Dad touched my cheek. “It won’t happen again. I know you’ve been suffering in silence for a while and not talked to anyone. Today was the result of that.”
I’d hoped Dad and the others hadn’t noticed that something was wrong with me, but apparently my anguish had been too strong to keep it hidden. My feelings for Amo hadn’t vanished in weeks or months, my heartbreak was still as potent as it had been in the beginning. It didn’t make sense.
“He needs to stay under surveillance for another day before he can go home with you,” the doctor told me, once he’d bandaged the tail and the dog’s two broken hind legs.
“Will she walk again?”
“Yes, but it’s likely that she’ll have a bad limp.”
Dogs were resilient. I’d do anything in my power to help her heal, not just physically. “I’ll stay with her.”
“Take them home,” Dad told Savio, pointing at Nevio, Massimo and Alessio.
Nevio stalked toward us, shaking his head. “I’m staying.” He stopped right in front of Dad, challenge in his eyes. Dad smiled dangerously.
“I need him,” I whispered.
Dad sighed. Nevio sank down beside me and wrapped his arm around me. I put my head down on his shoulder, but I didn’t find the comfort I needed.
Back in my room the next morning, I curled up on my bed, feeling hollow in a way I’d never experienced before. The ceiling seemed too low and was coming closer with every intake of breath. My bed was too soft, my body sinking deeper and deeper into the mattress, the blankets wrapping around me.
Momo yapped. He and Bear were curled up on the bed right beside me. Bear panted, my nervous energy obviously rubbing off on him. I swallowed. “It’s okay,” I consoled them, but Momo whined.
I couldn’t make them believe something that wasn’t true. They could tell I wasn’t okay.
Eventually I could hardly breathe. I wasn’t sure why this was happening. I didn’t regret the man’s death. But somehow knowing that I was capable of violence like this… I couldn’t understand how this was possible.
I despised violence more than anything else. I’d always refused to take fight lessons for that very reason, and last night, with one flick of my hand, I’d set a human being on fire without a second thought. Maybe I’d lost more than my heart when I’d given up Amo, maybe a part of me had been woken by the anguish of his loss that should stay hidden.
I squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could but my despair and a longing so excruciating it stole my breath took hold of me. I knew what I needed, whom I needed.
What was one more sin today?
For the first time in my life, I wanted to be consoled by someone outside of my family.
I picked up my phone without pausing to think and called the one person I’d sworn to stay away from.
Amo.
The click-click of Cressida typing a message on her phone filled the silence, driving me raging mad. She insisted we have dinner together even if we’d nothing to talk about. To piss me off, she spent all dinner chatting with her friends, making sure to keep the tone on so I heard her typing. I didn’t care that she wasn’t talking to me, but the background noise after a fucking stressful day made me want to throw the phone out of the window—followed by Cressida.
“What the fuck are we doing here? Why do you insist on this?” I asked when my patience ran thin.
She looked up briefly from her phone, as if she’d forgotten I was here. “We’re married, Amo. Married people have dinner together. They do things together. And husbands fuck their wives.”
My mouth curled and I had to hold back a very nasty reply not fit for someone who was my wife on paper at least. My father treated Mom like a queen, and I had trouble mustering up every ounce of decency I possessed around my wife.
“I have fucked you if I recall correctly.”
“Maybe a dozen times in a year!” she hissed. “And it was angry fucking every single time!”
“If you’re hoping for love making, then you picked the wrong husband.”
Cressida’s hand around the wineglass tightened. I could tell she wanted to throw it at me, but since she’d seen the fucking abyss in my eyes after I came to her in our wedding night, she knew better than to provoke me even though I’d never hurt her. She enjoyed the rage fucking so that didn’t count.
“You only fuck me when you need an outlet after a messed-up night of torture and killing.”
I didn’t deny it. It was the only time I could stand being with her, on nights when I was completely numb from an abundance of violence. “You can have angry fucking or no fucking. It’s up to you.”