“He’s lying down,” I say. “He had a long day.”
The guard nods.
We walk out the front door together. The fountain is still off. The driveway is silent. The gate, far down the curve, is closed.
In the car, Lorenzo doesn’t put his hands on the wheel right away. He sits for a second with both hands flat on his thighs, looking through the windshield at the dark hedges.
“For what it’s worth, boss.” He starts the engine. “I’d have done the same thing.”
He pulls down the drive. The gate slides open as we approach. The closer guard at the gatehouse lifts two fingers in a small wave, the way you wave to someone you’ll see at the same place tomorrow.
Lorenzo waves back.
I stare at the road.
Two days ago I sat across from Bea in my office, and I told her—I remember it exactly—that the easy way to handle Antonio would be to put a bullet in him and be done with it.Solve the whole thing in one evening. One phone call, one shallow grave,half the city breathes easier.I’d said it as a joke, as a thing a sane lawyer says to a clean assistant on a Tuesday afternoon to make her uncomfortable, to remind her where she’d landed.
Two days.
The man who said that line would have called the man who killed Antonio Martinez tonight insane.
But the man who said that line isn’t in this car.
I know why I did it. I knew before I stepped into that elevator.
I did it for her.
The insanity of it has stopped feeling like insanity. It has settled into the shape of a fact.
I drive home to Bea.
20
RAFFAELE
The elevator chimes, and I step out into my apartment. Only it doesn’t feel like my apartment. Not anymore.
The place is too quiet for the way I’m walking through it.
I’m still wired.
The drive back was long. Lorenzo offered three different distractions on the way—coffee, a stop, a question about Nico. I waved off them all. Now I’m here, and I still haven’t come down. My hands have a faint tremor I’m not used to. The adrenaline is still coursing through me, telling me, very clearly, to go find her.
Ineedto see her.
The bedroom door is open a few inches. Light from the city is laid across the floor and bed in long, pale strips. She’s sleeping in the middle of them.
She’s on her side with one arm tucked under the pillow. Her hair is spread across the white sheet. For longer than I mean to, I just stand in the doorway and watch her breathe.
The thought rumbles through me in a dark storm. Wake her up. Take her now.My body is still hot from tonight’s action. I’m ready for a different kind of thrill. An intensity only she can offer me.
But she’s not in the same space as me.
She’s so still. So perfect. Whatever dream she’s lost in, it’s not my nightmare.
I take a step back from the doorway and find the wall by the windows. I push my back against it and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor. It’s only from this distance that I let myself look at her again.
The city is the only sound.
