Page 58 of Ruthless Sin
“Yes.”
“I’m proud of you. You know that?” A beat, quieter. “What you and Izzy gave me today is a chance to keep her safe. That means everything to me.”
Marco’s throat moves. “Izzy found him,” he says. “I just picked him up and brought him here.”
“I know what you built.”
He turns toward the side room before the rest of his face shows.
Renzo is at the gate.
He has been here since I went in. He has not come inside and has not asked to. He’s leaning on the post with the gate guard, passing a thermos, not talking. He straightens when he sees me and hands me the keys to my own car like he just happened to be holding them.
“You good.”
“Always.”
He looks at me. We both know that isn’t the answer. He lets it stand, because that is the courtesy between us.
He opens my door, which he has not done since we were boys and it was a joke. It is not a joke now.
He leans in the window. His eyes drop to my hand and come back up.
“Marco called me,” he says. “Told me what happened in there.”
I don’t answer.
“Good.” Flat. No qualifier. “Anyone who puts eyes on her gets what they get.”
He straightens. His hand goes to the roof of the car.
“She’s at the compound. Safe. Nobody is getting through that gate tonight.”
“I know.”
“You know it up here.” He taps the side of his head once. Then his fist goes to his chest. “Not here yet. Drive. Straight route. Eighteen minutes.”
He steps back.
I drive.
The compound is asleep when I come through the gate.
The kitchen light is on at its lowest. Nonna has left a plate on the island under a cloth, the way she has left a plate for every man in this house who came home late from work she does not ask about.
I stand at the island with blood still on my hand and I do not touch the plate. My hands are not clean enough tonight to eat food Nonna made for me.
I go to my study. I hang the jacket on the back of the chair, set the folder on the desk, open the cover, and write the name in pencil on the inside, small, the way I write things I mean to act on. Andrei Volin. Reception. Six weeks. I close it.
I sit.
The door of my bedroom stands open across the gallery. The corner of the bed from the desk. Made. Empty. It has been made and empty every night since I gave her the room across the house and the one rule that goes with it. That door is hers. She crosses to mine or she does not, and no one in this family decides that but her.
I could go to her hallway. Stand outside her door. I have the name now, the man with eyes on every road she’s been on, and I want to walk to her room and put my body between her and every doorway she has ever been watched from, and I want it so badly my hands are flat on the desk and my jaw is locked and the blood on my knuckles is drying and I am not moving.
I don’t go.
The door is hers. I gave it to her and I don’t get to take it back because I am not the man I was this morning. Tonight I am the man who lost control in that room, and I do not bring that man to her door.
