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She didn’t know how awful it really was. What should I have told her? Because it was who I was groomed to be? Because I had been raised with a vendetta, decades in the making, and my inheritance from my father was the privilege of carrying out a promise I’d made when I was just a boy?
“That’s not something I share, baby girl. Not with anyone.”
“You said few people know this about you? Lilly? Gabriel?”
“No. No one in my family knows. As you said, Lilly thinks I’m a stockbroker. Gabriel... He knows I play with the stock market. He suspects more than that, but we don’t talk about it. You need to understand, Noemi. I don’t talk about this. It’s not dinner table conversation. If you hadn’t overheard me talking to Michael, if you didn’t see me kill that bastard at the resort, we would never have this conversation. Ever.”
“What happens now then? I can’t pretend I don’t know—”
“I don’t expect you to. But once you return home, this will never be spoken of again.”
I had to make sure that happened.
“You said that you were a bad man, that when bad men needed to die, someone even badder had to kill them.” She hesitated, a tumultuous expression in her eyes. “The men that you’ve killed, did they deserve it?”
Her attempt at vindication touched me. She didn’t believe I was a bad man. She was looking for a way to justify the monster.
“I thoroughly vet every contract I take.”
“They were guilty? How can you be sure of that?”
“Because I spend a considerable amount of time investigating them. I go to bed with a clear conscience, Noemi. I’ve never taken a contract on an innocent person.”
“Is that why you’re gone so much? You’re investigating these people?”
“Yes.”
“You said ‘person.’ You’ve killed women, too?”
She was dangerous with her ability to see through my words. But it was also a relief. It meant this conversation wouldn’t drag out unnecessarily as minute details were picked slowly apart. It needed to be quick, like the removal of a band-aid where slow exposure only prolonged the pain.
“Evil tendencies don’t inherently belong to men. Women can be just as immoral.”
“Immoral?” she whispered thoughtfully. “Exactly what type of people have you...” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘killed’ one more time.
“People who deserved it.”
“Says you,” she challenged.
“Says me.”
We stopped walking and I turned her to face me.
“I’m not talking about the average wife beater or street corner thug, baby girl. Every single one of them deserved everything they got. And more.”
She tilted her head as she sought to understand a world she knew nothing about.
“So, you’re their judge, jury and executioner? What type of people deserve to die because Dante Calegari decreed it so?”
“The worst mankind has to offer. Pedophiles. Human traffickers. Men and women who sell other men and women as slaves.”
“Sex slaves?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes. Among other things.” Things so unspeakable even I couldn’t say the words out loud. Especially not to her.
Her voice softened as she looked away from me. “Children?”
“Yes.”
