"You like killing my men for my stepdaughter?" Frank's voice, easy, almost warm, like he's asking about the weather. "That's cute, Don Nico. Real cute."
"You called for a reason. Say it."
"I'm impressed, is what I'm saying. Didn't think you had it in you to move that fast." A pause, and I can hear him smiling through it. "But tell me this, Don Nico. When you're busy spreading her pretty legs at night, do you ever think about her daddy's blood on your hands?"
Something goes very still in me, cold and total.
"You don't know what you're talking about," I say, and it comes out flat, controlled, nothing in it for him to grab onto.
"Don't I?"
"You're already a dead man, Frank." I keep my voice level, quiet enough that it doesn't reach past this room. "The only thing left to decide is how slow."
I expect a flinch. I don't get one.
"Do your worst, Don Nico." He sounds delighted, genuinely, like I've given him a gift. "I'm looking forward to it."
"Then we understand each other."
"Oh, we do." I hear him breathe out, slow, savoring it. "Have fun fucking her for now. After I put you away, I'm going to enjoy making you watch me ruin Harry's little girl."
The line goes dead.
I stand in the dark holding the phone, the confirmations still lit up on the screen, four men down, and Frank's voice still crawling somewhere under my skin.
I look back at the bed. Lydia hasn't moved, one arm curled under the pillow, hair loose across her face, entirely unaware of the three things I'm standing here holding at once.
What I did to her father, thirteen years ago, with a knife too big for my hand.
The fact that Frank has known it, or some shape of it, the whole time, and has been sitting on it like a loaded gun waiting for the one moment it would do the most damage.
And now, a threat, aimed dead center at the only thing left in this world I actually care about protecting.
I don't move. Just watch her breathe, and think about how much I still haven't told her, and how much less she knows than shethinks she does, and how badly I want to keep it that way for one more night.
Cazzo.
I set the phone down on the dresser, screen dark now, and I don't go back to bed right away. I stand there in the cold, looking at her, at the mole on the back of her neck where her hair's fallen away from it, and thinking that God must have a cruel sense of humor to make her someone I never want to let go.
I get back in bed eventually. She stirs, murmurs something wordless, and pulls herself against my chest without waking. I hold her there and stare at the ceiling until the sky outside starts to go gray, and I don't sleep at all.
29
LYDIA
WEEKS LATER
My phone buzzeson the counter, screen lit up with a name I never bothered to change to something crueler.
Frank.
I let it ring twice before I pick it up, because some stupid part of me still wants him to think I have a life he's interrupting.
"What."
"That's how you answer your father now?"
"You're not my father."
