Rafael shifts in the chair and the movement brings him marginally forward and the distance between us, already not much, becomes less. He's looking at the window now, not at me, his hand resting loosely over the closed wound, the long line of him relaxed in the way dangerous things are relaxed—not at ease, just resting, still entirely capable.
I should go to bed.
I stay exactly where I am.
The silence stretches and I am looking at his hands and thinking about the fact that those hands were doing something entirely different a few hours ago and that the cut under the closure strips is partially my fault in a way I cannot say out loud to anyone in this house. The guilt and the wanting are pressing against each other in my chest in a combination that makes no sense.
"Get some sleep, little Gia."
There it is. Low, without looking at me, delivered to the window like an afterthought. I hate it the way I always hate it — that immediate, specific flare in my jaw, the chin that wants to come up, the words that line up behind my teeth. And underneath all of that, now, the other thing. The thing that started in the bathroom and has been building ever since, the thing that his cologne and his proximity and his hands at the base of my zipper have made progressively worse. The name in his mouth in thisquiet does something to the base of my stomach that I refuse to acknowledge.
I stand up. Pick up the kit.
"Good night," I say, and my voice comes out even, which is the only victory available to me right now and I will take it.
I feel his eyes on my back the entire way to the door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GIA
The estate is so tense today. I have no idea why, and it’s eating at my insides.
Maybe that's just your guilt eating away at you.
Yep, I'm my number one enemy.
I know this because I come downstairs at half eight, and the kitchen is just… wrong. Marco is at the range the way he always is, but the two men who eat breakfast in the kitchen most mornings, Fredo and the younger one whose name I still don't know, part of the overnight rotation, are not there this morning.
Their chairs are there. Their usual mugs sit on the counter, one of them half full and cold, abandoned like they left in a hurry and haven't come back.
Weird. These men don’t play with their food.
Marco doesn't look at me when I come in.
That's weird too.
"Morning," I try to say cheerfully.
"Mrs. Caruso." He gives a stiff nod and sets a cup in front of me without being asked, then turns back to the range. His shoulders are set in a specific way that makes it look like he's concentrating on the pan harder than the frying, or whatever, requires.
I wrap my hands around the cup and frown at it.
Even the house sounds different. There are voices somewhere in the east corridor, low, male, and uneasy. Through the kitchen window I can see two of the perimeter guards talking at the garden gate, not moving, just talking, which they never do during a shift.
Did I wake up in an alternate universe or something?
I drink my coffee, watch the window and I don't ask Marco anything because he is not going to tell me and it will make him even more unsettled.
By nine o'clock the east wing corridor has had four different men through it. By half nine I hear Rafael's voice from behindthe closed study door — I don't really hear what he’s saying but he’s talking in a really dark scary voice and I wonder for the umpteenth time what the hell is happening today. Someone answers. Then silence. Then the door opens and a man I've seen twice before at the dinner table comes out looking white. He walks fast toward the rear of the house without looking up.
I decide maybe I shouldn’t be around after all?
I go to hide in the library, which has a view of the corridor.
I am reading a book but I have not absorbed a single word since I sat down.
A second man comes out twenty minutes later. Younger, one of the drivers, his jaw tight. He doesn't walk fast. He walks carefully, making sure nothing in his body is giving anything away, which is itself a kind of giving away.
