Page 5

I guess it healed us.
Elio offering to bring me back in is generous. It should make me feel...
something.
The fact that it does not creates a dissonance in my mind that feels like a buzzing beneath my skin.
I mentally shake. "Thank you, Elio. That would be... great," I manage to grit out.
I can tell Elio wants to ask more, but at that time a wail of despair comes from outside. Elio moves, automatically drawn to the doors to the patio, leaving me in the kitchen.
Alone.
When everyone is asleep, I choose to sneak back into the kitchen to fill my glass with Elio's expensive French cognac. Sipping the complex drink, I meander back into the room that I'm staying in.
I grimace.
Even now, looking at the walls in my brother-in-law and former best friend's house, safe and content and happy with my family, I feel that same itch under my skin as I had earlier.
Brought back into the family business.
As though Elio is the family. Elio is the business.
And I am on the outside.
I believe that is what bothers me, but there's another piece of it that feels... strange. Like a puzzle piece that I'm trying to jam into a space that looks like it should fit.
Even though it doesn't.
I wish to feel... at home.
Like I belong.
And not because of Elio's goodwill.
Unbidden, my mind drifts to the last time that I felt like that. When I felt so at home, I almost forgot that I wasn't.
Except...
I suppose I was.
It might be the fucking French alcohol, it might be the loneliness gnawing at me.
But regardless of the cause, I shut my eyes.
And I let myself remember.
A year and a half ago
"You said the water would be cold," I hiss through clenched teeth. "This isn't cold. This is fucking ice."
"Well, aren't you a big tough mafia man then, unable to handle a little Irish water?"
Her voice.
It's always her fucking voice that gets me first.
I've been holed up with Roisin Kennedy, Interpol agent and my handler, for a month and a half. I haven't been able to see my family, have no idea what's happening to Caterina, and I'm...