I find Willa taking up residence in one of twelve studio apartments I own on the other side of the highway.
“Well.” She looks me up and down, wearing a green silk bonnet. “I knew you’d show up at some point.”
She steps away to let me pass, then snaps the deadbolt.
“Thanks, nothing for me.” I respond to an offer that wasn’t made.
“What brings you?” She mutes the TV and takes a sip from a travel cup of Diet Coke. I peer into every corner of the studio.
“You already unpacked.” My people have been with me forever. They know where their safe house is, and Benny keeps them clean and furnished. Willa’s bed is made, of course. The pillowcases will be silk, and the television is on the most innocuous thing available.
“There wasn’t a speck of dust.” Willa runs her finger along the windowsill and shows me the result.
“I have staff to take care of it.”
“You included my space in their rounds?” She tosses a coaster on the table and puts her Diet Coke on it. “How sweet.”
“You need to go home.”
“Why?”
“Your presence… your existence is causing me trouble. Yesterday, I got an earful about what a liar I am. And manipulative. A user… all because you decided to show up here.”
“No, Dario. Because you’re a manipulative liar, but I have to say… the way you were rendered completely speechless when you were caught? She raises her eyebrows to mimic the surprise she felt. “Shocking. It was like you cared.”
“I do care.”
“Oria told me, and I didn’t believe it. I thought she was just projecting. But there it was, in front of my own eyes. My God, Dario. You love her. What an utterly misguided, unfortunate, stupid choice to make.”
“I don’t love her.”
“You weren’t even supposed to actually fuck her.”
“One has fuck-all to do with the other.”
She opens the fridge. “You think?”
“I didn’t marry you because I fucked you twice.”
A can of ginger ale goes flying through the air. I catch it.
“I know what we were and what we are.” Willa closes the refrigerator. “Don’t flatter yourself. We both have needs, and neither one of us has done without because of a stupid piece of paper. I’m talking about her.” She jabs her finger at me. “Every girl who came through us was treated with care. They came to me untouched by any more trauma than they’d already gotten from the Colonia.”
“She’s not the same.” I open the can. It fizzes, and Willa waits until I drink off the foam. “She’s royalty. You knew that. She was a weapon from day one.”
“You never preyed on the weak ones.”
Violence almost leaps out of my skin to strangle her. The insult cuts where I didn’t know I was exposed. Not that she called me an animal. I may dress in clothes and use a knife and fork, but I’ve never played at being anything besides rage and desire held together by a sack of skin.
I’m bristling at the idea that I’m preying on Sarah, even though that was the plan from the beginning.
“She’s not weak,” I say, defending her strength so I don’t have to think of what I’ve done.
“I’ll be the judge of that once she’s away from you, with the girls on St. Easy.”
The nickname for the island we set up to rehabilitate Colonia women used to be a private joke. It’s not funny anymore.
“She’s not going.”
“Then I’m staying.” She pours herself fresh soda.
“You don’t belong here.”
“Oh, I know that. I have a whole life and none of it’s in this hellhole. I have a man who loves me and who I love. I have purpose and I have peace.”
“Because you don’t have the stomach to do what I do here.”
Leaning her hands on the counter, she takes a deep breath like a woman gathering strength from the air. “You forget what I used to do for a living.”
“The job you left because you couldn’t watch people get hurt anymore? What do you think you’re going to see if you stay? When I get my hands on Peter Colonia, you’re going to wish you were back on a tropical island with that man who loves you.”
No snappy response. She knows the truth.
“This is my fault,” she says. “I was down there getting complacent while you were up here acting like a vicious monster.”
I’m not going to stand here and argue about who she thinks I am or what she thinks I’ve morphed into.
“I have this. I’ll take care of her. I’ll teach her what she needs to know until she can stand on her own two feet. Without me,” I say.
“What have you done to help her so far? Instructions on how to suck your dick the way you like?”
“I’m the only one who can help her.”
“You won’t teach her a damn thing because once you do, she can leave you.”
“Just go.”
“I’m not staying here.” She swallows hard, then makes the next statement as if it’s the most difficult thing she’s ever uttered. “But I’m not leaving without Sarah.”
Out of respect, I hold back laughter. “You really think you get to decide this?”
“Don’t test me.”
She’s getting tested. We all are. And I’m not the one deciding who passes or fails. It’ll be Sarah.