She answered on the second ring. “Emily?”
“Hi, menace.”
There was a pause. “Why do you sound weird?”
“That’s rude.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
I looked down at the capybara cup and let out a small breath.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
Silence.
Then, “Wait. Really?”
“Yep. I’m coming home for the surgery.”
The squeal she let out was so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear, but I was laughing by then, and the tight, awful knot that had lived in my chest since our first conversation seemed to loosen.
“Oh my God,” Sophie said breathlessly. “Oh my God. Mom’s going to cry.”
“She always cries.”
“Yes, but this time it’ll be emotional and not because I hid yogurt in the heating vent.”
I blinked. “You did what?”
“Not important. You’re coming!”
I leaned back on the bed, smiling up at the ceiling now. “I’m coming.”
As Sophie kept talking, bright and tumbling over herself with plans and relief, I knew I had done the right thing. Not just for her. For me. I was choosing it. Him too.
CHAPTER 10
PIETRO
Something was different tonight.
Emily was nervous. Electric in a way that put me on edge almost as much as it drew me in.
Earlier that day, I called my uncle Hoka and told him not to continue the investigation I asked for. After I told Emily about my cerebral palsy and she opened up about her ex, guilt had started gnawing at me.
That feeling did not come naturally to me.
The men who raised me did not move through the world burdened by guilt. Not in the parts of them I had seen, at least. Everything had a reason. A purpose. A cost. They were ruthless when required, and just as absolute in their love for their families, their wives, their children. It was a duality that had confused me when I was younger. Less so now.
I remembered one night in particular.
I was fifteen, old enough that my father had started taking me with him more often, to acclimate me to the life I had been born into. That evening ended in blood. I stood in silence while my father tortured a man to death, watched him do it with the same terrible efficiency he brought to everything else, andthen followed him back to the car with the sound of the man’s screams still lodged in my head.
We drove home in silence.
When we arrived, my father got out, removed his bloodstained shirt, and replaced it with a clean one from the spare garment bag he always kept in the trunk. Then he looked down at me, his expression still grim, his face still carrying the residue of violence, and said, “You always do everything possible to keep the darkness at your door. You never let it touch what owns your heart.”
I started to ask him what he meant.
