Page 39 of Valentino

Then comes a slap, sharp and clean across my cheek, cutting through the fog. My eyes water. A sound escapes me that isn't quite a word.

Someone speaks in Italian. I don't understand the words, only the tone, the laugh underneath. Another voice answers. A flash of white light, harsh and sudden. They're holding a phone above me, angling the camera, murmuring to each other about how to frame the shot.

I try to turn my face away. The hand on my jaw won't let me, holding me still while they record. Spit hits my cheek and slides toward my ear and I can't wipe it away. A mouth covers mine, wet with cigarettes and wine, and I gag against it, my stomach heaving, but nothing comes. My body too slow even to purge itself. His tongue pushes in, and I make a noise but it dies in his mouth. He pulls back. Wipes his lip with his thumb like I'm the one who left something on him.

I want my mother. The thought comes from nowhere and it's so pathetic and so true as hot tears run sideways into my hair. I want someone who knows my name to walk through that door. I'd settle for anyone, even for a stranger.

Aldo crouches close and tucks a piece of my hair back from my face. Gentle. That's the worst part-that he can touch me like this, like he cares, after what he just witnesses.

"Listen to me, bella," he says softly, like he's sharing a secret. "This is nothing. A reminder. Do you understand?" I don't, but I can't make a sound. "When you are asked to do a job," he says, "you do the job. You don't ask about the girls. You don't ask about bruises. You don't look at things that are not yours to look at." He smiles-the same warm smile from the party, the one that made me feel seen, chosen. "You do the job they pay you to do. You go home. Easy."

His thumb strokes my cheekbone, right over the place the slap landed.

"You're a smart girl. I knew it the second I saw you across the room. So smart." He leans in, and his breath is hot against the side of my face. "But you got loud. And loud girls—" he pauses, his head tilting as he studies me, "—loud girls wake up remembering why they should have stayed quiet." He drags his tongue up the shell of my ear slowly.

My whole body wants to revolt. The nausea rolls up from my gut, acid in my throat—good, let it come, let it cover them—but the drug keeps even that from me, keeps everything locked down, and leaves me trapped in a body that won't obey.

Tears keep coming. I'm still here, aware, screaming, and my body won't obey.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Valentino

The sound stops me halfway down the corridor.

A woman, muffled. Like someone pressed a hand over her mouth, but not tight enough. Then men laughing.

My feet move before my brain catches up.

The door is heavy old wood. I turn the handle slowly. Tell myself I don't know what's behind it. That's the lie I keep so I don't lose my mind in the half-second before I'm proven right.

I push it open and step halfway in.

Three men. A balcony beyond the glass doors, and on the floor between them⁠—

Amanda.

I text Elio without looking down. Back. Car. Now. The phone goes back into my pocket. I reach under my jacket and close my hand around the gun.

Her dress is rucked up wrong. Her head lolls, loose. One of them crouches over her with a phone in his hand. Another wipes his mouth with the back of his fist like he just finished a meal.

Something cracks open in my chest.

No plan. No calculation of angles and exits. Nothing in my head. Just white, just static, the boy I was finally breaking loose.

Aldo turns. He's faster than he looks. His hand goes to his waist. There's a flash of metal, small and black. He lifts it.

I shoot him first.

The shot fills the room. He folds at the middle and goes down hard, gun skittering away under a velvet chair.

The other two throw their hands up so fast it would be funny on any other night. Palms out. Eyes wide. As if to say we were just watching.

As if watching makes them anything other than what they are.

I raise my gun, and the first one's mouth falls open to bargain. Wrong move. I was never going to listen. The second lunges for a door he'll never reach. Two shots. Clean. I've killed for the family, for money, because I wanted to. Never for a person. It should scare me, but it doesn’t.

Aldo's not dead. He's pulling himself across the floor toward the chair and the gun underneath, leaving a dark trail behind him, breathing in wet little hitches. He gets a hand on the chair leg.