I've been watching him more closely since Emilio told me about the conversation about Ferrara's daughter, Graziella, and the connection Carmelo made between a missing child and a trafficking pipeline. Emilio said Carmelo brought it up on his own, which means it's sitting in his head, turning over and over.
He catches me watching him and holds the look for two seconds, which is two seconds longer than Carmelo usually holds eye contact with anyone who isn't a target. I raise an eyebrow. He goes back to his whiskey. That's our whole relationship. Eyebrows and whiskey and the mutual understanding that we both care about the same people and express it in completely different ways.
The door opens and Emilio walks in.
He's in jeans and a t-shirt, the sling gone because he took it off three days ago. His arm is still bandaged under the sleeve, but he's got full range of motion back and the stitches come out next week. The man walks into the bar and bee lines straight for me.
"Evening, beautiful," he says, sliding onto the stool directly across from me. The same stool he sat on the first time he came to this bar, the night he found me and Alexandra drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon and decided this was his favorite room in the building.
"Evening, asshole. The usual?"
"The usual, little vixen."
I pour from the new Macallan. He picks it up, drinks half, sets it down, and looks at me with those dark eyes that still make my stomach flip even though I've been sleeping next to them for weeks and I should be immune by now.
I'm not immune. I don't think I ever will be.
The bar gets busier. Soldiers come in from shift change, pulling up stools, ordering drinks, filling the room with the low hum of conversation that I love. This sound. This specific combination of voices and glasses and the occasional laugh that breaks through the background noise. This ismysound. The sound ofmybar on a Tuesday night, full of people I've learned to care about and who, against all logic and probability, care about me.
Emilio helps. He comes behind the bar the way he's started doing, inserting himself into my space, learning the bottles, the pours. He's still terrible at it. He over-pours everything, confuses the vodka brands, and once handed a soldier gin when the man asked for whiskey, which almost started a fistfight that Carmelo ended with a look.
"Two fingers," I tell him as he reaches for the Macallan. "Not four."
"My fingers are bigger than yours."
"Your fingers are exactly the same size as mine."
"That's factually incorrect and I have evidence."
"What evidence?"
"Last night. When I had my fingers inside you and you said right there, that's perfect, don't move, and I'm pretty sure you weren't talking about the size of your own fingers."
"Emilio, Goddamn, shut up." I glance at the soldiers at the bar, three of whom are close enough to hear this conversation. "We have customers."
"The customers don't care. Right, guys?"
The nearest soldier, a man named Torres who's been drinking at my bar since the second week, raises his glass without looking up. "We hear nothing, sir."
"See? They hear nothing."
"They hear everything and they're going to repeat it in the barracks and by tomorrow morning the entire compound will know what you do with your fingers."
"Good. Let them know. I want the world to know that Emilio DiAngelo has talented fingers and the most beautiful woman in this building at his disposal." He basically shouts the last part.
"At your disposal? I'm going to dispose of YOU if you don't pour that drink correctly. Two fucking fingers. Two."
He pours. Three fingers, because he has never once in his life done exactly what he's been told, and the extra finger is his way of reminding me that his rebellion is permanent and nonnegotiable.
He does have pretty fingers though.
The night goes on. The bar stays full. Charlotte and Claudio leave around nine, his arm around her shoulders, her head against his chest. Alexandra follows, phone still in her hand, headed upstairs to Leone. The soldiers thin out in waves, twos and threes, until the bar is half empty and the noise has settled to a low murmur.
Carmelo is still at the counter. He finishes his whiskey, sets the glass down, picks up his knife, and stands. He looks at me, then at Emilio standing beside me behind the bar, and he smirks. It’s the acknowledgment that the two people standing behind this counter are part of the thing he's been told to guard, and the guarding is not a burden.
He nods once, at both of us, then he walks out.
"Did Carmelo just nod at us?" Emilio says. "Like, a real nod? A nod with feelinganda smile?"
