Did… did he just punch this guy? Pistol whip him?
The brute is trying to figure out the same thing. Albeit, with a concussion.
“D’Amico,” he slurs. The man takes an awkward half-step back. “Shit,” he mumbles, eyes glazing over.
His hands come up slow. Palms out. The knife is still in his right one; he realizes it halfway through the motion and makes a small, stupid production of setting it on the edge of the sink. Slowly. Very slowly. Like he’s at a traffic stop.
“Listen, man. Listen... I’m just?—”
Raffaele shoots him.
I turn my face away a fraction of a second too late.
The sound in the bathroom is worse than any sound I have ever heard anywhere else. It bounces off the tile. It bounces off the tub. It’s still bouncing after the man has already gone down, and I realize some of it is in my head, and some of it is in my ears, and I don’t know which part is which.
When I open my eyes, there’s a man on my bathroom floor.
Blood on my tile. Not pooling yet, but starting—a creeping edge of it moving toward the grout line. My bathmat is going to be ruined. That’s the thought my brain offers me.My bathmat is going to be ruined.I know I’m in shock, because that is a shock thought, and knowing it doesn’t help.
Raffaele lowers the gun.
He looks at me.
There’s blood on him too. He hasn’t bothered to wipe any of it.
“You-you killed him,” I hear myself say.
“He was dead the second he touched you.”
My knees want to give. I lock them.
“Bea.”
I don’t answer.
“Look at me.”
I do.
“You should never have had to explain yourself to a man like that,” he says. “Not tonight. Not ever. You don’t owe them a single word. When one of them asks you what you are to me—if any of them ever asks you that again—you tell them you’re with Raffaele D’Amico. Full stop. You don’t qualify it. You don’t soften it.”
“I don’t?—”
“They’ll know soon enough. I’ll make sure of it. But until they do,that’syour answer. You are mine. That’s what they hear. That’s all they hear.”
He crouches next to the body.
He goes through the man’s pockets without ceremony. Phone. Wallet. A second piece tucked in a belt holster he checked for on the way down. All three go into his own jacket. He takes the knife off the sink too, folds it closed, adds it to the collection.
He’s looking at the man’s face now.
“This kind,” he says. “This is what you send when you’ve decided you don’t need the body back. This is a guy who handles the jobs the ones with names don’t touch. His boss knows that. Sent him anyway.”
He pulls out his phone, types something short with his thumb, sends it. Pockets it again.
“Someone will be here in an hour. Don’t worry about the floor. Don’t touch him. Don’t touch anything of his. I’ll have the towel and the mat and the shower curtain replaced in the morning. You won’t have to look at any of it ever again.”
I’m still clutching the towel. The water is still running behind me. Steam is rolling into the little room.
