Carina was already out in the car, and the blood on her lip had dried to a dark line down her chin.
Dario: You and me are going for a drive. Say goodbye to your family.
I turned to Ottavia, and she looked at me like a bill she had finally finished paying.
Ottavia: Don't you dare look at me like that, you stupid little bitch. You should be on your knees thanking him.
Ottavia: Do you know what he wiped off the books for us? Do you know what you were worth before he walked in here?
I wanted to ask her how she could say it out loud with the candles still burning.
Aldo stood against the shelf with his hand over his bloody mouth and never once looked at me.
Nicolette: Uncle. Please. Say something.
He shook his head, slow, the way a man shakes it at a funeral, and I understood that he had already buried me.
Dario: That is enough family time. Move.
His fingers closed over the marks on my wrist and squeezed until my hand went numb all the way to the fingertips.
Dario: Out. Now. Don't make me carry you in front of the neighbors.
The night hit me cold and wet, and Bruno already had the back door of a long black car standing open.
Carina was in the front seat with her hand pressed to her mouth, and Bruno's palm was flat on her shoulder, keeping her there.
Then Dario's hand was on my back, shoving, hard enough that my knees hit the seat before the rest of me did.
The door shut, and the whole city went soft and far away outside the glass, and I was alone in the back with him.
Carina: Nico, don't you say one fucking word to him, do you hear me? Not one.
Dario: She'll say plenty. Just not to you.
Dario: Look at me.
His hand came around the back of my neck and turned my face, and there was nowhere left to look but him.
Dario: Not the shop, not that coward with the bloody mouth, not God. You belong to me.
Then he kissed me, and it wasn't a question.
His mouth was hot and rough, and he kissed me until my fingers were in his lapels and my breath was coming through my nose in little pulls.
Dario: There it is. You kiss like you're still trying to be good, and you are so bad at it, saint.
His hand dropped from my neck to my knee and pushed my skirt up over it like he was unwrapping something he had already bought.
His palm came down flat on my bare thigh, warm and wide, and my leg jumped once and then stayed.
Dario: Skin like a fucking candle.
I broke the kiss, because I couldn't think with his mouth on mine, and I had exactly one thing left in me worth trading.
Nicolette: Carina. Let her go and tell me she's safe, or this stops right here with your hand off me.
Dario: Careful. You're not in a position to bargain. You're in a car with a locked door.
His fingers went in above my knee, five points of pressure, and his thumb pushed the inside of my thigh until it hurt.
Dario: You want to bargain? Say you're mine, and maybe I don't put her out on the pavement tonight.
Carina was shouting my name through the seat, and Bruno turned the radio up like a man who had heard all of this before.
I got a fistful of his shirt and pulled him closer instead of shoving him off, because he was the only door out of that car for her.
Nicolette: Let her keep her job, keep her mother's medicine coming, and no man in that club puts a finger on her.
Nicolette: Do that, and I'll be whatever you want me to be. But if she gets hurt, there's nothing left of me worth having.
Dario: Then I want you saying yes with your mouth open and your hands where I tell you, not praying into my shoulder.
Dario: And not one word about your God while my hand is under your dress.
His thumb moved on my skin in small circles, and my body answered him before my shame could catch up with it.
The word came out of me on a breath I didn't even recognize as mine. Yes.
Nicolette: But she stays untouched and her mother's medicine gets paid through the winter. That is the whole price.
Dario: Her medicine is paid through spring. Carina is a ghost in my club to every man but you.
Dario: Say it again, and this time put my name in it.
Carina was bleeding two feet in front of me, and I was the only prayer she had left in that car.
I had one choice in the whole world, and it was the shape of my own mouth, and he was waiting for it the way a man waits for a church bell.
If I said his name, the last thing I owned would be gone.