Instead, I walk to the liquor cabinet in my bedroom. My steps crunch over broken glass. Good. Let it cut through my shoes. Let it remind me what I am.
The bottle of Macallan catches the light when I pull it from the shelf. Thirty years old. I bought it to celebrate closing the Marchetti deal, back when I thought celebrations meant something.
Now it's just medicine.
I don't bother with a glass. What's the point of pretending to be civilized when I've just proven I'm anything but?
The first swig burns going down. Fire and oak. I sink onto the edge of my bed, bottle in my good hand, ruined hand cradled against my chest.
She's gone.
I knew it was coming. The moment I saw her face when she came in. I knew.
I knew, and I let it happen anyway.
My cigarettes are in my jacket pocket. I fish one out with blood-slick fingers, leaving red smears on the white paper. The lighter takes three tries to catch. My hands won't stop shaking.
Pathetic.
The smoke fills my lungs. Familiar. Grounding. The same brand I've been smoking since I was sixteen, when Lorenzo dared me to steal a pack from Giuseppe's study. I got caught. Got my ass handed to me. Kept smoking anyway.
Some habits you can't break. Some monsters you can't kill.
I take another long pull from the bottle. The whiskey is starting to work now, dulling the sharp edges of everything. The pain in my hand. The tightness in my chest. The way her voice keeps echoing in my skull.
I hate you.
Another drink. The bottle is lighter now. Good.
"Cheers," I mutter to the empty room, raising the bottle. "To the monsters."
The whiskey goes down easier now. Or maybe I've just stopped tasting it.
Outside my window, the sun is setting. Orange and red bleeding across the sky like a wound that won't close. Somewhere out there, a yellow cab is carrying Kristen and Lily back to that shithole apartment.
She'll be safer there.
Away from me.
I finish the cigarette. Light another. The smoke curls toward the ceiling in lazy spirals, and I watch it disappear into nothing.
The bottle is half empty now. Or half full. Depends on how you look at it.
I look at it like a man drowning.
She's gone. Let her go. You don't deserve her anyway.
I take another drink.
And another.
And another.
Until the bottle is empty and the room is spinning and I can't remember why I started drinking in the first place.
Liar. You remember.
I remember everything. Her laugh. Her smile.
