Was that who I was in the room with? Alone? Like an idiot?
“Were you going to kill Eren even if he hadn’t touched me?” I asked, forcing my gaze to lift.
“I don’t know. If the order came down, I would have done it. My job was to watch him, gather some intel.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he confirmed as he turned away, running a hand around the fireplace, finding the on button, making the fake flames flicker to life. “You gotta eat,” he said, moving the cart closer to me, taking the lid off my dinner, then stealing one of my garlic bread sticks for himself.
Eat?
How could I eat?
Even as those thoughts formed, though, Brio was kicking out of his black Tims and throwing himself on the other side of the bed, propped up by the headboard, watching the TV that was playing a rerun of a crime drama.
I used to be obsessed with primetime cop dramas. Until I found myself married to a criminal.
I knew that none of Eren’s crimes were mine, but being associated with him gave me this knot in my belly at the idea of police.
“What do you want?” I asked, keeping my back to him.
“Right now, just want you to eat,” he said, tone calm.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, steeling my nerves enough to make me turn to face him, wanting to be able to read his face.
“What’d you mean then?”
“What do you want from me… for… you know…” I said, waving a hand out.
I watched as he understood my meaning, and I didn’t think I was imagining it when his eyes darkened.
And when a man who murdered in cold blood had his eyes go cold, I was pretty sure that was a bad sign.
In my peripheral, I could see a steak knife sitting on my cart. But I wasn’t sure I had what it would take to actually grab it and stab it into someone’s body.
“Don’t do shit because I expect shit,” he said, climbing up off the bed.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said as he slipped into his shoes. “It’s just… I don’t… I’m not used to men who do things without something being in it for them,” I told him, seeing understanding cross his handsome features.
“Oh, but I did get something out of it,” he told me as he stopped in front of me.
“What?”
“Pleasure.”
“Pleasure?” I asked, thinking I must have misheard him.
“Fucked in the head,” he said, making a gun with his fingers and pressing it to his temple. “Like that shit.”
“Meaning killing people?”
“The killing, yeah. And everything before too.”
Everything before.
Meaning torture.
He got off torturing people.
“Don’t worry,” he said, reaching toward my face, but I flinched away, still trying to process what he’d just admitted. “I don’t kill women,” he finished, dropping his hand, and that darkness was back in his eyes.
Then, without another word, he made his way to the door.
And disappeared.
I sat there in a sort of daze for a long time as I tried to come to grips with everything that he’d said to me.
It seemed to all boil down to one fact.
I caught the attention of a serial killer.
As if my life wasn’t screwed up enough…
CHAPTER NINE
Brio
I scared her.
I honestly thought that the main reaction I would get was relief.
I’d miscalculated.
The hands.
It was the hands.
That had been too much.
I thought it would be sort of poetic.
But the average woman didn’t want a gift of dismembered body parts on the same surface where they cook their meals and write their grocery lists.
Well, lesson learned.
“Are you paying attention?” Salvatore asked, tapping his fingers on the felt table top to draw my attention.
“Call,” I said, tossing some chips into the center of the table even though I hadn’t so much as glanced at my cards.
The poker night was something new, mostly since Salvatore got out and was looking to reconnect with the Family.
So, every week or so, we would end up at his apartment sitting around the poker table that he had in place of an actual dining table.
At some point, food would be ordered, and we would eat it with plastic utensils he had stashed in his cabinet since he didn’t have a flatware set.
His apartment was on the small side and bare bones. His living room had a leather sectional, a large TV, and the poker table.
The kitchen had empty cabinets , paper products, condiments and not much else.
I really didn’t have room to speak. My place didn’t have much going for it either, and I didn’t have the excuse of being locked away for fifteen years.
“So, what’s going on with the job?” Anthony asked as he shifted some of his cards around.
He was still crashing with Salvatore until his stitches came out.
He looked tired.
And in need of his mother’s good cooking.
She was sure to lecture Salvatore about underfeeding her ‘little boy.’