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“It was a very near thing,” Goncharov said, dabbing his bloodied temple in the mirror. Not a single porcelain tile was spared from the crimson splatter. He picked up the tweezers again and dug out the last bit of rubble with a wince. “Bastard almost took out my eye.”
Katya’s cigarette glowed from the bedroom. “How close?”
“Close.”
“Was it Valery?”
“Of course it wasn’t,” he snapped.
In the mirror, Katya watched him, just as she had a hundred times before. This time he wore a stranger’s reflection. Lo Straniero. “Oh, of course.” It was pointed, humorless. “Because you are ever so transparent in matters of business.”
“What is that supposed to—”
“What does it mean?” Her tone could score glass. Smoke disappeared into the ceiling as Katya took her time ashing the remains. “It means what it has always meant, Lyubovnik.” Sarcasm dripped, joining the blood on the floor. “Why, you would tell me anything.”
“I know what they think of me. Maybe they’re right to.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Andrey cuts in, more urgent than intended.
Goncharov’s eyebrow lifts. “Like what?”
“That.” You are not what you endure. “Now, let's find you that drink.”
A draft from a far window toyed idly with the many candle flames in the corner of Katya’s vision. The chaise lounge beneath her was plush, blue velvet. Even the hearth audibly crackled with promise of comfort, drenching the darkened room in firelight. Even so, she was chilled to the bone.
The truth was this: Katya couldn’t close her eyes.
The fresh memory draped her like a fine silk; enveloping, thin. Her hands trembled. It wasn’t a kind thing to see in the dark.
It would get easier, taking a life. She’d heard her husband promise to signor Ambrosini years ago. He hadn’t mentioned how cold it would feel. How the light would flee Ice Pick Joe’s eyes like sunlight slipping through waves, dwindling to darkness before reaching the sand. Did it truly get easier? Or was he just familiar with the cold?
The bottle fell from his hand and shattered on the cobblestone. It was the last of his liquor, but Goncharov laughed deep from his chest, the alcohol slowing down time in its own way. It wasn’t long before the tears came.
He sank to his knees, the shards digging in through the fabric of his trousers. This alleyway was his confessional. Goncharov looked up into the darkness, sobbing. “Is this it?” And then, quieter, into his hands, “Would anyone stoop low enough to see me now?”
Like lightning preceding thunder, a torch shone in his eyes and then: “Goncharov?”
The Banker’s voice drove the shadows back up the walls.
Sofia sank her teeth into the skin of a blood-red apple.
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”
Her glossy nails framed the bite. This image was very different, Andrey thought, from Goncharov’s gloved hand tossing it to him at the market. She knew. Somehow, she knew.
“Nothing at all,” Andrey said, drowning.
“The wine is too cold. Isn’t the wine too cold?” Katya spoke to the tune of Lady Macbeth scrubbing out that damned spot.
Had Goncharov had a gun at his disposal, he might have used it. But the revolver was in Katya’s handbag now, and neither belonged to him.
Andrey’s fist curled around the knife.
In the distance, the clocktower made itself known. It chimed with a pious melody for the holy day. It was a beautiful sermon. All of Naples went to church while Goncharov’s blood pooled on the pavement.
The police found the body four hours after the congregation sang its last hymn. Two stab wounds in the chest and one in the side. Intimate, intentional, deadly. No ID on the victim and no eye witnesses. Nameless. Reports say they didn’t have to close the victim’s eyes. Someone had already closed them.
All it took was a glimpse of her husband’s corpse. With binoculars, Katya could see it from the bridge.
Valery squeezed her shoulder, keeping his voice soft like he did when Mama died and she was too sad to sleep in her own bed. “I’ll give you a moment.”
But she didn’t need one.
Love couldn’t save any of them, she understood, and the unending violence would swallow its own tail until they all lay cold beneath the pier with Joseph. Her brother, her friends, her lovers—dust to dust. That was the end of it. With any luck she, too, would be washed out to sea.