The motion is quick and deliberate and there is no hesitation in it. None. Not a fraction of a second. Not the pause of a man who is reconsidering. The arm moves and the blade moves and Matt's shoulders...
Matt’s shoulders jerk once. Forward, then down. His hands come up, weak, useless, fingers twitching like they’re trying to hold something that’s already gone.
Valente keeps holding him upright by the hair, even as Matt’s body sags forward, the fight draining out of him in seconds.
I don’t make a sound. There is no sound left in the world.
My mouth is open but nothing comes out. The garden is quiet. The light is still moving across the stone wall. The lizard is gone. Elio’s face is still there, that same open, terrible rage, and Valente is still holding Matt upright by the hair so the blood can run freely down his front.
The gold light keeps creeping across the wall like nothing happened.
None of it stops.
None of it fucking stops.
I can’t breathe. My lungs are locked. My knees are locked. The only thing moving is my heart, slamming so hard against my ribs it feels like it’s trying to break out and run away from what it just saw.
Elio.
The man who carried me out of that compound.
The man whose hands shook when he held me.
The man who just opened Matt’s throat like it was nothing.
My fingers are white around the crumpled napkin daisy.
20
VIOLET
The daisy napkin has gone damp from my grip, soft at the creases where I've been folding and unfolding it. Everything is exactly where it was before. The trees, the stone bench, the morning dew on the grass, except Matt is dead.
How long have I been sitting here?
The light says minutes. My body says years. The two numbers don't reconcile, but my brain, my stupid, stubborn brain tries to anyway.
The courtyard is empty now, just stone and morning light and a dark stain spreading into the grout lines that nobody has cleaned yet. Valente and Elio are gone. Matt is gone. Whatever they did with his body happened while I was sitting, shrouded by the shadows of the lemon tree.
I look down at the daisy. Nine petals. Eleven. Ten. Still can't decide. The ink has smudged where my thumb has been pressing, turning the lumpy center into something even less recognizable than it already was. The stem is still crooked. Still committed.
From the world's worst artist to the world's best.
I put it in my pocket.
Wait for it to happen. But there're no tears, no shaking, no screaming, no falling off the bench, no dramatic collapse onto the wet grass. My body just sits here. Breathing. In and out. Steady as a metronome, which is obscene, and the most violent thing my body has ever done to me, this refusal to react on a scale appropriate to the occasion.
I should be falling apart.
But maybe I can't just yet. Maybe I need to keep it together until I can find out what the actual fuck just happened here.
Okay. Inventory. What do I know? A man I trusted killed a man I loved. Notloved, not like that. But loved. The way you love someone who shares their bread with you in the dark. The way you love someone who puts his body between you and the worst thing in the room every single time without being asked. The way you love someone who draws you a terrible daisy and means it with his whole chest.
That man is dead. The man who killed him is inside that villa, and at some point in the next hour he is going to look at me and say something. And whatever he says, whatever version of this he's built, I'm going to have to receive it.
I stand up. My knees hold. Good. My hands are steady. Also good. The napkin daisy is a soft square against my thigh through the fabric of my pocket, and I leave my hand there for a few seconds before I take it away, because I cannot afford to be holding anything when I walk through that door.
The kitchen corridor smells like coffee and freshly baked bread. Normal morning smells and sounds. My feet carry me through all of it not stopping until I'm at my destination.
