Page 93 of The Woman with the Target on her Back (Grassi Family)

The whole property was enclosed by a wrought iron fence. Yes, the ones with the pointy things on top that I’d begged as a child for him not to use.

They kill deer, I’d insisted.

There are no deer here, he’d replied.

That’s because we keep taking away their land, I’d reminded him.

And then, yeah, as you can imagine, that spiraled into a pretty epic argument. One where I’d begged my mother to come and pick me up early. But she was too worried about my father dragging her back to court to negotiate visitation again if she did it, so I sulked in my room for a whole day, glaring at the stupid spikes on top of the fence panels.

My father wasn’t one for flowers. No matter how many times I’d told him as a teenager that the native pollinators were dying en masse, and we needed to feed them. He was all about his evergreen hedges that he kept meticulously trimmed so they never got too big, never overtook the general grandeur of the home itself.

He did give in on one thing.

A small flowerbed in the back on the side of the porch. Where no one from the street would see it. He let me fill it with native ferns, butterfly bushes, and even some coneflowers.

I imagined he had it yanked out the day I stopped visiting.

“Swanky place for the chief of police. If I knew crime prevention paid this well, I might have gone into that instead of crime,” Milo said as we parked out front.

“He’s on the take,” I said as we started to climb out.

“Milo, stay here, keep an eye,” August demanded. “Aurelio, around the back,” he went on.

“And us?” I asked.

“Walking through the front door. Just a daughter visiting her father,” he said, putting his hand to the small of my back. “Do you have a key?”

“I have the code. If he didn’t change it,” I said as we approached the door with its expensive security system that reminded me a lot of the one at August’s apartment. Video capabilities and all.

Heart hammering, I went to plug in the code, but realize the system wasn’t engaged.

“What’s up?” August asked, having turned away either so he didn’t see the code, or simply to watch the street.

“It’s not locked,” I said, watching him turn, brows raised. “Is that unusual?” he asked.

“My dad is a nut about security,” I told him.

“Okay, I go first,” August said, reaching for his gun, then positioning himself in front of me.

One glance toward the street told me that Milo had picked up on August taking it out because his hand was positioned inside his jacket too, likely holding onto the gun to pull it out at a moment’s notice.

August moved into the foyer, and I kept close to his back.

There was a grand center staircase leading up with large doorways on either side of the foyer leading to the study and the dining room.

It was decorated in a sort of timeless style which I hadn’t hated growing up because at least it had some natural wood and stone elements to make up for the fact that he seemed allergic to softer materials or art of any kind.

He kept the interior as pristine as the exterior.

There was never a spot on a counter, a smudge on the wall, a fingerprint on the windows. Thanks, of course, to a twice-weekly cleaning service.

As a kid, I used to test his anal tendencies by leaving little messes around and seeing if or when they were cleaned up. A pencil mark, barely visible, on the wall by my desk? Gone by my next visit. Same went for a towel I wedged in the back of my sink cabinet in my bathroom. It took a full two months of visits, though, for someone to finally find the little pencil mural I drew on my closet wall, cleverly hidden on that small wall on the side beside the door.

That was why this was so shocking.

“What is it?” August whispered when my hands grabbed the back of his jacket as we stepped into the empty kitchen, all stainless steel and empty counters. My father didn’t even keep his small appliances out, preferring the toaster, air fryer, and blender to be tucked in the cabinets when not in use.

There was a to-go container overturned on the counter, the contents spilled all over the floor. Along with a shattered coffee cup.

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