Page 81 of Runaway in the Mafia
The glass shattered, and the acid of whiskey mixed with blood burned through me.
“What the hell, man?” He was up and standing away from me. Suspicion in his gaze.
“Memories,” I muttered. “You have a place you can help me out with this wound?”
“I’m sure Sandy will know something.”
Sandy wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pool. Sergio and Battista approached him, and I wrapped my arm around him. “Nah. I prefer you help me out with it. You know, one wife beater to another.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He pushed away from me to smash into the wall of my two cousins behind me.
“The real question is what I’m going to do to you. Honestly, they make it so difficult these days. I mean, what’s a man got to do these days to butcher a wife beater?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
AHANA
One gunshot announcement was all it took to take down a party of a thousand guests. Still, the family had remained. Carried on. In hindsight, they’d probably experienced worse than a hole in the wall and a news alert. Not Ada, though. Not me either. I had walked out of there lugging my shame. Ada had come along quietly.
On the car ride home, she’d ignored her seat belt to slip next to me. When her arms had wrapped around my shoulders, I hadn’t known whether I would cry or sink into her arms and take the comfort she offered. Ultimately, I did neither. I sat upright, stiff as an iron board, while she soothed my back in a rhythm that eased my chest, one stroke at a time. She didn’t speak. I didn’t either. But when we entered her driveway, she finally broke the silence. “He’s nothing you’re used to,sì?”
I nodded after an awkward beat. He definitely wasn’t.
“Maybe that’s why he’s good for you?” she’d murmured just as the engine had stilled.
It dawned on me that she had seen this coming. The strange hum of excitement in her made sense when the filter of awareness was placed. Strangely, her approval warmed the pit of my stomach, but I was too dazed to take a magnifying glass to it and observe. Too confused to trust my course of action. Which was why I shouldn’t have called Romeo and asked him to bring me to him.
Didn’t matter anymore. What was done was done. He finally knew I wasn’t his, and that was going to be it. I tried to forget the cacophony of the day once I was back in the safety of my room. Find somewhere dark in my memories to hide this new batch of nastiness and get on with it. But clearly, his deliriousness had rubbed off on me. No amount of tossing and turning could put me to sleep.
The sun went down, and it came up. Hours later, a late morning heat bathed my bed. Still, I couldn’t find the energy to pull myself up. But when the sound of tires skidding jump started my nervous system into a gallop, I gave up all pretence of finding peace and crept to the window. My gaze found Vitale’s black Ferrari beneath it. It was parked criss-crossed in the driveway. Never a good sign when a lunatic was in a hurry.
A sound brushed my back. I expected him to stand there. But when I turned, I found Ada instead at my door. My sigh was one of relief. I told myself.
“Caffè?”
For a fleeting moment, I contemplated hiding under my bed from the psycho that had entered the house in a rage. Or climbing out the window and making a run for the wedding house. Lia was there, and so was the rest of the family. In numbers, I could find safety. Then I remembered the events of the past evening and how numbers had failed in front of him.
With a nod, I followed her downstairs. My chest fighting with a wrecking ball clogged in my rib cage.
The house was as it always was. Except for the rare stillness marking the absence of the maids and guards who’d shifted to Remigio’s place. But the bricks themselves that made up the house somehow hadn’t got the memo that everything had changed. For a second, a thought filtered through my mind whether it would have been better had Sergio taken me back to the wedding house. But it had been filled with constant looks. The whispering behind my back, the open jealousy from some of the women… well, it had been too much.
My bare feet were cold on the marble and, faintly, I thought I should have changed out of my camisole top and pyjama bottoms. But Ada’s rushed feet pulled me along, and I walked into the kitchen to her shocked gasp.
My eyes skimmed past her to find him seated at the table. A cigar in one hand and a whiskey in the other. All ordinary for him, at least. I was moving from a wife beater to a chain smoker and an alcoholic. Drinking at nine a.m. seemed more like an acquired habit than a onetime thing. What wasn’t ordinary was his white button down splashed in crimson… ketchup… no... it wasn’t. My mouth popped open, and my lungs emptied of air. All my thoughts shrivelled to the ground, sunk through the concrete, and fled the scene. My body screamed in terror. Silently. And I stood frozen to the spot as Ada rushed forward.
“Beddra Matri.What happened?”
His eyes were black, shallow pools that were pinned to me. “Nothing, Mamma.” I was a statue. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. “Just business.”
Business.
My business involved making pretty graphics and studying algorithms. His was… please tell me it was ketchup, and he had been clumsy.
Ada rushed to the cupboards and came back with a first aid kit. She hovered beside him, worry in her eyes. “Where are you hurt?” In that instant, she gave away her love for her firstborn.
He frowned. “I’m not hurt.” He followed her gaze to his shirt like he’d just noticed it only now. “Should have worn black. The bastards always have to make a Pollock out of it.”
My breath strangled.Not ketchup.
