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Not yet.
Not ever, if I’m being honest.
“The edge is sharp,” she says about the seashell.
I move it out of her reach. “Don’t cut yourself.”
She smiles. “You’re protective.”
You have no idea.
I nod, discomfort with intimate conversation growing like mold in my chest.
“Oh my God, the fish!” Cristina leaps off the bed as if it’s on fire. She flings open the old closet, almost tearing the door from the hinges. A dress practically flies over her head before she sprints out into the courtyard, leaving the door swinging.
I prop my head on my arm and chuckle at her theatrics.
The bedroom doors close, and I sigh, content to lie here for a while.
The hideous wallpaper takes me back to memories of my grandparents’ part of our manor in Switzerland. I remember my grandpa sneaking outside for a smoke. He spent most of their marriage thinking Grandma didn’t know he smoked a pipe after she’d gone to bed.
Until one night, when he was outside, she locked the bedroom door on him and wouldn’t let him back in. Grandpa spent the night in the living room, where Grandma found him in the morning, arm hanging over the edge of the couch, his pipe on the floor.
I found her standing near him. She knew Granpa would never get up, and she just stood there like a statue. I remember walking up to her and showing her the ripe tomatoes our staff picked from her garden. I had been waiting for her to wake so she could make me breakfast. It’s what grandma did.
But that morning, she asked me to check if Grandpa was alive.
I touched his forehead as if checking his temperature.
He was cold.
After he passed away, Grandma was never the same again. Our family was never the same either. That was when the dissent started, when my uncle Gio started looking at me as a threat instead of as his beloved nephew. My father, a perceptive, intelligent man, picked up on Gio’s subtle and not-so-subtle threats and exiled him to the island.
I wished he’d killed him.
I wished he hadn’t loved him like a brother. Love made him stupid.
I better take care that that’s not what’s happening to me with Cristina, or I’ll risk not only my life, but the lives of my family.
“Fuck.” I scrub my face and grunt as I stand. Shaking out my thigh, I wince from the sting as the wound continues to heal.I’m happy with how the healing is progressing. The connective-tissue gel injections are an absolute miracle.
Once dressed, I start toward the house, but Drago appears at the French doors. He peeks inside and waves at me like the creeper he is.
I open the door and exit the bedroom, inhaling the heavy air outside. The humidity makes it harder to breathe. I expect him to tell me the food’s ready, but instead, he leads the way to the lawn chairs and sits on one.
I swipe his New York team baseball hat from his head and put it on to shield my eyes from the sun. He unhooks the sunglasses from the front of his T-shirt and puts them over his eyes.
“The jet’s ready,” he says. “I need the girl distracted for a while longer so I can sanitize.”
“I’ll handle the girl.”
Drago cracks his neck and purses his lips. I can tell he wants to say something.
“Just say it.”
“All right. Last year, when Corrado brought his wife to my safe house, and you ordered me to put a dial-explosive into her phone in case she couldn’t be trusted, she dialed 911.”
“Since she’s alive and well, I presume you either disobeyed my order and never put it in, or it failed to trigger, in which case you need to improve your craft. The plane needs to blow up, and I’m relying on your skills. You know how much I hate incompetence.”
