Page 158 of Ruthless Sin
Stepan turns in forty-eight hours. Tomorrow Mila goes to Casa Lucia.
I drive her. I walk her in. I walk her out. I don’t leave the curb.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark. Jacket on. My hand on the velvet bag in my pocket. I count my breaths until the rage goes back down into the place I’ve kept it for three years.
I get to four hundred.
It doesn’t go down.
I don’t sleep.
27
MILA
The kitchen is dark when I come down, but Nonna is already at the stove, the household pot going, the smell of coffee reaching me before I've cleared the last stair.
The thermos is on the counter. I’m in my own clothes for the first time in days. The cream sweater Cassia bought me. The chain at my throat under the collar. The folding knife in my pocket. The Tsvetaeva-in-translation folded inside my sweater against my ribs.
Nonna doesn’t turn. “Eat the bread, ma chère. You’re going. Eat the bread anyway.”
I eat half.
Oksana’s day. The shower she made everyone promise to attend in the music room weeks ago. You have to show up. Yes? Yes.
“Pronta, ma fille?”.Ready, my girl?.
I nod. She turns. Sets the thermos in my hand. Squeezes my wrist once.
“Nico is at the SUV. You ready or not, cher, he’s been waiting since before dawn.”
The first time anyone has said his name to me in the kitchen since the morning he told me.
I don’t answer. I walk to the side door.
The SUV is at the front of the compound. Nico is at the driver’s door. Black shirt. Black pants. He hasn’t slept. I can tell because his jaw is tight. He opens the back door for Sofia. Sofia is already there. Notebook against her chest. Hair pulled back. The dress Maria’s daughter wore.
He opens the front passenger door for me. He doesn’t look at me. His jaw stays locked. He is close enough that his sleeve brushes the door frame, close enough I could reach out and touch his wrist.
I don’t. The space between us holds.
I get in. He closes my door. Walks around. Gets in.
The SUV smells of leather and his cologne. He starts the engine. The compound gate opens. The guard at the gate is one of the new men Marco brought in. He looks at the SUV. Looks at Nico. Nods. Looks at me. Doesn’t smile.
The gate closes. We pull onto Magazine.
Nico doesn’t speak the whole drive. He drives the new route. The streetcar tracks. The left at Audubon. His right hand is on the gearshift. The tendons stand out across the back of his hand. The same as the morning I saidSpasibo. He’s watching the mirrors. Every block. Every light. Every passing car.
My eyes are on his hand on the gearshift. Heat moves low in my belly, slow and unwelcome. My pulse is a little wrong. Not since the morning he told me.
The chain at my throat is warm against my collarbone. I don’t speak either.
Casa Lucia. The badges at the gate are different again. Marco’s plainclothes men at the corners of the property. The lobby half-rebuilt, scaffolding still on the back wall. Nico pullsthe SUV to the curb. He puts it in park. He doesn’t turn off the engine.
“I’ll be here,” he says, quiet.
The first words he’s said to me since the morning I left his room. His voice is rough.
