Page 127 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
“About you?” He lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh. “Alice worried too much. That was her problem. She made everything into a crisis.”
My hands start shaking.
I tuck them beneath the table.
Stefano sees anyway.
Leon does not.
“She was unhappy,” he says. “Fragile. You know how she was. She didn't understand how to let things go.”
For one sick second, I hear the old doubt in them. The doubt he planted when Alice vanished. The version of her I had been forced to question because he said it calmly enough, and thepolice had not had enough to prove otherwise. If I hesitate now, he wins twice.
Stefano’s hand grips my thigh beneath the table. Hard. Grounding.
Leon sees the movement and mistakes it too.
“You do not have to sit there,” he says to me. “Whatever he told you, whatever he paid, there are ways out of these arrangements.”
My laugh comes out ugly.
“You are going to offer me safety?”
“I am going to offer you perspective.”
“No,” I say. “You are going to offer me another lie because you think women only recognize cages when someone locks the door. I am here to expose what you did.”
His eyes harden.
I lean forward, murmuring, “You killed my sister.”
“Careful.”
“You made her afraid to call her own family. You made your children afraid to sleep. You turned them into something you could trade when they stopped being useful.” My voice doesn’t rise. It does not need to. “And you are sitting here acting like you lost a shipment.”
Leon’s jaw flexes.
Stefano says nothing.
That is worse.
Leon reaches for his drink at last. “You have no idea what Alice was like behind closed doors.”
My body goes cold.
The phrase is familiar. Every abuser’s favorite room. Behind closed doors. As if isolation changes the rules. As if no one can be held responsible for what happens where no one else sees.
“I know exactly what she was like,” I tell him. “She was trying to leave you.”
His eyes flicker.
There.
Not guilt.
Fear.
Raven’s voice fizzles once through the tiny receiver hidden in my ear.
