This is strategy.
The car smells like leather and cold air. Luca holds the door. I get in before anyone can help me.
Assistance is just control with manners.
Rory catches the door before it closes. His face is wet from rain, not tears. “Evie. Don’t do this.”
“I already am.”
“You don’t know what you’re walking into.”
“No,” I say. “But I know what I’m walking away from.”
His gaze moves past me to Alessandro, who hasn’t entered the car yet. “Your father wouldn’t want this.”
“My father wanted a great many things that turned out poorly.”
Rory flinches. I’ll be sorry later, though. There’s no room for it now.
The door closes. Sound changes immediately. Rain becomes a soft tapping against reinforced glass. Men become shapes. The street becomes a scene through a window, already less real because I’m no longer standing in it.
Alessandro enters from the other side while Luca gets into the front.
The car doesn’t move, waiting for instruction. Everything waits for him.
I turn my head. “Did Dante kill my father?”
Luca goes very still.
Alessandro doesn’t. “No question you ask in this car will help you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“Is it meant to frighten me?”
“No.”
“Then what is it meant to do?”
“Keep you alive.”
I almost smile. How thoughtful. “You’re assuming I prefer that.”
His gaze shifts to me. “You do.”
I hate him a little for being right.
The car begins to move. Outside, the ambulance remains. Police lights smear blue across the wet glass, then fall behind us.
My father disappears by increments. First the stretcher. Then the alley. Then the street. Then the city swallows the corner, and there’s nothing left to look at except my own reflection in the window.
I don’t look like someone whose father just died. I look composed.
“Your uncle will be allowed to visit,” Alessandro says.
“You’re very generous with other people’s family,” I say.
