Page 71 of Petrichor

“Is Jerry a friend too? Was showing up at my place all beaten part of the plan?” I’ve heard him angry, annoyed, horny, bored, sarcastic. Never this emotionless.

“Plan?” He points at the table. It’s covered in pictures. I take a step closer. I’m in all of them. At the supermarket, walking down the street, talking to the postman, with Art at a café. They’re from different days. Weeks.

“It was extreme, but you got in,” he keeps going impassively.

Does he seriously think I’d go that far to get closer to him? It’s like he’s refusing to see me. From the beginning, he just kept those walls between us, never giving me a chance.

“Fuck you, Marco.”

No threatening comeback from him. Instead, he cocks his arm back and punches the guy in the face. Then on the side and the other side. He keeps going, again and again and again. His fury, almost palpable in front of me, leaves me breathless.

I know Marco is a violent man. It’s part of his job, and I witnessed it with my own eyes the night I met him at the bar. But as he turns and I look into his empty eyes, I know what’s different. There’s nothing of the man I know there. He’s turned into someone else, someone who doesn’t care what the truth is.

“Don’t fucking move!” That arctic tone makes me realize I took a couple of steps back.

I’m afraid of him. My mind and my body are screaming at me that I’m in danger. I feel like hiding behind those veiled, dead, pitch-black eyes, there’s a beast on a hunt, ready to pounce on his prey. He’ll kill me and then swallow me whole.

“Tell me what Mario is scheming. Art is helping him, I want to know what they are planning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know he’s the one leaving instructions for Denny to screw us over. What’s the code?” He pronounces the question slowly.

“I don’t know anything about your mob…stuff. All I can say is that Art is my friend. He’s a good guy.”

“He’s a mob prince, son of the second most vicious boss in New York. I can’t believe this clueless act of yours is real.”

“You’re good too,” I state, my voice wavers but not my heart.

“Good?” He lets out a bitter chuckle. “You know who this fucker is?” He grabs the man’s hair and yanks his head back to give me a better look.

I shake my head because I really don’t know who he is. I just glanced at him once. Still, an uncontrollable tremble assails my body. The summer storm is raging outside and inside me as well.

“No? He works for Mario Enzino. He’s one of the men who tried to shoot me when I went to buy ice cream…for you.” Is he implying that I had something to do with it? I was devastated when I heard he got shot.

“What happened to you to make you doubt my intentions—meso strongly?”

His nostrils flare, eyes darken, lips tighten even more. He spins around and strikes the man hard in the gut, making him cough and then hurl. I suddenly feel the urge to do the same. My stomach is twisted in knots. Violence has been a constant part of my life. It follows me everywhere I go, or perhaps it’s because I don’t know anything else.

“Then why do you have his picture on your phone?” His voice reverberates inside the room.

How does he know that? Did he check my cell? Did he hack into it?

“Do you want to know where the other men are?” He glances at the four big iron steel doors on the other side of the room. “Well, where what’s left of them is.”

He grabs the man’s face and slaps it. “Hey,stronzo, look up. I said look up, or I’ll use those battery cables on your nipples again.”

I have to push a hand to my mouth to stop the bile from coming out.

“Do you know theprettyguy standing there?” He pronounces the word pretty in such a stony way.

But I don’t have time to feel hurt about it, because terror overwhelms me when I see recognition filling the bloodied man’s eyes.

“It’s-it’s not what you think,” I whisper. Is this why Don Sebastiano wanted me to leave? He told me how it would end, and I stayed anyway.

“Now you know what I think, Joel?”

Hearing my name hurts. It reminds me of suffering and loss. And the displeased way he utters it is like a hand squeezing around my heart.

---