Cacio e p**e and destruction

Chapter 6: Cacio e p**e and destruction

Armando

She woke up swinging and thrashing.

The drug’s exit was violent. One second she was lying unconscious on the large bed, the next she was a whirlwind of fury and fear.

“YOU PSYCHOPATH!” The first thing her hand found was a heavy crystal lamp. It sailed across the room and exploded against the solid oak bedroom door I’d just locked. Shards of glass skittered across the polished floor. “I’ll call the police! I’ll tell them everything! I’ll—”

“You’ll live,” I said, leaning against the doorframe just on the other side, out of her line of sight through the reinforced peephole. My voice was calm, a forced steadiness I didn’t feel. “Which is considerably more than you’d get if the Rinaldis found you first. They don’t ask questions before they act.”

She charged the door, the impact of her small fists against the thick wood was just a dull, hopeless sound. “Open this door right now!”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she screamed, her voice cracking with the strain.

I pressed my forehead against the cool wood, closing my eyes. I could picture her on the other side, her cheek against the same spot, separated by a few inches of oak and a universe of lies. “You saw a man who’s about to disappear. That makes you a witness. A liability—to them, and now, to me.”

She kept quiet for a while, then, I heard a small, broken sound. A sob she tried to stifle.

“Who are you? Please let me go. I won't say anything to anyone.” Her voice was a shattered whisper, all the fight gone out of it, leaving only a hollowed-out terror. It was the most painful question she could have asked.

I slid down the length of the door until I was sitting on the floor, my back to the wood. I knew she was there, doing the same. We were back to back, only inches between us, a world apart.

“I’m the man who’s going to keep you alive,” I said, the promise feeling like a noose.

I went back to my study and gazed at the bank of monitors there, Gwen was systematically destroying the room. After the lamp, it was the books from the shelf, then the framed prints on the wall. She was now working on tearing the heavy velvet curtains from their rods with a furious, desperate strength.

Enzo handed me a glass of whiskey, three fingers deep. He nodded toward the screen. “She's... energetic.”

I took the glass, the amber liquid barely stirring. I didn’t drink it. I just watched her, my chest tight. “She's terrified. This is what terror looks like when it’s not frozen. It’s destructive.”

“You could tell her the truth,” Enzo ventured carefully, always the voice of a reason I could never afford to follow.

I gave a harsh, quiet laugh. “And say what, exactly? ‘Sorry I kidnapped you, Gwen, but we actually grew up together at St. Agnes Orphanage, and I’ve been watching over you and paying your tuition since I left the orphanage’?”

Enzo winced, taking a large swallow of his own drink. “Yeah. Okay. That might not go over great.”

“She’d never believe it. Or worse, she would. And then she’d look at me like I’m even more of a monster for it.” I finally took a drink, the whiskey doing nothing to burn away the bitterness.

An hour later, the noise had stopped. I entered with a tray—a simple porcelain bowl of cacio e p**e made by my chef, the peppery aroma filling the room, and a glass of water. It was her favorite, from the menu of the little Italian place near her apartment that I’d memorized from a dozen surveillance reports.

The room was a warzone. But in the center of it, she was curled in the window seat, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, staring out at the night skyline. The storm of anger had burned itself out, leaving something worse in its wake: a quiet, chilling resignation.

“You need to eat something,” I said, my voice softer than I intended.

Gwen didn’t look at me. She didn’t even flinch. “Why are you doing this?” The question was flat, empty. “Why not just kill me? It would be easier.”

The tray nearly slipped from my hands. The casualness with which she suggested her own death was a knife to my gut. The words were out before I could cage them. “Because I owe you.”

Her head snapped around, her eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, finally meeting mine. They were searching, probing the cracks in my armor. “Owe me what? What could you possibly owe me?”

The memory flashed, unbidden: a smaller, skinnier version of her, handing a stolen apple to a bruised boy in a dusty courtyard. Don’t tell Sister Agnes. A lifetime ago. A different world—where it all began.

I clamped down on the memory, hardening my features into a mask of indifference. “Just eat the damn pasta, Gwen.”

I left the tray on the desk and walked out, locking the door behind me. I didn’t look back.

Near midnight, the monitors showed she was asleep, curled in a tight ball on the bed she’d stripped of its now-broken canopy. She’d cried herself to sleep. Even on the grainy video feed, I could see the faint, glistening tracks of tears on her cheeks.

I entered the room silently, moving like a ghost through the wreckage of my own making. The pasta was mostly eaten. A small, irrational victory.

She was deep under, her breathing even but hitching occasionally with the remnants of sobs. And there, clutched in her fist, held against her heart like a talisman, was the note. The one I’d left on her pillow months ago after that single, impossible night. The paper was crumpled, the sharpie ink slightly smudged, but the words were clear: ‘Don’t look for me’.

My own words. My own warning. She’d kept it.

A wave of something agonizing and profound washed over me. I reached out, unable to stop myself, and gently brushed a stray curl from her damp forehead. Her skin was so soft.

“I’m sorry, mi corazón,” I whispered, the old endearment slipping out from a place I kept locked and buried.

Her eyes flew open.

They weren’t drowsy or confused. They were clear, sharp, and filled with a fiery resolve. The note hadn’t been a comfort. It had been a reminder. A fuel for her rage.

And the knife she’d hidden under the pillow—a butter knife from the tray, sharpened against the stone floor until its edge was wicked and serrated—lunged toward my throat.