홈 / Mafia / He Wants Me Dead Or Alive / 챕터 81 - 챕터 90

He Wants Me Dead Or Alive 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 81 - 챕터 90

110 챕터

Telling Kylie

Rosa POVKylie came over on a Saturday afternoon with no agenda and no wine and no crisis, which was how I knew she had been waiting for me to be ready to talk. She sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her and a mug of tea in her hands and she looked at me with that face she made when she was being patient on purpose.I sat across from her in the armchair and I did not know how to start."You have something on your mind," Kylie said."I have a lot of things on my mind.""You always have a lot of things on your mind. This is different. This is a you-looking-at-the-wall-like-it-owes-you-money thing."I looked at the wall. It did not owe me money. It was just easier to look at than Kylie's face."I stopped pretending," I said.Kylie waited. She did not ask me to explain. She just sat there with her tea and her patience and her face that said I have all day."The deal is gone. The one we made at the beginning. Physical only, no strings, clean exit. It's gone. I don't know when it h

Watching Her

Raffaele's POVI watched her when she didn't know I was watching.Not in the surveilling, controlling way of the early days. That was different. That was strategy and suspicion and the need to know where she was at all times because I could not afford to be caught off guard. This was different. This was the way of a man who could not believe his luck and was still half-expecting the floor to fall out.I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and watched her do her coursework at the table. She bit her lip when she was reading something difficult. She tapped her pen against the wood when she was thinking. She stretched her arms above her head when she had been sitting too long, her shirt riding up just enough to show the small of her back. She did not know I was there."The coffee machine is broken," she said one morning, not knowing I was watching from the hallway.I walked into the kitchen. "The machine is fine.""The machine is trying to destroy my morning.""The machine is making coffe

A Fight That Matters

Rosa POVI found out about the security detail from Klaus.Not from Raffaele. Not from a conversation or a discussion or any of the things that should have happened between two people who had agreed to stop making decisions without each other. I walked out of the building to go to class and there was a car I didn't recognize and a man I didn't know standing by the door and Klaus said, "He'll be driving you from now on."I went back upstairs.Raffaele was in his office, sitting at his desk with his laptop open and his glasses on. He looked up when I walked in and his face did that thing where he saw me and softened for just a second before he realized something was wrong."Your new security detail," I said. "You added a driver. Full time. You didn't mention it.""I was going to tell you.""When? When I got in the car and a stranger drove me to campus?"He took his glasses off and set them down on the desk. "I made a decision about your security. I should have talked to you about it fir

Makeup

Rosa POVThe night after the fight I came to him differently.Not angry. Not the deal. Not any of the armor I had worn in the beginning when I was still pretending this was temporary. I came to him because I had spent the hours after the argument on my side of the penthouse and his office was dark and the kitchen was quiet and I missed him. I missed the sound of his voice and the weight of his hand on my back and the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. I was done pretending I didn't miss him.I walked down the hallway and I did not knock. I never knocked anymore. I opened the door and he was standing by the window with his back to me and he turned before I could say anything. He had known I was coming. He always knew."I still think you were wrong," I said."I know.""But—""I know that too."He did not make me finish the sentence. He already knew what I was going to say. But I was wrong and I still missed you and I still love you and I still want to be here

Luca notices

Raffaele's POVLuca found me in my office on a Thursday afternoon.He did not knock. He never knocked. He walked in and sat down in the chair across from my desk and looked at me with that expression he had been wearing for weeks, the one that meant he was seeing something he had not expected to see and was still trying to figure out what to do with it."You look like a different person," he said.I looked up from my laptop. "What did I look like before?"Luca was quiet for a moment. He was not someone who chose his words carefully. He usually said exactly what he meant and moved on. But this was different. I could see him thinking about how to say it."Like a man waiting to be punished for something he couldn't stop," he said.I sat back in my chair and looked at him. Luca and I had known each other for most of our lives. He had seen me at my worst and at my best and at every place in between. If he said I looked different, I believed him."She's good for you," Luca said. "I've never

