Page 3 of The Butcher's Wife
Aldo stops me next to his pitch-black SUV, where Dad and Junior are already sitting inside. Through the driver’s side glass, Junior’s gaze cuts to mine, and his eyes narrow.
Dad is already settling into the backseat for a nap. He always pretends not to see the way men treat Serafina and me. Mom says he loves us in his way, but she’s too afraid to acknowledge the truth.
Aldo poses me so I’m facing him. Serafina’s fawn-colored wool coat does little against the chill that cuts through to my bones.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Aldo says, caging my biceps in his hands. His thumbs lightly graze my breasts and then press into the flesh there intentionally, stroking backand forth. “A fucking hit-and-run? Don’t worry about a thing. When we find the bastard who did it, he’s gonna pay.”
I try not to breathe as he presses a withered kiss to my lips, but when he draws back, snatching a handful of my ass, I choke on his awful scent—like sour milk. Flakes of dry skin litter his face.
When he smiles, his veneers are blinding.
Aldo releases me, leaving me stumbling into the car. Dad is snoring against the far window.
“Seat belt, Serafina,” Aldo calls from the passenger’s seat as the car pulls away.
I buckle myself with mechanical movements and face the window without seeing a thing.
The golden plants in the walkway shimmer in my mind. What did Serafina call them? I remember flicking through old photos on my DSLR on her bed, and her voice, soft and sweet from years of practice, excited to share a new perennial that turns gold in the fall. She called itAmsonia. She said it would last forever.
“Break open the cigars!” Aldo’s voice snaps me out of my reverie.
I blink away unexpected tears. Outside my window, gravel leads to Turi’s mansion in the center of manicured hedges and a field of dark, rippling grass. I haven’t been here in years.
Serafina told me Turi had recently gotten married. She said it was a scandal, but I had just gotten into a fight with my husband, and I was snippy with her. I ended the call early.
It was our last phone call.
A huge, familiar figure outside my window startles me. Everyone else has left, and I’ve been sitting in the empty car with my hands in my lap. The door swings open as Iunbuckle myself, smoke and pine needle scent coiling through my senses before I turn. A crisp black button-down wrapped around a tall, heavyset build fills my vision until the man lowers his face to study me with espresso-colored eyes. A strand of dark hair slips from his bun to brush against his thick, tattooed neck.
For the first time in three days, I feel a spark, a flicker, ofsomethingas I say his name.
“Dom.”
2
DOM
Something is wrong.
I fold my arms and lean against the wall of Turi’s formal dining room as Aldo forces laughter and pretends we’re all good buddies. He’s not the issue, not at this moment. He’s doing what I’ve known him to do for roughly the last twenty years—he arrives in a bad scene, blusters and bluffs his way through until he can get his feet under him, and attacks when people least expect it.
Tonight, his usual tactics are failing him.
Turi sits at the head of the dining room table with his wife Marisol at his side. Ignoring Aldo completely, he’s only got eyes for Junior, Aldo’s malevolent monster of a son. That’s not what’s wrong either.
Junior attacked Marisol, and now Turi’s going to kill him. Simple.
Barbara is immune to the tension in the room, his wrinkled hands clasped on his belly and his eyelids half-closed. He’s more dangerous than the doddering old man act he puts on, but even knowing that, his little nap routine is damn effective at lulling you into a false sense of security.
I rest my thumb on the waistband of my pants—a silent threat to Junior that he better behave. One sudden movement from him, and he’s eating a bullet.
Half of the people here tonight, pushing food around on their plates and pretending to drink wine, I need to protect. If I let myself get distracted, one of them could die.
So why am I so focused on the woman sitting in the chair?
I blame it on how she was acting when she got out of the car. She looked up at me with her big brown eyes, and her cheeks were wet with tears.
It’s no mysterywhy—she’s the twenty-year-old fiancée to sixty-year-old Aldo, whose past five wives have all mysteriously disappeared, Henry the Eighth-style. Hell, if I was in her shoes, I’d be crying too. Junior makes sure his stepmoms don’t last long.
