Despite everything, I laugh too. He’s right about that. “You’re from Italy originally?”
“Sicily.”
“So…” I swish my beer around in the bottle. “What brought you here?”
His shoulders sag. “It is not a good story.”
“And mine is?”
He looks down at his own beer bottle. “My sister Antonia’s husband—he was like yours. A bad guy. A rich, powerful bad guy, who made himself feel better by slapping her around. I tell her, leave… but she would not. Then one day, he pushed her down the stairs and she never woke up at the hospital.” He grabs the sleeve of his T-shirt and pulls it up to reveal the tattoo I have seen of the heart with the name Antonia inscribed in it. “Now this is how I remember her.”
“Oh.” I clasp a hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “There is no justice for men like him. No jail. No punishment for murdering my sister. So I decided to punish him. Myself.”
I remember the dark look in his eyes when I told him what Andy did to me. I will kill him. “Did you…？”
“No.” He cracks his knuckles again—the sound echoes through the tiny apartment. “I did not go that far. And I regret this. Because after that, my life was worth nothing. Niente. I had to take everything I had and use it to get out.” He takes a drink from his beer bottle. “If I ever go back, I will be killed before I leave the airport.”
I don’t know what to say. “Was it hard for you to leave?”
“Will it be hard for you to leave here?”
I think about it for a moment and shake my head. I want to leave. I want to put as many miles as I can between me and Andrew Winchester. If that means going to Siberia, I’ll do it.
“You will need passports for you and Cecelia.” He ticks it off on his fingers. “A driver’s license. Birth certificates. Enough cash to keep you going until you can find work. And two plane tickets.”
My heart speeds up. “So I need money…”
“I have some saved up I can give you,” he says.
“Enzo, I couldn’t possibly—”
He waves off my protest. “It is not enough though. You will need more. Can you get it?”
I’ll have to find a way.
A few days later, I drive Cecelia to school like I do almost every day. She’s got her yellow hair in flawless twin braids behind her head and she’s wearing one of her pale frilly dresses that make her stand out among her classmates. I’m scared other kids make fun of her because of those dresses, and she can’t play in them like she wants to. But if she doesn’t wear them, Andy punishes me for it.
Cece taps her fingers on the glass pane of the back window absently as I turn onto the street for the Windsor Academy. She never gives me a hard time about going to school, but I don’t think she enjoys it. I wish she had more friends. I put her in so many activities to distract her and help her meet people, but it doesn’t help.
But it doesn’t matter anymore. Soon everything will change.
Very soon.
When I get to the school drop-off area, Cece lingers in the back of the car, her blond eyebrows knitted together. “You’re picking me up, right? Not Dad?”
Andy is the only father she’s ever known. And she doesn’t know what he does to me, but she knows that sometimes when she does something he doesn’t like, I disappear for days at a time. And when I do, he’s the one who picks her up. It scares her. She won’t say the words out loud, but she hates him.
“I’ll pick you up,” I say.
Her small face relaxes. I want to blurt out the words out loud: Don’t worry, honey. We will be out of here soon. And he won’t be able to hurt us ever again. But I can’t yet. I can’t take that chance. Not until the day I pick her up and we go straight to the airport.
After Cecelia gets out of the car, I turn around and drive home. I have one week left here. One week before I pack a bag, then make the ninety-minute drive to where my safe-deposit box is waiting with my new passport, my new driver’s license, and a big wad of cash. I’ll purchase the tickets at the airport using cash, because the last time I bought a ticket in advance, Andy was waiting for me at the gate. Enzo has helped me plan this in a way to minimize the chances of Andy figuring out what I’m doing. So far, he’s still in the dark.
Or so I believe until I walk into my living room. To find Andy sitting at the dining table. Waiting for me.