Page 89 of The Kingpin’s Bride

His eyes flicked to Camilla. She was watching us over the rim of the bowl, milk on her lip. He exhaled once, sharp, and left the kitchen. I sat beside her. She leaned into my side immediately, still eating, like proximity was part of the meal.

“Are you going to leave?” The question landed so small and so heavy I had to swallow before I answered.

“No, of course not,” I said. “I’m not leaving.”

She nodded like she’d been waiting for the official ruling. Then, after another bite: “Is he going to leave?”

“Um… No. I don’t think so.”

She considered this too. “He looks like a man from TV.”

I looked toward the hallway. The shower had started in the distance.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The handsome one that sells houses.”

I giggled.

“Yeah,” I said. “He does exactly that.”

She ate the rest of her food in silence. When the bowl was empty she pushed it away and crawled into my lap without asking. I wrapped the pink jacket tighter around her and rocked her the way I had in the doorway.

Matteo came back in a black T-shirt, hair damp, the blood gone. He stopped in the entrance like he needed permission to re-enter his own kitchen. Camilla watched him over my shoulder.

“Hi,” she said.

He blinked. “Hey, little lady.”

“You look less tired now.”

Something almost like a laugh punched out of him, short and startled. “Thank you, Miss.”

She studied him a second longer. Then she held out one small hand, palm up, the way kids do when they’re offering something they don’t have a name for.

Matteo stared at it. I felt him hesitate, the full-body flinch of a man who had been taught that hands reaching for him meant a request or a weapon. Then he stepped forward and crouched again, the same careful drop he’d used beside her bed. He didn’t take her hand. He just put his much larger one on the table next to it, close enough that she could choose.

She patted the back of his knuckles twice, solemn as a judge, then withdrew. Then her eyes dropped. Matteo’s forearm was still resting on the table, close enough that the black ink caught the kitchen light. Vines. A skull face half-hidden under the sleeve of the new T-shirt. A date in Roman numerals. Something that looked, to a four-year-old, exactly like a very angry bird.

Camilla leaned forward until her nose was almost on his wrist.

“You have drawings,” she whispered, awed.

Matteo went still. “Kind of.”

She frowned, considering the word like it might be a trick. “Did you color on yourself?”

“Someone else did,” he said.

“Did it tickle?”

“No,” he grinned.

“Did it hurt?”

A pause. “A little.”

She gasped the way children gasp when they discover a new injustice. Then she poked the bird with one careful finger, as if it might peck her back.