Page 10 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

I understand every word even though I pretend not to at first on principle. “You were kind to me, Elisa.”

“I was doing my job,” I answer in English, because something about stepping into his tongue feels like handing over a key.

“That is what kind people say when they are kind,” he replies, switching back to English with a smoothness that makes me wonder how many tongues live in his mouth. “I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing except following instructions and not undoing my stitches by being stubborn,” I say, and I mean it. Debts make me itchy. They have too many strings.

He tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat.

His knuckles are raw across one side, not from tonight.

Old scabs.

Newer bruising.

The kind of hands that solve problems directly before they are sent upstairs to be solved officially.

“Then I will apologize instead for what I'm about to ask,” he says. “Do you have somewhere I can disappear for a few nights?”

The last word has weight.Disappear.

Not stay.

Not rest.

Disappear.

The kind of verb my mother would have folded into a napkin and put in the freezer like it could be saved for later.

Heat blooms behind my eyes that has nothing to do with tears.

The old rules move under my skin like a second pulse.

See nothing.

Hear nothing.

Say nothing.

I should say no.

I should let whatever this is slide past me into the gutter and find someone with fewer scruples and a larger couch.

I should not even be standing here talking to a man with a lion on his ribs and a rosary running down his arm who kills pain by ignoring it.

“You should go to a hotel,” I hear myself say, which is a test more than advice.

“Hotels have cameras,” he says, and he lifts his chin at the tiny black domes on the hospital’s eaves. “And staff who sell stories. I need anonymity.”

“Anonymity is expensive,” I say, because if humor is a shield, I will build ten.

“I'm very good at expensive,” he says with a small shrug that is both a joke and the truth.

Then he softens the voice he has been using since he woke up, the one that fills a room without raising itself. “I would not ask you if I had another choice that would keep you from trouble.”

“You could ask me with a name,” I say, trying to see if he will give me even that.

He looks at me for a long moment.