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The voice is familiar, but my instincts sink my teeth into his hand. Even through the leather, I make him yell and drop me. I spin around, face to face with a giant of a man, his hair shaved close and expression twisted with anger.
Dario wasn’t quite so big and menacing the last time I remember seeing him when we were still in high school. He has a gun in his hand and pain in his eyes. He swears under his breath and presses a button on the radio clipped into his vest.
“I’ve got her,” he says to some faceless entity on the other end. “Contessa, come on. We don’t have much time.”
I back up when he reaches for my hand.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, not understanding. He shouldn’t be here.
“Tessa,” he implores. When I don’t respond, his grip on the gun adjusts. “What the fuck are you doing? Come on, Tessa! Don’t make me point this at you.”
I ignore the gun in his hand as we stare each other down.
“And then do what with it?” I ask, not feeling the fear that I should.
His jaw clenches.
“Contessa, I’m trying to help you—” he levels the gun on me, “but that can happen one of two ways. If they have you so fucked up that you don’t even remember me anymore, there’s nothing to bring back—”
It’s a bluff.
I back up, ignoring the threat.
Dario takes a slow, half-step forward, reaching out as if I’m a wild animal that he can tame.
“Tess…”
He lunges all at once. He gets his hand around my arm as I scream and kick against him. Suddenly, something snaps against his head, staggering him. He reels away from me, stumbling over his own feet. Behind him, Salvatore seamlessly rights the gun in his hands again and puts three bullets into the man’s chest.
The shots are deafening, the world on mute. Dario tries to get up and fails.
Salvatore collapses on top of him, cracking his fist across Dario’s face. He lifts him up just to punch him into the ground again. The limp body flops beneath him, not resisting anymore, eating hit after hit, until that familiar face starts to rearrange. Slowly, he loses the definition of who he was. The boy who showed me how to shoot off firecrackers, when I was afraid of them, who always shared his dessert with me at Christmas when my father was intent on keeping me thin and desirable—he disappears beneath black and blue skin, swollen eyes, his nose crushed into a pulp.
It doesn’t feel real.
He shouldn’t be here, my mind keeps saying. Why is he here?
“Sal,” I yell, barely able to hear myself over the ringing in my head.
He doesn’t stop, cracks Dario’s face to the side with another hit. His teeth are bared like an animal, all rage.
The only thing Salvatore has left to break are his own knuckles, but he keeps going, like he won’t stop until there’s nothing left of him.
A few feet away, Nate peeks out from behind the curtain, his face ghostly, terrified tears streaming down his cheeks, both hands clamped over his little ears.
I put my hand between Salvatore’s shoulder blades.
“Please,” I whisper.
He snaps out of it all at once, as if shaken from a trance. Blood bubbles from Dario’s busted lips, the only sign of life left in him. Slowly, Sal pulls himself off the floor, looking me over head to toe, his breathing ragged and hands bloody as he touches me, as if to make sure I’m still in one piece.
“Tessa. . .”
For the first time, he hears Nate sobbing. Realization dawns. He steps toward him, but the boy bumps back into the wall and cries harder. I see the flash of hurt in Salvatore’s expression, there one moment and then gone the next. I scoop Nate up into my arms instead. He shakes like a leaf.
“I had to find him—”
He doesn’t make me explain myself, dragging me along by the arm as he ushers us to the basement again. I glance over my shoulder once. Dario has not moved.
