“Whether Pietro and I are together or not doesn’t change anything,” I said. “I’m a smart woman, and I know better than to talk about a world I have no part in. So you can leave in complete confidence, Mr. Genovese. I have nothing to tell.”
He watched me for a few seconds after that, long enough to make me wonder whether silence itself was one of his weapons. Then he gave a small nod, as if I had passed some private standard.
“Good,” he said. “I saw the video from the Albanian warehouse. You were brave. You didn’t bargain, didn’t beg, didn’t try to make yourself smaller. I liked that.”
The mention of the warehouse hit me like a blow I was not braced for. My stomach turned so sharply I had to lock my knees under the table to keep the reaction from showing too clearly. However brave I might have looked on the recording, whatever dignity I had scraped together in that place, the memory was lodged in me like a splinter under the skin.
“I’m not sure I care whether you liked it.” My voice came out cooler than I felt.
To my irritation, that seemed to amuse him.
“Good.”
I gave him a flat look. What could I even respond to that. What would I even want to reply to that.
“For all it’s worth, I think he made a mistake,” he added with a smirk that managed to look calculating.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Well, whether he did or not is irrelevant, because maybe,” I said, pushing my chair back, “he spared me one.”
Matteo watched me for one beat longer, then inclined his head.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I added, “I do, unfortunately, have a job to get back to.”
“Thrilling, I assume.”
“You have no idea.”
He smiled then, just enough to make me dislike how striking it was. “Go on, then, Edwina.”
I muttered something rude under my breath and left before he became any more conversational.
The rest of the day dragged far too slowly and with just enough irritation sprinkled through it to make time feel vindictive. By the time I finally peeled myself out of the elf costume and changed back into my own clothes, snow had started to fall again.
I pulled my scarf tighter, adjusted Sophie’s cane quote in my bag for what had to be the fiftieth time, and started the walk home telling myself, not for the first time, that I really needed to stop using alleys like some kind of Victorian heroine.
Which was perhaps why, when someone stepped out in front of me halfway down the narrow cut-through behind the pharmacy, my first reaction was less fear than pure, exhausted annoyance.
Then I recognized him.
Adam.
He looked worse. Not enough to satisfy me, unfortunately, but the cracks were showing. His coat was unbuttoned despite the cold, his hair damp with melting snow, his wild expression making it clear this was not a man interested in dignity.
“You,” he hissed, as if the word itself had been fermenting in his mouth for days.
I stopped walking. “This is becoming repetitive.”
His laugh was sharp and ugly. “You destroyed my life.”
“I’m pretty sure corruption and malpractice did that.”
He took a step closer. “You’re fucking a killer, but you broke up with me over a few slaps.” His face twisted. “Do you hear how insane that sounds? Do you hear the double standard?”
For one very quiet second, the whole alley seemed to go still around us.
