Kill Order Kiss novel · Chapter 5 of 16

Chapter 5: Beet Blood

The line went dead.

Beppe sat there with the phone in his hand.

I looked at the door of the plane.

There was nowhere to go.

There was thirty thousand feet of air and then the Atlantic.

"Beppe," I said.

He didn't move.

"Beppe. Look at me."

He looked at me.

His eyes were wet.

"Her name is Marisa," he said. "My daughter. She wants to work in the children's hospital."

"I know. You showed me her picture at Christmas."

He reached into his jacket.

I stopped breathing.

He took out a peppermint and put it on the table between us.

Then he put his face in his hands and cried.

I didn't know what to do.

So I unwrapped the peppermint and ate it.

"I'm not going to do it," he said into his hands. "God help me. I can't."

"Then what happens to Marisa?"

He wiped his face with his sleeve.

"Nothing, if he believes it."

"Then we make him believe it."

He looked up.

"What?"

"The picture has to be good enough for Aurelio Ricci and Carmine Greco." I stood up. "Do you have a kitchen on this plane?"

The galley was the size of a closet.

There was a fridge full of juice and champagne and a basket of snacks for rich people.

I found bottled beet juice, the fancy kind.

I found honey, a jar of cherry jam and a packet of cocoa.

I mixed it all in a coffee mug with a spoon.

It was too pink.

I added more cocoa, and it went too brown.

I added a little coffee from the pot.

I held it up to the light.

It was the color of the floor under my father's counter.

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