Page 16 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

“Bad decision,” I repeat, letting it sit in my mouth. “That is fair.”

“I did not say I regretted it,” she adds, and the honesty skims the air between us like a flat stone on calm water.

Men in my world spend their lives burying their tells.

I have made a profession of teaching them to bury them better.

You can't advise a Don if your face betrays you when the room turns.

You can't negotiate a truce if your hands shake when an old man says a name you have been waiting to hear.

I was taught to be still.

To use quiet the way other men use force.

To know that a whisper at the right table travels farther than a shout in a courtyard.

And yet, here, in this old room that smells of flour and iron, a woman saysI did not say I regretted itand something loosens in me that has not loosened in years.

I came to be stitched.

I stayed because she said ‘follow me’ with the authority of a prayer.

She retrieves a folded blanket from a shelf and shakes the dust from it with brisk snaps.

The sound wakes the ovens a little.

She spreads the blanket over the cot and tucks the corners like she was taught by a mother who made every bed as if it were the only bed a man would ever have.

I study her again because studying is what I have left when my tools are not in my hand, when the guns are on the counter and the knives are lying quiet against my skin.

“You did not hesitate,” I say, and I mean the hospital door, the alley, the keys in her hand. “Most people hesitate before they let a stranger into a place like this.”

“You are not most strangers,” she says, smoothing the blanket with the side of her palm. “Also, I'm tired, and sometimes, tired turns the volume down on fear and up on instinct.”

“What does your instinct say?” I ask, wanting to hear it even if it indicts me.

“That you will keep your gun where you say you will,” she answers, glancing toward the counter. “That you will hear anything on this street before I do. That if trouble comes, it's coming for you and I should use that fact instead of pretending I can undo it.”

“It's not coming for you,” I say, the words out too quick for someone who has built a life on measured speech. “Not if I can help it.”

She lifts an eyebrow.

“Then help it by lying down when I tell you to.”

I let the laugh out because it's safer than the other thing pressing against my ribs.

I sit back on the cot and allow the weight of the night to find me.

When she moves, the hem of her shirt rides up a fraction, and my eyes, traitors that they are, follow.

The shape of her is more honest than any confession.

The way she stands, one foot bearing the weight while the other is ready to step, speaks to me in a language I have always understood.

This is a person who knows how to move quickly without breaking things.

“Tell me if you feel feverish,” she says, resting the back of her hand against my forehead, then my throat, a quick check that seems small until you need it. “Your body is already angry. Don't give it a reason to start a war.”