Page 94 of The Butcher's Wife
Upstairs in our bedroom, Annetta paces around the room like a caged tiger.
“Since when do you understand Italian?” I ask.
“Since Frederico’s mom refused to speak to me in English. She thought it was embarrassing that I didn’t understand.”
“What?”
She waves me off, an urgent brightness to her face. “Dom, it’sMarco.”
The name tugs on a hazy memory. The last time I saw Frederico’s younger brother was at Annetta’s wedding, as I watched the whole thing unfold from a far-off distance. Marco was the best man. I remember thinking he looked like a bastard, like all of Frederico’s family.
“I thought I was just going crazy, that I saw Frederico outside the church, but I think it was Marco.”
“What the fuck do you mean you saw him outside the church?”
“I mean, I saw him outside the church after our wedding. I thought he was Frederico because he shaved and was wearing Frederico’s clothes, but now I’m certain—it’s Marco.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “So you could’ve told me I was seeing things? Like with the elevator?”
“Fuck.” I groan. “Alright.”
“He was always taking trips to Cuba. He”—she presses a hand to her mouth—“he used to bring me souvenirs when he came back. I never knew he was snatching girls off the street, and I never would’ve guessed they’d bring them as far as Chicago.”
“Did they ever find out that you knew about the girls?”
“At the end, yeah.”
So, the Chiarellis have more than one reason to hunt Annetta. If she knew about the girls they were trafficking, her running back to Chicago could fuck up their whole cash cow operation.
I’m going to enjoy killing off that damn family one by one.
She bites her lip and looks away from me. “Giulia toldme Frederico would never cheat on me with another Italian woman, and that I should count myself lucky that he wasonlysleeping with foreign girls.”
“What?”
Her voice comes out as a near whisper. “She gave me pills to induce ovulation, and she said they were gonna use one of those girls as a surrogate if I didn’t give Frederico a baby soon.”
Rage burns into my chest like a hot poker through the heart. Before I can think, I grab Annetta and crush her against me.
Useless. I’m useless. I keep thinking I can fight her enemies, that I can kill anyone who wants to hurt her, but I can’t undo all the shit she’s had to go through. There’s no protection from the past.
She mumbles against my chest, but the blood pounding in my ears is so loud that I have to draw her back to arm’s length to hear her.
“We have to help them.”
The girls. She’s talking about the girls.
“We’ll get them a hotel tonight,” I promise. “I’ll go have a word with Riccardo.”
“No.” Her voice is firm. “I mean, the rest of the girls. All the other ones who are being trafficked.”
I bark out a laugh. “You can’t be serious. That’s gotta be hundreds of thousands of people.”
“We can help some of them.”
“You need to focus on yourself. How are you going to help those people when you can barely keep yourself alive?”
