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“You look terrible,” he told me.
I glanced down at my hands. They were raw across the knuckles. Someone else’s blood had dried in the creases.
“So do you.”
“Yes, but I have charm,” he claimed.
“You have a broken nose is what you have.”
I moved past him toward my room. He caught the back of my shirt and pulled. I turned fast, knocking his arm away. His smile faded. Alessio studied me for a moment. He was one of the few people who had never been afraid to do that. He looked past every flaw, every weakness and every warning written across my face.
Then he held out the whiskey. I stared at it.
“You need it more than I do.”
Alessio didn’t move. Instead, he leaned against the wall opposite me.
“What happened?”
“You know what happened.”
“I know what you were ordered to do.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because I am asking what happened to you, Demi.”
I took the bottle from his hand and drank. The whiskey burned all the way down my throat. Alessio watched me with a kind of patience I had resented even then.
“They had a boy with them,” I explained.
His expression changed as he stood to attention.
I looked at the floorboards between us.
“He was hiding beneath the table.”
Alessio said nothing.
“The father reached for his gun. I fired. The boy saw me.”
“How old?”
“Seven. Perhaps eight.”
“Was he hurt?”
“No.”
I took another drink.
“He didn’t cry. He only stared at me.”
Alessio lowered his voice. “Demi.”
“I saw myself in him.”
The words came out before I could stop them. For a long moment, the corridor held nothing but our breathing. Then Alessio stepped closer.
