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He grits his teeth. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“I just did.” I jerk my chin, indicating I want him gone. “I’ll keep in touch.”
Michela comes out of the bathroom and heads for the exit. Since the security thinks my wife’s passing through, they part before her and the guards at the doors open them so she can walk out.
I push away from the wall and reach into my pocket to grab my phone just as I catch her turning and giving the room one last sweep with her gaze. She’s looking for me at the table, and when she doesn’t find me, she starts to walk away.
For a moment, I think I might let her go, the way my father let my mom go when she walked away from us. I was nine, and I chased her down the driveway and onto the street, but I wasn’t fast enough. My little feet tripped over themselves and made me fall on my face.
When I lifted my head from the asphalt, she was already gone. I never saw her again in the flesh. Only in the obituary. Years later, I learned she never wanted this life in the first place. Michela doesn’t either. She’s an innocent, and she doesn’t belong in my dark world.
Better off without you.
And yet, I press my phone against my ear.
My driver answers on the first ring.
“The girl from the apartment,” I say. “Is she running?”
“No, sir. I have her.”
“In the car?”
“Yes, sir. She asked if I could give her a ride home.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, of course.”
“Without my permission?”
“Sir, she said she’s your wife.”
I stare at my phone. “Say that again?”
“She said she is your wife and that she would like a ride home.”
I’ll be damned. “I don’t suppose she’s going back to the apartment?”
“No, sir. Her mother’s house.”
“Be sure she arrives safely.”
The line goes dead, and I stare at my phone, then grit my teeth and dial my driver again. “I want a report every five minutes. Do we have anyone in her neck of the woods?”
“I believe we do.”
“Activate them.”
8
OLD FRIENDS
MICHELA
On the way home, I’m still trying to figure out how I got to the back of this limousine that smells like fine leather and subtle lavender air fresher. In the bathroom, after Corrado didn’t deny his involvement in the criminal world, I thought about leaving. Not that I expected him to admit such a thing, but I’d hoped for a denial.
Once I summoned the courage to leave the birthday party, and when I got outside, I told the driver, whose name is Hank, that I was Corrado’s wife and asked if he could drop me off at my mom’s. Without fuss, he obliged. A good thing too, because if he refused, I might’ve walked home.
