Page 80 of Ruthless Daddy
I sat very still. The bakery felt like a photograph of itself, perfectly composed, perfectly empty.
He said, “There is more.” He was trying to get it all out at once, as if the telling was a kind of surgery. “Last night, after—” and he stopped, as if unsure if we were allowed to mention the night, “—after, I realized I couldn’t keep it from you. Even if it meant I lost you.”
His voice was softer, now. “If you want out, we can be gone by sundown. I know people, places. I have cash, documents. We can disappear, Angela. My family would hunt me, but I would do it. For you.”
It was so earnest that I almost laughed. Instead, I stared at the table, at the roll cooling in front of me, the way the light hit the surface and made a perfect gold ring around it.
I said, “What about the plan?”
He shook his head. “Fuck the plan. If you want to run, we run. If you want to stay, we stay. You choose.”
I tried to picture it. A life on the run, again, but with Pietro beside me. I tried to imagine him anywhere but here, without his family, his city, his routines. I tried to imagine me with him, and not resenting the cost.
My mouth felt full of cotton. I reached for the coffee, then changed my mind.
I said, “You’d leave your family for me?”
He said, “I would do anything for you.” The way he said it was not romantic. It was a plain statement, like saying, The sky is grey. The city is cold. I love you.
I nodded, but I didn’t answer right away.
I thought about all the ways this could play out. I thought about the three lives I had already lost—Angela, Anna, the girl before either. I thought about the math: the probability of us getting away clean; the probability that, even if we did, Enzo would just send another crew, and another, until one of us was dead.
I thought about what it would mean to be the woman who cost him his family.
I looked up at him, really looked, and tried to see the Pietro who had saved me from the men in the club.Who had called me Baby Girl. Who had made such sweet love to me last night. But I didn’t see him. Instead, I saw a man who had been holding his breath. I saw a man who was ready to jump, if only I said the word.
I opened my mouth to say something.
He held up one hand, quick, palm out. His eyes shifted—just a tick, just enough to catch it.
He said, in a low voice, “Don’t look now, but there’s a man in a grey coat at the corner. He’s been there since we walked in.”
I didn’t turn. I didn’t have to.
“Marseilles?” I said.
“Yes. I think so.”
I thought about that. I let the information fill my body, cold and hot at once. I said, “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. It could already be too late.”
I looked at the roll in my hand. I tore it in half, then put one half back in the basket. I placed the other half in my mouth and chewed, slow, deliberate, the way I did when I needed to kill the panic.
He reached for my hand under the table. I let him have it. I squeezed, hard, once.
He said, “We go out the back.”
I nodded.
He stood, leaving cash on the table—enough to cover the rolls and the coffee and the booth and maybe the whole bakery for a week. He looked at me, one last time, as if to memorize my face.
I said, “I’m ready.”
He led me past the counter, into the kitchen, then out a narrow door into the alley.
The air was colder than before. The sky hadn’t changed at all.