Let Him See It

Rosa POVI woke up at three in the morning and I could not go back to sleep.I lay in my bed with my eyes open and the ceiling dark above me and I thought about what Kylie had said. Tell him in the light. With your whole chest. I thought about what my mother had said. That's what matters. I thought about what Raffaele had said when I asked if he was still waiting to be punished. I'm not that man anymore.I was still that woman. Not the waiting to be punished part. The part that held back. The part that kept something in reserve, something she could retreat to if everything went wrong. I had been doing it for so long I had stopped noticing. But I noticed now. Lying awake at three in the morning, I noticed.I had been performing a version of not-quite-there. I had said I love you and I had meant it. I had stayed and I had chosen him. But there was a piece of me that I had not let him touch. A piece I kept behind a door that I had not opened for anyone. Not for my father before he left.

An Unexpected Call

Rosa POV The phone rang while Raffaele was in the shower. It was on the kitchen counter, buzzing against the wood, and I picked it up without thinking because I was standing right there and because the name on the screen said Mom. I had not known he saved her number as Mom. That was something I filed away for later. I answered it. "Hello?" There was a pause. Then a woman's voice, warm and sharp at the same time, the kind of voice that had been used to getting what it wanted for a very long time. "You must be the girl." I felt my stomach drop. "I'm Rosa." "I know who you are. My husband said you have spine and the right kind of silence. He means that as the highest compliment." I did not know what to say to that. Don Navarro had said I had spine. Don Navarro had said I had the right kind of silence. Don Navarro did not hand out compliments like candy. He handed them out like weapons, carefully, for specific purposes. "That's very reassuring," I said. She laughed. It

The Words Are Comng

Rosa POVThe words sat in my chest like something waiting to be said.Not painful anymore. Not sharp or scary or any of the things they had been in the beginning when I was still running from them. They were just present. Warm. Demanding eventually.I felt them building for days after the phone call with his mother. They were there when I woke up and they were there when I went to bed and they were there in all the spaces between. I circled around them in everything I did.I reached for him now without thinking about it. His hand when we were walking. His arm when we were on the couch. His chest when we were in bed. I did not plan these touches. They just happened. My body reached for his the way it reached for air, automatic, necessary, the kind of thing you did not notice until you stopped doing it.I called him when something happened. Not big things. Small things. A funny thing Kylie said. A frustrating thing my professor did. A bird that landed on the windowsill of the classroom

Feels Like Home

Rosa POV We made dinner together that night. His recipe, my execution, mostly works. He stood behind me at the stove and read instructions off his phone while I chopped and stirred and complained that he had chosen something too complicated. "You said you wanted to cook together," he said. "I said I wanted to cook. I didn't say I wanted to cook something with sixteen ingredients." "It has seven ingredients." "It has seven ingredients that I had to look up in three different stores." He kissed the back of my head and I complained about that too and he did not stop. The pasta was good. Not great. But good. We sat at the table and ate and talked about nothing important. My coursework. The professor who fell asleep during student presentations. Luca and Kylie's latest disaster, which involved a broken sink and a plumber who spoke only Spanish and Kylie's high school Spanish which was, according to Luca, a crime against the language. "I'm going to send them a gift basket," I

I Love You

Rosa POVEarly morning. Grey light coming through the windows, the city just beginning its noise. I was lying on my side facing him, watching him sleep with the unguarded look I had never let myself hold for long.I held it now.His face in sleep was open in a way it almost never was when he was awake. The sharpness was resting. The control was resting. He was just a man. Just this. Just Raffaele, who had covered me with a blanket before I knew him, who said I love you into a dark room without meaning to and never took it back, who gave me a choice when he did not have to, who looked at me across a tournament and said I told you with nothing in his face but certainty and something that might be joy.I lay there and let myself feel the whole weight of it without holding any of it back.I was not afraid.The thing I was afraid of, that saying it makes it real and real things can be taken, was still true. That had not changed. The world was still the world. People left. Things ended. Not

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