"Your room or mine?" Antonella asks.
"Mine."
The door closes behind us.
I exhale.
"Thank you," I say.
"You looked like you were about to curse."
"I was."
She moves around the wheelchair. Sits on the edge of my bed. Faces me.
"Your mother loves you very much."
"I know."
"She's terrified of losing you. That's why she cries. That's why she's so desperate to believe we're happy."
I don't respond.
"Bruno." Antonella leans forward. "What happened in that warehouse last night?"
The question catches me off guard.
"What?"
"You came back looking like a ghost. And now you can barely hold yourself together in front of your own mother." She pauses. "What did you do?"
I can lie.
But I'm tired.
So fucking tired of lying.
"I tortured a man," I say. "Cut pieces off him until he told me what I needed to know."
Antonella doesn't flinch.
Doesn't look away.
"Did he deserve it?"
"He helped steal from my family. He mocked me. Called me a cripple."
"That's not what I asked."
I meet her eyes.
"I don't know if he deserved it. I don't know if anyone deserves what I did to him. But I did it anyway. And I felt nothing."
She's quiet for a long moment.
"Do you want to feel something?"
The question hits me like a punch.
