Page 88 of The Butcher's Wife

Hate for Russell shocks me with its intensity.

I want all of this to go away—back to how it was before I found the pill bottles in her closet.

I want Dom to hurt him.

I want to punish Serafina for choosing Russell over me.

But when Dom drops to kneel over Russell, the movement kick-starts me into action.

I can’t punish the dead. There’s nothing left for me in this room.

“Dom, I want to go home,” I say, hearing the ineffectual whine in my voice.

He barely spares me a glance as he grins down at Russell, who, strangely, has gone completely limp and expressionless. “Go wait in the car, angel. I’ll be right down.”

“No,” I whisper.

Dom’s head snaps toward me. Russell’s eyes flick from Dom to me.

“I want to go home.Now.”

I peer at the man my sister chose. He watches me impassionately.

He’s not asking for my mercy. He’s got nothing to lose. And even though I hate him, for a moment, I understand him completely.

I turn and walk away.

I think Dom will go through with it anyway—kill Russell, because why not? It’s what he does. But once I step into the hallway, heavy footsteps sound behind me. We walk through the house like that, with him several steps behind me, until we get to the bottom of the stairs and he finally catches up. For once, he’s not smiling as he snatches my hand in his.

“For your parents,” he says.

I dig my fingernails into his hand, and the corners of his mouth twitch.

The living room explodes with drunken laughter as Dad, my brothers, and Carlo’s friends play poker in the sitting room. Mom’s in the kitchen, preparing drinks for them.

“Serafina, help me get these drinks out to the guys,” she says.

Dom waves Mom off, a luxury I’ve never been afforded. “We’re heading home, Debbie. Thanks for the dinner.”

In the penthouse,Dom and I step off the elevator into his foyer. I take off my heels and pass them to him before striding into the living room. The tall, open windows that once felt like a little slice of the outside world are now like the pane of a glass case. I look down at the cars passing below, taillights glowing red against the black streets, and into the golden windows of the other apartment buildings. None of what happens in our penthouse matters to those people. None of this matters at all.

When I turn around, Dom’s looming over me with barely contained anger.

“Did he touch you?” he snarls.

“No.”

“What did he say to you?”

I wait for the tears to come again, to feel anything at the memory of what happened in my sister’s room, but they don’t. There’s only a quiet, simmering anger, suffocated by a blanket of apathy. I thought I was the only person whocould protect the memory of her, but all I’ve been guarding is a hollow box.

The girl I knew never existed.

“He told me Serafina had been lying to me. She loved Russell, and she let me get married to Frederico to be with him.”

When his expression softens with something like pity, I turn away, watching the cars.

He steps behind me and circles his arms around my shoulders, but instead of feeling comfort, I’m irritated.