Page 119 of The Butcher's Wife

A car drives past us with a whoosh of air.

“I’m taking you home,” he says. “Now.”

“They’re going on a plane tomorrow morning. If I don’t go now, I’ll lose this chance.”

“Then we wait here until I have one of Turi’s men come pick you up, and I go. Alone.” Some of the frustration fades from his face. He exhales. “Go home, Annetta. Your family needs you. Let your husband do your dirty work.”

I touch his chest, his arms. I stroke my nails along his neck—touching that place where I bit him. Dom’s fingers flex against my back.

“No one knows the Chiarellis like I do. Last night, Marco was sleeping off a hangover at his mistress’s apartment. His mom slept in her bed on the second floor, first door to the right. Tonight, they’ll have the housekeepers pack their suitcases. Marco will eat dinner at Giulia’s house. He’ll go home to play cards with Mario and snort cocaine. Giulia will spend time in the garden, and her guard Tommy will walk the perimeter, but he has a bad knee, so he’ll rest against a tree?—”

“Marisol told you all that?—”

“No. This is what I know after spending the last three years of my life stuck there. If I go back home, back to your penthouse, or to my parents’ home, or even to Salvatore’s, I’ll be a sitting duck again. They’ll pick off my family one by one, until they get to me, and they’ll do to me what they did to Matteo.”

Everyone in the family knows what happened to Matteo, how he was tortured and cut up into a hundred pieces. And everyone knows what Salvatore and Dom did to seek justice after.

“Don’t say shit like that.”

I take his big, heavy hands in mine, hands he uses for unspeakable violence but have only ever been used to loveme. I press my cheek against the back of his hand and drop my voice to a whisper. “I need this to end.”

When he steps back, he fills up my entire vision. This man, I realize, has never lied to me. He’s been the one constant in my life. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.

He steps away. “Come on.”

I inhale suddenly, unaware I’d been holding my breath, and follow my husband.

In his car,Dom makes me swear a hundred times over that I won’t leave the vehicle.

He’s driving now, a light touch on the steering wheel. He pushed his SUV further onto the side of the road, texted Salvatore to get it towed, and tossed a backpack full of practical, dark clothes for me into my lap.

“What if they take me?” he asks.

“I’ll drive away.”

“And if I take too long?”

“I’ll drive away.”

“What do you do if you see someone approaching your car?”

“I’ll drive away.”

He quizzes me for hours.

How many bullets does your gun hold? Nineteen.

Where are the extra bullets? Show me how you replace the magazine. Pull your knife out of the holster. Again. Braid your hair. Tuck it away. Tuck your shoelaces. Tuck your shirt.

He drives for hours. For once, he doesn’t have the radio playing, and we sit in tense silence, broken only by another clipped command or question as he thinks of them.

He encourages me to sleep, and I do, contorted across the center console, hugging my body against his arm. After fading in and out of a restless sleep, I wake up to the sight of a river in front of us.

I reach for my gun.

“Where are we?” I ask groggily, jerking my head around.

“Shh… We’re going to sleep as much as we can, and we’ll do the last leg. I don’t want to get there while there’s light out.”