The wide, rollup door next to an open chain-link storage cage is marked DANGER—LIVE ELECTRICITY. Dario inputs a code that seems to go on forever.
“Aren’t you going to get electrocuted?” I point at the yellow sign.
“That’s fake.” The light goes green, and he presses his finger to the pad. “This is our ride.”
There’s a loud clack and a beep, then the door rolls up, revealing a pristine black Audi parked in a tight space, another rollup door on the opposite side—in front of it.
“This is the ghost car.” He reaches for a briefcase on a high shelf. “Registered to a fake name in a shell corporation. Untraceable. I have it maintained and taken out once a month.”
“It’s nice.”
He pops the trunk and puts the briefcase, my art box, and my suitcase inside. “I’ve never even driven it.”
Dario slaps the trunk closed, and in the echo, a word forms in the concrete cavern.
“Sarah?” The thick clap of a door closing follows.
I recognize the voice. The familiarity shakes my guard loose, and I turn to see one of my father’s many security men crossing the lot from the stairway door.
“Sonny?”
He’s big at the shoulders and bigger in the waist, with a full head of sandy hair and a mouth full of perfect teeth. Daddy called him Muscles, because he had them, and Rock, because he was as dumb as one.
“We found you.” He seems happy to see me. His smile is relaxed and genuine.
I glance to the side, looking for Dario, but he’s not there.
“What are you doing here?”
It’s the only question I can think of besides, Where did Dario go?
“I knew you’d be down here!” He reaches for his pocket, and I flinch before I realize what he’s pulled out is a phone. “I’ll get you out before the swatters are done clearing upstairs.”
“I don’t want—”
Behind him, Dario appears, fast as lightning. A sleeve appears across Sonny’s neck—an arm. Another arm locks the first in place.
“Sonny Graco.” Dario swings the man to get him on his heels. “Nice to see you.” Sonny claws at Dario’s arm. “How many?”
Another minute of struggle and Sonny’s legs flap like two flags in a storm.
“He can’t breathe!” I shout, as if Dario doesn’t know.
“How many with you?” He jerks Sonny’s head to the side. “Show me!”
Sonny makes a gacking sound and holds up four fingers.
“Thank you.” Dario lets him go.
I exhale, but it’s too soon for relief.
Sonny’s on his knees for half a second when Dario takes out a knife and slits his throat.
I’ve never seen a person die, so I don’t know if it always happens in slow motion in the space of a blink. My senses are heightened. I hear the lights buzzing, smell the copper of fresh death. The air against my skin is warm and heavy.
By the time I gasp, Sonny is already on the ground.
“Wait,” I whisper too late.
“We’re going.” Dario grabs my elbow.
“He has kids.”
“They all have families. Come!”
I let him pull me away, into the car, wide-eyed and empty as he drives up the ramp, through the gate, and into the streets of Manhattan.
Along the East River, joggers slog through the gray foam air and the slabs of the Queens skyline are softened in the haze.
We’re stuck in traffic, trapped between movement and stillness. We are bodies flung through the air on our heels, shoulders forward, chests back, waiting for the ground to hit us from behind.
Dario squeezes my cool, dry hands and says, “Welcome to New York,” which is meant to console me about the traffic.
Timothy never had to take me far and always seemed to be able to avoid a jam.
I wonder if he’s alive. And William. And how many more?
“Just so you know,” he starts after a pause. “You don’t have to worry about Willa.”
“She doesn’t have to worry about me either.” I take my hand away and fold the left fist under my right palm. “You can tell her that.”
“She’s my wife by the law. You’re my wife by scars.”
I rub the sore lines on my fingers. The tissue is still sensitive. “I don’t even know what you think that means.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why you feel comfortable saying your wife isn’t really your wife.”
“She’s…” He stops himself with a quick wave and starts over. “It was a situation. I met runaways all the time. Hired them to do stuff. This one, Rosemarie… she was maybe thirteen. I knew before she even opened her mouth she was Colonia. Nico was the one to get the story out of her. She was sold into marriage to some old fucking pig. She got out.”
“How?” I’m surprised. Once a girl is promised, she’s in a transitory place, owned by everyone and no one. So she’s protected and watched by both families.
“She’s a smart, smart girl. Funny too. But once she told Nico shit, she never told another outsider, she got spooked. She ran off and got picked up by Protective Services. Willa was her social worker. So, I caught Willa on her way home.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what?”
“You met her and saw how she was and you had to have her.” I shrug as if it’s obvious. He shoots me a glance that says it’s anything but. “Look at her. And she’s so… I don’t know… she knows her business. If I were a man, I’d want to marry her.”
He looks away as if he can hide his chuckle. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, maybe a little.”
“Thought so.”
