“I trust you with my life, Evan,” he said. “My life – the life of my daughter, the running of any of my businesses – I would trust you to be loyal to this family as much as I would anyone who shared our blood. Yes, in many ways you would be the perfect choice for her.”
His lips tightened, and his eyes narrowed. I felt my muscles tense a bit because I knew the answer was coming. His focus on me was acute and palpable.
“You would never love her, though,” he said, “would you?”
I blinked a couple of times.
“What, sir?”
“You would never love my daughter,” he said again. “Even this hooker you killed for, you don’t have any real feelings for her at all, do you?”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“If you had gone back to your apartment, found a letter from her saying she was moving out of the city, and you never saw her again, would you care?”
I didn’t even know how to answer.
“I didn’t think so,” Rinaldo said. “That’s why you will never touch my daughter. I hope you’ll always be there to protect her if I am unable to do so myself.”
“Of course,” I responded immediately.
“That you understand,” he commented. “Killing to keep her safe – you know just what to do with those instructions. But matters of the heart? You’re lacking there, son.”
My chest tightened up, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Cold sweat had formed on the back of my neck and trickled between my shoulder blades. The rest of my body tensed completely before I could stop it. I tasted sand in the back of my throat, but when I tried to swallow past the sensation, I couldn’t.
“You don’t even really understand what I mean, do you?” he asked. “You don’t let anyone in that head long enough for you to understand them or to let them understand you.”
“I have a shrink,” I heard myself say.
“I know,” Rinaldo replied. “I know everything, Evan. You don’t think I’d let your past not be of my utmost concern?”
“I…I never thought about it.” I hadn’t, either, and now the sleepy feeling waned as it was replaced by feelings of stupidity.
“You endured more than most men ever will,” Rinaldo said quietly. “You’ve had it worse than anyone you ever killed. They died quick and easy. You’ve been dying since they brought you home from that war.”
I forced myself to swallow hard and found I was having a hard time looking at his face.
“You are going to crack someday, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
My eyes flashed to Rinaldo’s, and I couldn’t stop my hands from clenching into fists. The anger boiling inside of me had nowhere to go, and I was dangerously close to letting it loose on the one man whom I didn’t want to hurt.
Had Mario been in the room, he would have noticed. He would have seen how close I was, and he probably would have shot me. Rinaldo only nodded slowly and sat back again.
“If there comes a time I need to put you down, I will,” he said. “If there comes a time you want me to put you down, you let me know. You can go now, son.”
I stood up, trying not to let my knees wobble as I did. I turned and walked as quickly as I could out of the room, trying not to comprehend what Rinaldo Moretti had just said to me.
*****
I couldn’t think.
I could barely breathe.
Even though spring was in full force, the temperature had fallen and the wind was bone-chilling. I dropped down on the bench inside the dog run and unhooked Odin’s leash from his collar, so he could run around and sniff at the other neighborhood dogs. I needed to think – my head was just too jumbled up with all the recent information inside of it, but every time I tried to figure out what was happening to me, my head ached and reminded me how long it had been since I’d slept.
Well, kind of reminded me. I’d really lost track of how long it had been. I couldn’t focus anymore – that’s what I knew. I jumped at fucking everything, too, just like I had in the hospital after I had been brought back from the Middle East. It had been years since I felt that kind of paranoia, and I wasn’t even sure how to begin to cope with it.
Where did things start going wrong?