Page 40 of Merciless Daddy

“I’m not under duress.”

He looked at my torn wedding dress, Sal’s coat, the butterfly closures on Sal’s cheek.

“Of course not.”

“Who is Katerina?”

“A woman much smarter than me.” He handed over the bags. “Black leggings. Cashmere jumper. Socks. Underwear. Things for washing. She made the selections. I carried them because apparently I have arms and no judgment.”

Sal stood at the kitchen counter behind him, saying nothing.

I opened the bag.

Black leggings. Soft enough to slide through my fingers. Thick socks. Underwear still folded in tissue paper. A large dark grey cashmere jumper. A toothbrush. Face wash. A hair tie. Things a woman I had never met had thought to send because she understood the small humiliations of arriving somewhere without any of your own things.

The second bag held pastries. Honey-dark baklava. A glossy braided bread dusted with sesame. Something warm with orange and cardamom rising from the paper.

“I don’t need charity,” I said.

Tonio’s expression changed. The charm did not leave it, exactly. It just stepped aside.

“Don't let Kat hear you call it charity,” he said. “She’ll go ballistic.”

I looked at the bag again.

“Thank her,” I said.

“Of course.”

He left after that. Sal closed the door behind him.

I took the clothes into the bathroom and locked it, which was childish because I knew he would not come in. Still, my hand shook once on the latch.

The mirror gave me back a stranger. Hair tangled. Mouth bruised at one corner. Shoulder bare under shredded white silk. I looked like a bride after a fire.

Not how I wanted to look the day after my wedding day.

I stripped out of the dress slowly.

The leggings fit. The underwear fit. The cashmere jumper fell almost to my knees, soft and heavy over my skin. I put on the socks and stood there in them for a minute, staring at my own feet.

Practical, I told myself.

Nothing more.

When I came out, the penthouse was quiet.

I found Sal in the second bathroom, standing over the sink. There was fresh blood on the white marble.

“You reopened the cut.”

He looked at me in the mirror. “It’s nothing.”

“Of course it is.”

He had removed two butterfly closures. The cut on his cheek had split at the edge, red against the dark stubble. I remembered the firebird pin going in. The resistance of his skin. The hot spill of blood.

Guilt moved through me again, but it did not travel alone.