Page 10 of Ruthless Sin
Three years since Moscow, since I came back wrong.
Years of closed doors, of smiling through Sunday dinners while my family pretends they aren’t watching me for cracks.
“A while.”
“Every night?”
“Most.”
“Dante know?”
“He assigned me to help her acclimate.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I don’t answer her.
She pours herself a cup and sits across from me, wrapping her hands around the ceramic. She looks at my bare wrist instead of my face.
“You came back from Moscow wrong,cher. Don’t think for one second I didn’t notice.”
The kitchen has always been this size, but tonight it feels too small to breathe in.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. I drop my eyes to the coffee, my throat closing up tight.
“I’m fine.”
“No,” she says, her voice quiet and unyielding. “You’re not.”
I should say something to defend the lie.
She’s right, and we both fucking know it.
Three years of this shit. The mask at dinner and the cufflinks I can’t throw into the river. The whole house has been watching me perform.
I thought I was getting away with it.
Cazzo.
She stands, rinses her cup, and sets it in the rack.
Walks to the doorway and stops, her back to me.
“That girl upstairs?” she says, her voice dropping into the quiet room. “She’s hiding too. You see that, don’t you.”
I don’t answer.
“You don’t have to,” Nonna says. “Takes one to know one.”
She leaves.
The cicadas have gone quiet, the air dead, and the jasmine thick on top of it.
Somewhere on the third floor a floorboard creaks. Maria, probably, not making it all the way back to bed.
I sit at the table.
The coffee is cold.
