Page 53

Dried plane tree leaves blanketed the benches. Pigeons pecked at the fountain.

"Sit here." He set the tote on the green-painted bench, pointing at the seat. "Don't move. Give me five minutes."

I sat down mechanically, spine rigid.

Marcelo turned, crossed the gravel path, and pushed open the white-painted door of the public restroom by the park.

I pressed my right palm against the bench's icy wooden slats, left hand clamped around the leather cuff I'd just gotten. The metal scissor edge dug into my flesh, sharp pain threading up my nerves.

Footsteps crunched through dead leaves, approaching.

Marcelo came back.

His sleeves still rolled up, his solid forearms dotted with undried water droplets, skin pale from the cold wash. The blood on his jaw was gone, leaving only a faint red water mark.

He sat at the other end of the bench, an arm's width between us.

He turned his face toward me, gray-green eyes sinking like two stones under dappled tree shadows, unblinking, fixed on my face.

"I know what you want to ask." His voice was steady, palms pressed on his knees. "Look at me. Ruby."

My fingers dug into the bench's edge gaps, meeting his gaze. I couldn't speak a word.

Chapter 13

Marcelo

Cold seeped through my dress pants from the bench.

I stared down at my freshly washed hands. Water had carried away the dark red from under my nails, but the bruise blooming purple-black across my knuckles remained.

Ruby sat an arm's length away, fingers digging into the wooden slats beneath her until her knuckles went bone-white. Those amber eyes locked on my face from the shadows like two pieces of terrified honey frozen mid-drip. She barely blinked.

Back in that dead-end alley, I'd crossed a line.

In Manhattan, in Sicily, even in any Brooklyn back alley reeking of cheap cigars and motor oil—shattering some bastard's jaw, snapping his finger bones—for me, that was just another Tuesday. Didn't even need to write it down. But I shouldn't have shredded that civilized skin in front of a twenty-four-year-old American girl.

But if it happened again?

Thinking of that motorcycle trash ripping her bag strap, yanking her down hard onto the cobblestones—my palm still twitched violently. Fuck it. She got hurt right under my nose. I'd never let that slide.

"You're scared," I said. My voice sounded especially low in the empty shade.

Her chest heaved once. Lips parted, but no sound came out. Just kept staring warily at my rolled-up sleeves—where the tail end of my black snake tattoo showed.

"I owe you an explanation, Ruby." I turned toward her, elbows on my knees, cutting the distance between us by half a foot.

"You almost killed him." Her voice came out light, trembling despite herself. "Marcelo, the way you looked at him... like you were stepping on a roach."

"He hurt you, Ruby." I didn't deny it. My tone came out cold, almost cruel. But then I forced the violence back down, replaced it with something tired. Hoarse.

I leaned back, gaze drifting past her head toward Paris's gray horizon.

"I was nine years old when three men stuffed me in a burlap sack outside our estate near Florence," I said.

Ruby's tense shoulders hitched ever so slightly.

"My mother came from old aristocracy. Lived her whole life in an ivory tower. Kind, weak. She opened her heart to every vagrant and servant who came begging. No defenses." I twisted the snake-head ring on my left ring finger, voice flat as if reciting someone else's résumé. "She hired a young gardener who claimed his wife had cancer. Not only lent him money, but let him wander freely through the main house. Three months later, that gardener and two killers from Naples shoved me into a van that smelled like hay behind the stables."