The Don's Deadliest Obsession novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Two Years of Photographs

She confronts Tadeo about the photographs, the first touch lands, and Gaspare calls to say Giulia has vanished.

"You weren't supposed to find that tonight," Tadeo said behind me.

I didn't turn around.

I was looking at a photograph of myself eating a pear on the bakery's back step.

I didn't know it had been taken.

I didn't know anyone had been there.

"Tonight," I said. "So you wanted me to find it some other night."

"I wanted to tell you first."

"You gave me the key."

"I gave you every key." His voice was close and even. "I told you not to go in. I didn't think you'd listen."

"You were right."

I turned.

He stood in the doorway in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, barefoot, and the sparrow bracelet shone on his wrist.

He looked like a man who hadn't been to bed.

I walked down the wall with my arms crossed, because otherwise my hands would shake.

Me at the market.

Me at my sister's birthday.

Me on the church steps, with my head bowed.

"How long?" I asked.

"Two years."

"Who took them?"

"Men I pay."

"Why?"

He didn't answer.

"Why, Tadeo?"

"Because I wanted to know you were safe," he said. "Every day you were, I slept."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"That is the most frightening thing anyone has ever said to me."

"I know."

"You don't even know me."

"I know you take your coffee black and your water without ice," he said. "I know you count the register twice. I know you go to the cemetery on the second Sunday of every month and stand at the left side of the grave and never the right."

My throat closed.

Nobody knew that.

Not even Giulia.

On the desk by the door sat the only framed photograph in the room.

It was me at twenty-three, laughing at something out of frame, with my head tipped back.

I picked it up.

I threw it at him.

He didn't duck.

It hit the doorframe by his shoulder and burst, and glass skittered across the floor.

"You don't get to watch me laugh," I said.

I crossed the room and slapped him across the face.

It was a real slap, with my whole arm, and it turned his head.

He turned it back.

He didn't say anything, and I slapped him again.

This time he caught my wrist.

His grip was gentle, and I couldn't pull free of it.

"You touched me first," he said quietly. "Rule two."

I stared at him.

I had a dozen things to say, and none of them came out.

"That isn't funny."

"No. It isn't."

He turned my hand over.

Blood ran down my palm and dripped off my wrist onto the floor.

I hadn't felt it.

A shard of the frame had opened a line across the heel of my hand, right beside the old bread-knife scar.

"Come here," he said.

"No."

"It needs cleaning."

"I'll clean it myself."

"You can't see where the glass is." He wasn't asking. "Please, Serafina."

It was the please that did it.

The bathroom at the end of the hall was white tile and a brass faucet.

He sat me on the edge of the tub and knelt in front of me on the floor, with a first aid kit open on his knee.

He cleaned the cut with a cotton pad, and every touch was careful.

His thumb pressed my wrist to hold me still, right over the place where my pulse jumped.

He had to feel it.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm angry."

"I know that too."

He lifted a pair of tweezers and drew out a sliver of glass.

I didn't flinch.

His eyes came up to mine.

I looked away first.

My slip had slid off my shoulder, and the bathroom was small, and the heat of his body filled it.

I noticed that he was breathing slowly.

I noticed that the front of his trousers had changed, and he didn't turn away or cover it.

He didn't try to hide it, and he didn't say a word about it.

I decided it was the glass and the hour and the fact that I was half dressed in front of a man.

Anyone would have reacted that way.

That was all it was.

He wrapped a bandage around my palm and tied it off.

Then he sat back on his heels, my hand still in his.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you're thinking."

"That I'd cut my own hand off before I'd let you bleed again."

My mouth went dry.

I pulled my hand back, and he let go at once.

I didn't tell him what I was thinking, which was that I wanted him to say it again.

His phone rang on the hall floor.

He answered it on the second ring and put it on speaker.

"Quintero," he said.

"Where is she?" My father's voice was flat and cold.

"Where is who?"

"My daughter. Giulia left the house an hour ago and she isn't here. If she is with you, give her back."

Tadeo's eyes found mine.

"She isn't with me," he said.

"Then you had better hope she turns up alive." The line crackled. "Because if she doesn't, Serafina follows her."

The call cut.

In the quiet, I heard my own blood in my ears.

Giulia had run, and she was pregnant, and she was alone in the dark.

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