The guy’s head comes back up and even under the swelling I can see the panic on his face. “No! If you won’t do it, let these assholes do it. But don’t you turn me outta here alive.”
Luca moves forward to him, kneeling down beside him. “What are you so afraid of?” he asks urgently.
But the guy clams up, sinks back into silence. The only thing he wanted was to extract a promise from me. I can’t take this anymore, this scene, this stench, the sight of Luca crouching in that puddle of blood next to the guy like he hasn’t even noticed it.
I want to vomit, but I’m too numb even for that. I make my slow stumbling way out of the room, my legs shaky. The guys starts pleading, groaning, “Don’t do that! You can’t do that! You gotta—”
Luca follows me out, shutting the door on his pleading. We look at each other, and then one of the guards shouts over.
“Whatcha want us to do with him, Don Morelli?”
“Kill him,” I tell the guard. “Make it quick.”
“You got it,” the guard says, then calls across the room, “Hey, Dimples, you wanna do this one?” He looks back at us with a grin. “We got a pool going, and Dimp’s way behind.”
“No,” Luca says sharply. “I still have some questions for him. He stays alive untilIsay otherwise.”
The guard looks between me and Luca, uncertain. But then he shrugs and walks away. “Too bad, Dimp.”
“Come on,” Luca says to me sharply, and just about drags me to the elevator.
“Why don’tIget to say who lives and who dies, Luca?” I hiss at him once we’re heading up. “Just because you’re the Boss,youget to choose?”
“That’s exactly right, Finch,” he says calmly.
“I’m not your goddamnflunky.” I yank my arm out of his grip.
He stares at me. “Ofcourseyou’re not. Which is exactly why I didn’t want—”
The doors open at the lobby and I storm out, through the hotel, and make for the next elevator to our room.
I hear Luca calling me, but I don’t look back.
Chapter Thirty-One
Luca
By the time I get to the elevator Finch has dived into, it’s filled up with other people, and we stand silently staring at the numbers on the dashboard going up. Even when the last person gets out of the elevator, he says nothing, just slams his fist into the metal of the elevator wall.
He’s in the middle of a storm and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I just have to wait it out.
“What the hell was that?” he asks as soon as the door of our room shuts behind us. His voice is shaking. “You might be ‘the Boss,’ Luca,” he spits, making air quotes, “but you arenotthe boss of me!”
“You wanna rethink that?” I don’t bother keeping the edge from my tone, let it bring him up short. “Listen up, angel. You might be my husband, and you might make me weak at the fucking knees whenever I look at you, but you’d better believe it: when it comes to business, Iamthe boss of you. AndImake the decisions about business matters. This? Is a business matter.”
He stares at me, mouth open. “I could fucking slap you right now, you know that?”
“Well, I guess you can try. You can even punch me like you did to that soldier down there, standing around minding his own business. And then after that, I’m going back down there and I’m gonna break that fake gondolier. I’ll find out exactly what’s going on, and then I’ll take care of him.”
Finch’s face is all red, and he looks like he’s about to go off like a firecracker. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. And then I guess we’re paying to ship his fucking body back to Boston.”
He takes a deep breath to keep shouting at me, but then all the fury rushes out of him like water down a drain. “He wanted to die.”
“And he will. Once he’s told me what I need to know.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t understand what scares him so bad about my sister that he’d rather die here, away from home. What the hell is she doing these days that makes men so terrified of her?”
