Page 50

She nods once. Then her hand comes off the blanket and reaches across the space between us, settling over my ruined knuckles like she's afraid of hurting me.

"Okay," she says.

I look at her eyes. Blue fading to green around the edges, ringed red from crying and whatever was in her system burning off. I have built my whole life around watching exits and watching threats, and for some reason I can't stop looking at hers. I don't know what to do with that.

"They didn't hurt you," I tell her. "Not the way you're afraid of. From what I could see when I came in, they didn't get that far. You understand what I'm telling you?"

Her thumb moves over a split in my knuckle, slow, tracing the ridge of it. As if she's trying to memorize every scar.

"I don't remember," she says. "I remember a slap." Her voice is flat, stripped clean of panic. Like she's repeating a fact she's already exhausted. I hate it because this is not Amanda. "And I remember his mouth. The rest is a blur of lights. Then your face."

I keep my expression neutral. The anger that flares when she says it is sharp and immediate, but it isn't for her to carry. I force it down and focus on her instead. But jaw tightens anyway. I take a slow breath and keep my hand still beneath hers.

"Okay," I say. "That's okay. You don't have to remember more than that."

"You sound very calm for a man with another man's blood on his hands."

"I'm calm."

"You're not." Her thumb stills on my knuckle. She's looking at me now the way she looked at the blood, reading past the surface to the thing underneath. "Your jaw clenches so hard a muscle jumps when you're holding something in."

I let out a quiet breath.

The one woman in the world who actually notices these things had to be Amanda.

"You see a lot," I say.

"It's the only useful thing I do." She says it lightly, but for once she doesn't reach for a joke to cover it.

"Listen to me." I turn my hand beneath hers, slow enough that she can pull away if she wants to.

She doesn't.

Her palm settles into mine. Her fingers are cold. They're trembling, not from fear alone but from exhaustion, the strain finally catching up with her.

"The man I killed was the son of a very powerful man. Aldo Basile was Don Enzo Basile's youngest son."

She blinks slowly.

"He's Sicilian. Mafia. That man is going to come looking. Not for you. For me. But you were in that room. Until this is handled, you're a ghost. You don't post. You don't call. You don't exist anywhere anyone can be found."

"For how long?"

"I don't know yet."

She takes that news without arguing. The reality of it passes across her face in quiet stages, each one sinking a little deeper than the last.

Everything waiting for her outside these walls. Everything she has to walk away from for now.

"Valentino." Her fingers tighten around mine. "Do I need to know anything else?"

"Not tonight." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "Tonight you sleep. That's the only job you've got."

She doesn't let go of my hand.

And I don't make her.

Amanda