“At first, she didn’t believe me about the Colonia. But it got through when Rosemarie’s foster parents reported a story the girl told about wedding scars. Everything clicked, and Willa… when she gets fired up, watch out. She was all in. Wanted to know all about them… you. The Colonia. First thing was to get Rosemarie a permanent home with people who knew what the Colonia was about and that was me, and now Willa. But the adoption was going through Catholic Charities, and they don’t adopt to single parents.”
“So you got married.”
“We did.” He faces me. “It was business.”
“You cared about another person together.” I turn away. “That’s not business.”
“Maybe. Everything after that, though. We were in the business of catching girls who escaped and getting them out. Willa’s parents were on St. Maarten, so we settled on an island close by, where we could hide money and identities. There were bumps. We fight. She can be a fucking bitch, but we’re close. Not husband and wife. We understand each other.”
“You’ve both been living in the same world,” I say. “Under the same laws. Where these scars don’t mean anything. The only reason you learned what they’d mean to me is so you could hurt my family.”
Maybe he’s lying to me. Maybe he’s lying to himself. Maybe he’s expressing a disappointing truth. None of it matters. I want to be his as much as I want to be free, and I don’t know how both can be true.
“You’re crazy not to.”
“Listen to me.” He whispers so softly I have no choice but to listen. “I’m trying to tell you I don’t love her. You have to believe me.”
“No,” I say in the same low whisper, then raise my voice just enough to speak firmly. “I don’t have to believe you. You’re not my husband. You lied to me. I don’t want to want you, but I do. I accept that. I’m not who I was, and I’ll never be again. I was innocent before you came, and I can’t ever have that back. Those rules about obeying you and serving you… those are gone because you broke them. Whatever way I am now, you made me.”
He digs my left hand from under my right and presses on the tender line at the base of my middle finger. “These scars, they’re forever. They’re not meaningless to me. Blood was drawn. Our names are cut into each other’s bodies.”
“Sweet words.” I let him caress my hand, but not responding in kind. There’s no lying left in me. I’m not obfuscating to protect myself from him anymore.
“I don’t expect you to trust me, but you need to.” He looks at me when he says it, and since we’re at a dead stop, he can hold my gaze. “We’re at war. We’re being hunted. I can’t let them find you, and when you run, you turn your back. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
I turn away to look out the front. “You want to face them.”
Them.
Sonny was a them and now his throat is opened up into a bloody smile. I have very few memories of him. He was just there. He said hello and asked me if I was having a good day. He drove me places sometimes. I can’t even remember where I went.
“I have to.” He puts my hand in his lap. “But if you trust me, I can show you… teach you the things you need to know.” In the stopped traffic, he faces me again. “I can fight knowing you can live without me.”
“What do you mean, ‘live without you’?”
“War is a risky business. People die. Husbands leave wives behind.”
Arguing about whether or not we’re married seems beside the point. He’s talking about murdering and getting murdered.
“I don’t want that.”
“Let me worry about it then. You just get to learning.”
“I don’t want to learn how to kill someone the way you did.”
The traffic opens up, and he speeds ahead. He’s concentrating. Pensive. One hand rests on the bottom of the wheel, the other on my thigh.
The last time I rode in the front seat was the first time. Armistice Night. I didn’t even appreciate it at the time, but now I like being able to know what’s in front of me.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” He changes lanes.
“You didn’t have to do it. We could have just run.”
“They need to know I’ll kill for you.”
“I won’t kill for you, Dario, so don’t teach me how.”
There’s an island in the river, between us and Queens. It flicks by at a constantly shifting angle.
Am I a liar? Would I kill for him? Will I ever find out?
The sounds of the world are shut out. Even the engine and the tires under us are muffled. We pass two women jogging abreast in the fog, ponytails swinging. They’re a flash in my sight, then they’re gone.
“What do you want most in the world, Sarah? Not a thing. Any object you want, I’ll get you. That’s a given. Tell me what you want to do. Where you want to go. Who you want to be.”
“No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“I’m asking, and I know you can’t answer.” He slides his hand over mine. “Not yet. But you will when I’m through with you. I’ll teach you everything.”
“But will you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because then I can leave you.”
“I will.” He slides his hand from mine and drapes it over the steering wheel. “And you won’t. But if I ever leave you, you’ll know how to decide what to do and who to be. You’ll be strong enough to save yourself when I can’t.”
He’s not threatening to leave me. He’s not threatening anything. He’s sharing his reality in all it’s brevity and intensity.
I don’t want him to die, or leave, or break himself off from my love, ever. I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will keep out the pain of the separations I imagine. He didn’t have to touch me to brush away my anger. It wasn’t his dominance or the contrast of his more soothing charms.
He’s placated me with the promise of an education.