Page 193 of Bitter Poetry

The big, roller doors are open, and a truck is backed up to the bay. There’s a small forklift unloading goods from the back.

He takes the two guns out of his pocket, wrapped in the towel Tony gave him, and lobs them into a dumpster.

My legs are like jelly. He’s half holding me up as he walks past the workers and into the delivery bay.

“Hey, you can’t come back here!”

Christian ignores the call. With a tight grip on my arm, he continues past the startled staff until we push through a swing door into the back of the shop. The lights feel bright as we head down the nearest aisle and the queues at the checkout.

Feeling eyes on me, I glance down.

“Oh God, there’s blood on me.”

“Not now, Carmela.”

We exit the supermarket and cross the road.

“Take your jumper off,” he says.

I fumble to pull it over my head. He takes it from me and drops it into a trash can as we pass before grasping my arm again and making an abrupt left into a Starbucks coffee shop.

He buys two bottles of water at the counter and directs me straight to the back of the room, where he sits me in a chair. He unscrews one of the bottles and hands it over to me.

I drink half of it before I come up for air.

He just killed two men. And then he choked Roman out…

“Carmela, look at me.”

It’s a reasonable request, but I can’t yet meet his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” He changes tack. “Why were you here alone? Did somebody take you from Dante’s apartment?”

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I take another swig of water and then fumble to screw the cap back and put it on the table.

“Carmela, look at me right now.”

My eyes snap up. He’s got a thick lip, and his nose is red and slightly swollen, but otherwise he looks remarkably whole given what went down.

It hits me then and there just how stupid my idea was. What would have happened if he hadn’t been there… Why was he there?

“I was going back to Ettore,” I whisper. “And I let myself out of Dante’s apartment. No one took me.”

He doesn’t blink for the longest time. “Why?”

I scrub a hand down my face. I can feel a faint crusting in places, and I have a bad feeling it’s going to be blood.

My ears are still ringing, and it leaves me faintly disconnected from the world.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you’re not. Deep breaths. Deep breaths and look at me.”

He sounds calm. A laugh wants to bubble up because it reminds me of the last time he committed violence against a man out the back of Le Petit Café, and how afterward, I reflected that he was surprisingly calm under pressure.

At least the urge to vomit passes.

“I was going to kill him.”