After He Watched Me Drown, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Rules

Remo hides her in the boathouse loft, gives her three rules and keeps his hands to himself; at dawn Cesare drives up with two guards and calls her home.

I got into the truck because my legs would not carry me to the road.

Remo Salerno pulled out of the cottage lot with his lights off.

"The airport road has two Brancato cars on it," he said. "Cesare's men. They've been told to look for a girl with a duffel."

"They want to bring me back for the leftovers?"

"They want you quiet until they decide what to do about you."

I held my passport in both hands.

"Why are you helping me?"

"I'm the lake captain. Somebody fell in my lake."

That was not an answer, and we both knew it.

He drove along the north shore until the pines closed in over the road.

At the end of it stood a long grey boathouse with a patrol boat tied inside, rocking in the dark.

He took me up an outside stair to a loft over the slips.

There was a cot with a wool blanket, a space heater, a kettle, and a shelf of manuals on diesel engines.

He put a dry sweatshirt on the cot.

"Mine," he said. "It'll hang on you."

I did not touch it yet.

"I need a flight to Florence," I said. "I have three days to accept the exchange."

"Then we'll find you a flight."

"Tonight?"

"Not tonight. Whoever cancelled yours did it from a phone on the cottage network. They will watch the booking site for a new one."

"Fiora."

"Or Cesare. Or the person they both answer to."

He said it flatly, and I saw him decide not to say more.

He stood by the stair with his arms folded.

Under the rolled sleeve, a thick old scar ran along his right forearm from wrist to elbow.

"Before you sleep, there are three rules," he said. "They're mine, so they're short."

"Go ahead."

"You can walk out of any door at any hour. I won't stop you and I won't follow unless you ask."

"Fine."

"I won't touch you unless you ask me to."

I looked at his hands.

They were large and chapped, with black grease worked into the creases of the knuckles.

"I don't plan to."

"Good. Third one. You tell me the truth about what you want, even when it's stupid."

"That's a strange rule for a boatman."

"It's a rule for anybody who ends up alone with me at night."

I almost laughed.

It came out as a cough.

Then I was coughing so hard I had to sit down on the cot.

He crossed the loft in three steps, then stopped an arm's length away.

"May I?"

He meant my forehead.

I nodded.

His palm was warm and dry.

It covered my whole forehead.

"You're burning," he said.

"I was in a lake."

"You were in it for a long time."

I was too tired to ask how long he knew.

His hand stayed longer than a fever check needed.

When I looked up, he was watching my mouth.

His jaw set, and he took the hand back and put it in his pocket.

I told myself it was the fever.

I told myself a lot of things that night.

He filled the kettle, found aspirin in a tin, and set the cup on the floor by the cot so I would not have to reach.

"Drink all of it," he said. "Then sleep."

"Where will you be?"

"On the dock. I can see the road from there."

"You'll freeze."

"I've done worse."

I almost said stay.

I said, "Thank you for pulling me out."

He was already on the stair.

For a second his back went rigid.

"Don't thank me yet," he said.

I thought it was modesty.

I lay down in his sweatshirt, which smelled of cedar and engine oil.

The heater ticked, and I slept harder than I had in months.

Engines woke me.

It was gray outside the loft window, and the lake was flat and white.

Two black SUVs came down the pine road and stopped on the gravel with their doors already opening.

Two of the guards from the cottage stepped out.

Behind them came Cesare in a clean polo, his hair combed and his face soft with worry.

Remo was standing on the dock below with his hands loose at his sides.

He didn't move out of the way.

Cesare lifted his voice so it would carry up to the loft.

"Silvia," he said, "come home, baby. You're sick, and you're scaring everybody."

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