“Wh-where?”
“I’m taking you somewhere safe.”
She doesn’t resist as I walk her past Lorenzo, who has the phone to his ear and lifts two fingers in a small salute as we pass. I open the apartment door for her.
She steps out into the hallway without looking back.
In the car she’s quiet. Seatbelt across her chest, hands flat on her thighs, watching the city slide by through the window. I let the silence hold. I take the bridge. The river is black, and the bridge lights come up over us in long sweeps, and her face, in profile, is the one thing in the car I keep checking.
She doesn’t look at me.
I drive toward the penthouse.
Antonio Martinez had a meeting with his lawyer this morning. Had his witnesses moved. Had his Thursday arraignment confirmed by a judge who owes me. Had his lip split in my office. Spent his evening, presumably, on his couch with a warm glass in his hand and a cold pack on his mouth.
He won’t have a Thursday.
19
RAFFAELE
She moves through my apartment like a guest in a hotel.
Not the way a woman moves through a room she’s been brought to be kept. The way someone moves when they’re not sure if it would be rude to sit down. She sets her bag down and then picks it up again and looks for a better place. After a bit, she ends up perched on the edge of the cushion with her hands in her lap and her shoulders up around her ears.
I should say something to her.
I have nothing.
The rage is too close to the surface. If I open my mouth right now, what would come out would not be for her. So, I stand at the kitchen island with my hand on the marble, watching her settle and thinking of everything else I could be doing. That Ishouldbe doing.
It doesn’t take long before she feels me watching. She looks up, and I make my decision.
“Where are you going?” she asks after me as I head for the elevator.
“Out.”
“Raffaele.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Please—”
Her words get cut off by the elevator doors shutting. Then, I’m alone, and a heaviness pangs in my chest. Guilt. Rage.
Fear.
By the time the doors open in the garage, the fear has melted, and the rage is in my hands. I’m steady. I’m calm. I’m walking at exactly my usual pace. Inside, I’m moving furiously fast.
Lorenzo is at the curb in his own car, engine running. He’s eating sunflower seeds out of a paper sleeve with the window cracked. He sees me, and the bag goes onto the dashboard. The window goes up, and he leans across the cabin to push the passenger door open from the inside.
I get in.
“Antonio’s.”
He pulls into traffic without a word.
“Front door,” he says, “or you want me to get creative?”
