Page 106 of Brutal Legacy

The past sat like a boulder, holding my hope pinned down. I needed to know what had happened to this man. I knew in my gut that once I did, nothing would ever be the same, and I wasn’t sure I could cope with that.

“Make yourself at home. I have to go out.”

“Asottocapo’swork is never done,” I muttered, and then a terrible thought occurred to me. “Unless you’ve got somewhere else to go? I never thought about it before… since I’m your hostage and not your wife… if you had a girlfriend already.” The thought made me sick with jealousy, though I’d never admit that out loud.

The silence was deafening.

Elio was impassive. I couldn’t get anything from that guarded facade. I wanted to crack his head open and peer inside.

He stepped back into the hallway.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said quietly. “Don’t try to run. You wouldn’t get far.”

“I believe you,” I sighed, sinking down on the king bed. It was massive and cold.

I don’t think I ever did,I admitted to myself. Not then, and not now. I hadn’t got far.

I was still right here.

Waiting for him.

30

GEORGIA

Ilet myself wallow in my pity party for an hour after he left and then got up and dusted myself off. It was time to make myself at home, like he said. Best of all was the fact that the doors to his bedroom and office weren’t even locked. That made me think he didn’t share his space very often with others. Seeing how private he was gave me a kind of satisfaction I didn’t want to examine too closely.

I started in his office. There was a laptop, password-protected, of course, and a painfully neat desk. That was about all that made up the office. Not much to see there.

Next, I moved to his bedroom. In another life, I might have felt bad about invading his privacy. But considering how he’d left me with nothing but questions and no answers, locked up, penniless, phoneless, and desperate, I wasn’t feeling too bad about it.

As soon as I opened the bedside table, it was clear this was where he kept his private things, not at Casa Nera. There wasn’t much in his bedside drawers, but there was enough to give me a glimpse of the man he had become.

There were a couple of well-thumbed paperbacks and a set of dog tags. I picked them up, staring at his initials etched into the metal. Where and when had he worn these?

I already knew he’d been in the military — that much was obvious from his bearing and training — but I longed to know the story behind it.

Where had Elio gone? What had he seen? I had a feeling that thewhat he had seenpart was what drove him to sit at the table at night, clean his weapons, and roll the dice on tomorrow.

Beneath the dog tags there was a notebook I recognized like it was my own.

The one Elio used to write his poetry in.

I opened it, sliding my finger across the spidery black lines.

Beneath the frozen river, currents still run.

Beneath stone and concrete, seeds push through?—

And those seeds can lift whole buildings.

The past saton my shoulder and dug its claws in. He still had the notebook that he’d filled with words that summer. I gripped it tightly. I wanted to read it. I was that much of a masochist.

With a sigh, I sat on the bed with the notebook on my lap and gazed out the window. The city was dark, and the lights of the hotels and casinos glittered. Elio was out there right now.What was he doing? Who was he with? Was he really working? Should I even care?

He really could have a girlfriend. He’d been clear enough that I wasn’t his wife, only his hostage. Surely, his display in the clothing shop had been for appearances only. I could try to tell myself I didn’t care if he was with someone else, but that would have been a lie. And I didn’t have the strength to lie to myself in my own head.

Iwouldcare. I would really care.

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