From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Floor Beside the Bed

"The staff will check the sheets in the morning," Tancredi said once the housekeeper had gone. "Ignazio pays one of them."

"Which one?"

"I haven't found out yet."

"So the Donna can't sleep in a different room."

"Not on the first night."

I looked at the bed, and I looked at him.

"You take the floor," I said.

"I intended to."

He pulled a blanket from the closet and laid it out on the rug beside the bed, with his jacket folded under it for a pillow.

He took off his tie and his watch.

He rolled up his shirtsleeves.

I saw his forearms for the first time, corded, with a long white scar down the left one.

I turned my back and went into the bathroom, because there were limits to what a woman could pretend not to notice.

When I came out in the nightgown the housekeeper had left, he was lying on the rug with his eyes on the ceiling.

"Good night," I said.

"Good night, Dottoressa."

I got into the bed and lay stiffly on my back.

The house was very quiet.

For a long time I heard only his breathing, slow and even, and I could not have said whether he was asleep.

Then I was.

The stairwell came back the way it always did.

Concrete walls. A buzzing yellow light. A steel rail under my hand.

His face above me, and the gun low at his side.

I tried to say don't, and I couldn't make a sound.

I woke up with a scream in my throat.

Somebody had my wrist.

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