn’t occurred to me before I took Contessa over my knee, playing at pleasure and punishment. She shakes her head.
“He was never that straightforward. The closest he ever was trying to teach me to shoot—I was terrified of guns. He would let my older cousins knock me around to show me how much stronger men were, why a gun was my only chance. He called it roughhousing, but it was worse than that. They weren’t allowed to mess up my face, but they got the point across until I was desperate enough to shoot the stupid thing to make it stop. Usually, it was all bullshit mental games with him. Like my mom—”
Her voice goes soft and flimsy.
“She was the one who coddled me. He separated us for it, let me earn visits if I obeyed him. She had her own problems. I think when he took me away, they got worse. When she overdosed. I wondered if she didn’t do it intentionally, just so he couldn’t use her against me anymore.”
There’s gravity in the confession. A child’s lingering guilt. She can’t even look me in the face when she talks about it. I know what it is to carry that kind of blame. To shoulder a parent’s death. It hits a little too close to a raw nerve, like a sore tooth I should have pulled a long time ago.
No wonder the girl is so quick to jump in front of any innocent bystander, so eager to take the bullet for anyone she can.
“This much, I’ll promise,” I say, drawing her gaze again, “another part of our deal, if it matters. I’ll never threaten another person and use them against you.”
“Why?”
“I’m not here to repeat your father’s mistakes.”
Her eyes flicker slightly at those words, swallowing. Finally, she whispers, “Okay.”
“We have a deal?” I ask, more straightforward.
“Yes.” She breathes it like it’s the most painful word she’s ever uttered. “Maybe it’s for the best if I finally face it head on.”
I draw Contessa into a kiss, the binding action that seals the agreement. Her lips are soft, gently parted with surprise as it lingers. You missed this, my own thoughts hiss at me, with the same weighty accusation I leveled at her. I ignore them, roughly groping at her ass, drawing white streaks through the pink skin. I taste her sweet, surprised gasp.
“Good girl,” I whisper against her lips. “Go get changed. You’ve burned up half my goddamn morning.”
I lie back on her bed and watch Contessa take off the last of her clothes. She stands in the doorway of her wardrobe completely naked with my handprints stamped all over that perky ass.
