Page 53 of The Butcher's Wife

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

Annetta’s voice is a thin whisper. “He can’t swim. I watched him drown.”

“Then you drove home, the Chiarellis called a hit on you, and Mikey killed the wrong sister. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Turi broods on this for a moment. His weird amber eyes are flat in the basement’s dim light. “That’s good you told me. Honesty is an essential trait to have in our family, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s good we understand each other.” Turi exhales and glances at his watch. “You’re my advisor’s valued daughter and my right-hand man’s wife. Your enemies are my enemies. Is that right, Annetta?”

Sweat trickles down her temple, despite her shivering, and her nails dig into my wrist. She doesn’t look at the man in the chair.

“Yes, Don Salvatore.”

Turi’s gaze ticks to me. “It goes without saying that we don’t need anyone else finding out who she is before I can nail down the Chiarellis.”

I nod.

“Get your wife home.”

After a long,shitty day, the tentative light outside my living room windows tells me another is about to start.

We had to stop by Dr. Macaluso’s house to get stitches. Annetta sat in his living room with her arms crossed, staring forward and not moving a muscle the entire time. She didn’t speak, even while I explained to her that the person in the elevator had been my house cleaner and the man on the street was one of our own men.

She doesn’t speak now either, turning on her heel after she removes her shoes and going upstairs.

Exhausted, I follow her.

I head to my guest room, take a half-assed shower with my stitches sticking out of the water, and try to pass out in bed.

But as much as I toss and turn, I eventually find myself staring up at the ceiling with Annetta’s terrified face playing in a loop as that unfamiliar feeling of guilt wriggles around in my chest. It weaves through my internal organs like a fucking parasite I can’t get rid of.

Annetta deserves better.

She’s been forced into so many roles in her young life—a wife, a killer, a widow, a liar—and she didn’t ask for any of this.

I remember coming to her parents’ for dinner and hearing how she’d be late because she was volunteering or helping with cleanup after Serafina’s ballet recital or babysitting Joey’s kids. At the time, it made me feel good to be near someone who wasn’t a fucking blister on society’s foot like all the other soulless fucks I work with.

Annetta didn’t deserve Turi scaring her like that. She didn’t deserve to be married to her piece-of-shit ex-husband or to have to make such difficult decisions while she was with him. She never deserved what happened to her sister.

And she sure as hell deserves better than me, some old criminal bastard who’s never home.

She’s fought hard in her short, shitty life. She should get to live a real life now, not be stuck in hiding. What she needs is a therapist, maybe a dog, and a nice vanilla boyfriend who takes her on vacation to Niagara Falls.

My jaw’s already clenching at the mental image.

I shouldn’t have let her kiss me at the cemetery.

I shouldn’t have let her kiss me before that.

But we just kept circling each other, didn’t we? Like celestial bodies, or carrion birds.

A knock at the door startles me from my thoughts. I reach for my jeans on the nightstand, but the door swings open and Annetta slips in.