Page 102 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
We walk through the quiet back corridors, past the kitchens and the lower servants' quarters, out toward the stone path that curves through the garden.
It is cooler here, the sun retreating into a soft haze, the scent of lavender and gun oil lingering where the flowers meet the wind.
I slow my pace.
He does not press me.
When I speak, it is not because I want to, but because I cannot stop the words anymore.
"She should have come to me. All those years, and nothing."
Giovanni exhales a slow breath, tugging a coin from his pocket and flipping it once before sliding it between his knuckles in that way of his that makes it look like he is thinking harder than he lets on.
"She left for a reason, Enzo," he says, voice low. "Whatever that reason was, she chose not to explain it to you. So, the question is not why she left. It's why you still care."
I stop walking. "You think I care?"
He doesn't miss a beat. "I think you want to kill her a little less than you should."
I want to laugh, but then again, the joke would be on me. "You know what the job is," Giovanni adds. "It's just another name on a piece of paper. You've read a hundred of them. Why let this one gut you?"
His words are clean and incredibly sensible.
The kind of counsel he's always been good at giving. But today, they feel like sandpaper scraping against old wounds.
"Because she mattered," I say finally. "More than I let her know. And now, I do not know if she's a threat or a memory."
Giovanni watches me carefully.
Then he flips the coin once more and pockets it with a shrug.
"There are only two ways out of a mess," he says. "One that leaves you hemorrhaging, or the other that has someone else pay for the bandages."
"And which one is this?"
He gives me a smile that does not reach his eyes. "You tell me."
I do not follow him when he turns toward the main house.
I take the long path around, where the garden leads to the east wing, and the view stretches down to the road that winds through the trees.
I need time.
Not to think.
I have thought enough.
I need time to decide whether this is a reckoning or a redemption.
The picture is still burning in my pocket.
Her face.
That boy with dimples like his mother and eyes… god damn it, eyes like mine.
My throat feels itchy and I blink furiously as I walk to my car, settle into the driver's seat.
Only then do I close my eyes and let the tears come.
