“Did you decorate all this?” I ask.
“Bought it furnished,” he replies. “Didn’t see any point in changing anything.” He activates another button on the wall by the door. A loud beep rings out. And then the sun is slowly extinguished by security shutters that come rolling down over every window.
“Did the house come with those, too?” I ask, amazed by how dark the house has gotten. I feel like I’m in a tomb with him. Beneath the sleeves of the parka, the hairs of my arms stand on end.
“No.” Curse is nothing but a sculpted silhouette now. A shadow.
Without warning, without even realizing that I’m doing it until it’s too late, I reach up and brush my fingertips across his left cheekbone. Heat radiates from him into my fingers. Even after shaving this morning, there’s the not-unpleasant scrape of stubble present there. A roughness to answer my softness.
He’s so fucking still. But he’s definitely solid. Not a shadow.
“Sorry,” I whisper, dropping my hand and curling it into a fist. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says. His voice hardens. “But don’t let it happen again.”
I hunch into myself. I want to shrivel up and disappear. Loneliness comes at me like an ocean current, threatening to take me all the way down to the bottom. To a place Curse won’t save me from this time.
My parents are dead. Mia, my step-mother who was more like a sister or best friend, moved to Texas and remarried so quickly after papà’s death that she didn’t even bother to attend his funeral with me. The few friends I have left aren’t even in the same country I am right now.
I have no one here. No one besides the dark pillar of a man standing before me. A man who’s made it abundantly clear that he’s not my family and he’s not my friend. He’s not my rescuer, not my hero. Not even human, if his own words are to be believed.
And maybe I should believe him. Maybe I finally, truly do. Because someone with a human heart wouldn’t look at me right now, with everything I’ve gone through, and basically order me not to touch them. They’d probably try to comfort me. Maybe even let me hug them, for God’s sake.
But even so, I know that’s selfish of me. Just because my life has gone to shit, and I’m lonely, and I’m sad, doesn’t mean I get to run my hands all over Curse when he doesn’t like it or consent to it. An attitude like that would make me no better than someone like Carlo. Which is a horrendous comparison to make, but my brain makes it anyway.
“It won’t,” I promise softly.
I want to apologize again, but he’s already told me not to do that.
So I don’t.
Curse largely leaves me to my own devices for the rest of the day. It’s a jarring change after barely letting me out of his sight at the motel. But I soon understand why. His house is like a fortress with the security shutters down. There’s no way for me to open any windows or doors without triggering his security system because I don’t know the code. And there’s no landline phone in here, either. So if he was worried about me contacting someone in New York, or calling the police, that isn’t a possibility anymore. There isn’t a spare laptop or tablet lying around that I can use to connect to the internet. Even the TVs, of which there are several scattered about the house, don’t have any kind of cable or streaming services hooked up.
I pass the time exploring the massive house. I keep thinking that Curse is going to jump out from some dark corner and tell me not to go into a certain room or area, but he never does. If he has any skeletons in these closets, I guess he doesn’t care if I see them.
But I don’t find any skeletons. Just security cameras in room after beautiful room, decorated in warm shades of peaches and pinks, burgundies and cornflower blues. With every single window in the place covered, I turn on lamps as I go.
The only room I don’t enter is a large library-cum-office. That’s the room that Curse is in. He’s completely absorbed by whatever work it is he’s doing on a laptop at his desk, and he doesn’t speak to me or even look up whenever I pass by the open doorway.
At least there are books in other rooms as well. That’s what I’ll have to occupy myself with, I suppose. But it’s after 6pm now, and hunger drives me to the kitchen. I haven’t eaten since those beef jerky sticks this morning.
But when I get to the kitchen, Curse is already there. I don’t even know how he got here before me, without me noticing. He moves like a goddamn ghost. I guess that’s why he’s the Titone famiglia’s most feared assassin.
And most merciless.
But that feared, merciless assassin currently appears to be putting a casserole in the oven. Which is so surreal I pinch the skin of my wrist to make sure that I’m awake.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking,” Curse says. “Or as close to it as I ever get.” He shuts the oven. “Magdelena left all this shit for me.” He opens the freezer portion of a giant stainless-steel fridge, indicating tray after tray of frozen food.
“Magdelena.” My stomach knots. “Your girlfriend?”
“My maid,” he corrects me. He gives me a bit of an odd, lingering look. Maybe he’s worried I’m going to do something dumb, like try to touch his face again. Whatever it is, he seems to shrug it off, turning away to set a timer on the stove for fifty minutes.
I’m not sure I can make it an hour, but I’m feeling too weird and embarrassed to ask him for food now. Hopefully, he’ll just leave the room until the stuff in the oven is ready, and I can raid the fridge or pantry to tide me over without him seeing.
But he doesn’t leave.
