Chapter 6: Eze

Cillian was over Lexie before the glass finished falling, his whole back between her and the window.

Ciro had me on the floor behind the chair with his arm over my head.

The bread box was open. I don't know who opened it.

Both guns were out again.

"Stay down," Ciro said.

I didn't stay down.

I got up on my knees and looked over the sink.

Under the streetlight, a man in a green Eagles cap was running for a scooter.

He was limping. He didn't look back.

The scooter whined around the corner and was gone.

"Eagles cap," I said. "He's from home."

Lexie sat on the floor with glass in her hair, holding her stomach with both hands.

"Peanut's fine," she said, before anybody asked. "I'm fine. I'm furious."

Ciro looked at me.

"Villa," he said. "Tonight. Both of you. Both of us. Under one roof."

"Term three," Lexie said.

"Nobody's splitting you," Cillian said. "We all go."

The villa sat on the cliff above Eze.

White stone, blue shutters, a pool that ran right out to the edge of the sky.

Lexie stood in the front hall and turned in a slow circle.

"Forty million," she said.

"Thirty-two," I said. "The marble's fake upstairs."

"How do you know?"

"I went to the bathroom."

Ciro handed me a key to the room at the end of the hall.

"It locks from the inside," he said.

"Good."

By the second day, we had house rules taped to the big steel fridge.

Lexie wrote them on the back of a takeout menu.

GUNS IN THE SAFE, NOT THE BREAD.

NO BUSINESS CALLS AT THE TABLE.

NOBODY TOUCHES LEXIE'S YOGURT. (THIS MEANS CILLIAN.)

Ciro added one at the bottom in his gold pen.

NOBODY CRITICIZES THE COOK.

He cooked every night, sleeves rolled up, clams and linguine without a recipe.

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