Page 17 of Seneca
We sat there, the two of us, surrounded by debris and the body cooling between us. I thought of the first time I’d seen a man dead on the floor, and how my grandfather made me sweep the glass so my brothers wouldn’t cut their feet. I wondered if that’swhat this was. Karma had shown up, unfinished business, some cosmic joke about families and what you can’t run from.
The sirens started as a far-off whine and built to a full-throated scream. Blue and red lights stuttered through the holes in my windows, casting the body in alternating halos of color. I heard a cop radio, the shouts of “Clear! Clear!” as they fanned out across my lawn. I stood, straightened my spine, and tried to remember what a normal person would say to the police.
Seneca glanced at me, then at the door. “You gonna let them in?”
I nodded. “Better to look like a victim than a suspect.”
He grinned, wolfish. “You got that part down cold.”
The first officers entered, weapons up, faces blank behind the blast shields. I held up my hands and said, “I’m Judge Bellini. The threat is neutralized. Please don’t shoot my dog.” (I didn’t have a dog, but they didn’t know that.)
They swept the house. One of them recognized me, and I watched as the terror in his face shifted to abject confusion. I gave my statement about two assailants, one through the front, one through the back. Shots exchanged, return fire, self-defense. I let my voice go monotone, the way they teach you in police interviews. I left out the part where I recognized the tattoos and the name Martini.
Seneca hung back, just another witness, hands visible at all times, body language so at ease it was almost mocking. I caught him watching me during the whole thing, seeing every tremor in my hands, every time I tripped over a word.
After the ambulance took the body and the evidence techs started photographing the mess, he stepped close. “You okay?”
I wanted to say yes, but my legs were going, and I felt the edges of the world start to curl in. “I’m fine,” I managed, but the lie was obvious.
He caught my elbow, held it just tight enough to ground me. “You ever need to talk,” he said, “about the old country, or the new one.”
“Don’t,” I said, too quick. “If I start, I won’t stop.”
He nodded, once, and released my arm.
The living room was empty except for us, the stains on the floor, and the distant echo of sirens receding. I sat on the ruined couch, dug my nails into my palms until I could feel the pain, and counted the seconds until morning.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I heard my grandfather’s voice, quiet and certain: “No one ever escapes family.” He was right. But at least, for tonight, I’d survived it.
Seneca hovered in the doorway, half-shadow, half-salvation. “They’ll send another,” he said, voice matter-of-fact. “That’s how they do.”
“I know.”
He tilted his head. “You want me to stick around?”
For the first time in years, I let myself say it. “Yes.”
He smiled, more relief than anything else, and took up a post by the shattered window. The two of us, holding the line against the ghosts. The dead man on the floor, the coin in my pocket, and the knowledge that nothing was ever truly finished. What happened next was part of Seneca’s mystique.
Chapter nine
Catherine
Isaw myself in the blown-out window. Saw the mess of my hair, the dried blood on my neck, and the way my suit was torn at the shoulder. I looked like a survivor of domestic abuse. Seneca stood in the kitchen, pouring water from the tap, his hand steady for the first time all night. He wasn’t wearing his cut anymore. He’d laid it over one of the kitchen chairs. Now, he just had on a black tee that clung to his chest, dark with sweat and someone else’s blood. His jaw twitched when he drank, and I realized he was waiting for me to tell him what to do.
I didn’t want to think. I wanted the rush back, the clean panic of combat, the total clarity that comes with adrenaline. Instead, I walked over, grabbed the glass from his hand, and drained it, water spilling down my chin and onto the ruined shirt. I wiped my mouth, and he watched the movement suspiciously.
“I should be dead,” I said.
He considered, then shook his head. “Not tonight.”
I looked at him, really looked, and saw something I hadn’t let myself notice before. The scar wasn’t the only thing that defined his face. There were a thousand tiny lines around his mouth, thekind that come from biting back every scream and every joke. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, but he kept scanning the room.
“We need to get upstairs,” I said. My voice came out wrong, higher than I wanted, but he just nodded.
The house felt different. No longer a fortress, but a place where you went to get patched up before the next round. I took the stairs two at a time, Seneca close behind, his boots leaving a trail of blood drops from a cut on his calf. The hallway was littered with drywall dust and shattered glass. My bedroom door hung crooked, one hinge blown. I should have cared, but all I cared about was the way he looked at me in the blue wash of the police lights still rotating outside.
Inside, the bedroom was untouched, cold and perfect, bedspread still tucked, nothing out of place. I wanted to ruin it. I wanted to make it as wrecked as the rest of the house, as wrecked as I felt inside.
