“I’ll drive back early. Come to your place—”
“Sergio,” she cuts me off. I know what she’s going to say. I see it in her eyes. “I need time.”
I don’t speak.
“I,” she pauses, rubs her face. “I need to think.”
“I know you overheard.”
She looks down at her feet.
“Natalie, what you—”
“Please don’t.”
She turns away, puts on her coat. I bite my lip, forcing myself to remain silent as I watch her. When she’s ready, I take her downstairs where I arrange for one of my father’s men to drive her home and walk her outside. She turns to me, wraps her arms tight around me, tighter than I expect. For a long moment, she’s clinging to me.
“I love you, you know. I do,” she whispers.
There’s a sadness in her words, a sort of finality. But when I draw back, she pulls away and slips into the backseat of the sedan. I close the door, tap on the front window and watch the car drive away, down the driveway and out the gates, disappearing from view.
20
NATALIE
The drive back home is long and I’m grateful to be alone. I’m thinking. Counting. Over and over again, I count days. And like an echo, Sergio’s father’s words keep repeating in the backdrop. I’m not paying attention to the scenery, the other cars on the highway. The man driving is stone-faced and the few times I catch his eyes in the rear-view mirror, I see a hardness inside them, and I know he’s more than a driver.
“Accident up ahead. We’ll have to take a different exit.”
They’re the only words he speaks to me. I’m startled by the intrusion and confused for a moment. But as the car slows and veers off toward an exit, I nod.
“That’s fine. Thanks.”
The sky is strange. Heavy clouds drop rain then briefly allow the sun to shine through spectacularly only to turn over another bucketful moments later. I turn on my cell phone—I’d kept it off on purpose—but Sergio hasn’t called. I scroll to Drew’s number, almost hit the button to call him, but change my mind and switch it off again. Tuck it back into my purse.
First thing I need to do is pick up a test. Confirm one way or another because maybe I’m not pregnant. Maybe I’m just late. Why am I letting Dominic’s strange poke at my belly upset me so much? How would he know before me? He’s just a jerk, like Sergio said.
“I don’t give a fuck if you have that whore lick your floors clean day in and day fucking out. You do what you need to do with Natalie, but this is my final word.”
Shit.
The way Franco Benedetti talks about Lucia DeMarco, the way he talks about me, what does he think? What does he envision for his son? That he’d be with me and have her too? In what capacity? And how firm is his word? Is Sergio bound by it?
We slow to a stop at a red light. There are no other cars around and the traffic light is useless. I don’t know this part of the city at all. It’s run down. Somewhere I wouldn’t want to be alone at night or in the day.
There’s a gas station on the corner. I glance into the main building. A man is standing behind the register, his attention on whatever is flashing on the little TV on the counter. A row of houses stands vacant across the street, graffiti on its walls, boards on its windows and doors. Black marks the upstairs walls and part of the roof is missing. Must have been a fire.
I wonder how much longer the traffic light will be red. It’s a strange place, this.
A car pulls into the gas station on the other side of the pumps. It’s old and the back door is dented. Something that fits here, but would stand out anywhere else. Both driver and passenger glance our way and even through the closed windows, I smell the cigarette smoke. When he kills the engine, the music abruptly stops.
Our light turns green, but we don’t move. I notice my driver’s eyes in the mirror. See him stiffen, reach into his jacket. I wonder if he’s armed. He must be.
It’s just when I’m thinking this that a car pulls up, speeds up, slams into ours. I’m wearing my seatbelt but I’m jolted. My heart is racing. Alarm bells go off in my head. We need to drive, but I don’t think we can.
It’s a black sedan with heavily tinted windows. I’m thinking how it stands out here when three doors open, the passenger side and the two back doors, and men exit the sedan. One is wearing a black suit. He’s the one who catches my eye. The others are more casually dressed and before I can think, before I register what’s happening, the one in the suit is pulling my door open and his hand is wrapped around my arm like a vice. He drags me out of the car and my purse falls off my lap, the contents spilling onto the floor.
My driver is scooting across the front seat, reaching for the passenger door because the driver’s side door is jammed. He’s got blood on his face. He must have slammed it against the steering wheel when the car hit us.
