Ettore.
“One more thing,” Guido said, fiddling with the equipment. “See here—” He pointed at the screen.
The girls were back. This time their heads were down, arms linked, rushing to get out of the snow. It didn’t seem like they had a car; maybe a taxi had brought them. At the very end of the tape, a man stepped out from a tree along the sidewalk, stopping them in their tracks. We couldn’t see anything after that, since it was past the point of where our cameras roamed.
“He is not in the habit of killing women. Perhaps he seduced them.”
“For information.”
“Sì.” Guido nodded. “Even if he did not learn anything, he kills two birds with one stone. He is still a man.”
Yeah, leave no stone unturned. Ettore was known to mix business with pleasure. I stared at the screen for another minute or two until I heard the muffled voice of Eunice talking to Mitch, and his footsteps tramping on the floor above.
“I’ll be in the garden,” I said. “Send Mitch out when he comes.”
The sun had made quick work of the snow from the night before. My boots slushed in puddles, some areas still hard, but others the texture of slick slime. Scarlett had planted roses our first year here, and the bushes were barren, nothing left but a few hardheaded leaves and thorns.
I wasn’t sure if there was anything as depressing as a dead rose garden. In their prime, their blooms were romantic, timeless almost, but in their absence, something about their disappearance almost seemed wicked.
Instead of concentrating on the dead roses, I turned my back, looking up at the house. I could see Eunice in the kitchen, flittering, doing this and that.
Ettore was crazed, out for bloodshed, and he had been this close to my wife, only a stone’s throw from her unsuspecting back. All traces of him had melted with the sun, nothing but the cold threat and a hard sense of purpose left to linger in the air.
The pull of a door almost frozen to its foundation alerted me of Mitch’s presence, but I didn’t turn to look.
“You wanted to see me, Fausti.” He inhaled, adjusting to the cold once more, and then released it in a loud breath.
“We had visitors last night,” I said.
The words must’ve been wet. They clung to the air and then froze. Neither of us said anything for a while.
“And?” he asked, his tone urging me to explain.
Finally, I looked at him. “At three in the morning, Lewis.”
He gave me a blank stare, one that questioned my sanity. “Who was it? Maybe that’ll get us somewhere.”
“Celeste’s friends. Looking for her.”
His face relaxed and he grinned. “We wondered why they never showed up.” He lifted his gloved hands. “Worked for me though. I had her to myself all night.”
“Worked for you,” I repeated.
“Yeah, we’re never alone. Not that I usually mind.” He winked. “I’m not getting any younger. Two at once sometimes wipes me out.”
In the sane recesses of my mind, I knew the situation was not entirely his fault. But the part of my mind that watched my wife crumble because she thought someone she loved had died again wasn’t in the mood to listen.
He hit the side of the house with a curse and a grunt. I shoved my arm up to his throat, pinning him there.
“Fuck you, Fausti,” he spit out. “I knew you beforeyour brothers, when you were a kid-man riding your bike around town. You don’t scare me.”
“All the more reason to beat your ass,” I spit back at him. “Tell me the date, Lewis.”
I hadn’t agreed with Violet’s controlling ways. She couldn’t make up her mind, so she ricocheted back and forth between two brothers, like a pebble between two pieces of glass. The first crack starts off harmless enough, until it starts to stretch and run even deeper. I held my tongue out of respect for Mitchand Mick because I didn’t want to be responsible for their fallout.
This? This I refused to fucking bear. Mitch was my best friend, my brother. The one who stood next to Elliott. But I agreed with Violet this time. He had become selfish, and he refused to listen to anyone where it counted.
He shoved at me, and I relented a bit.
