It probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but it would do for now. I filled up the flask I’d gotten a few birthdays back as a gift from a few friends of mine in the Stiches, and hit the streets. It was still dark out, and freezing cold, but I had to go by her hotel. I had to put myself in her vicinity again, so I could figure out whether or not all of this was worth it.

 

I had to talk myself out of taking the car, reasoning that if I was splatted on the side of a building it wouldn’t do anyone much good at all. If there was one thing I objected to above all else, it was drunk driving—yeah, it was an odd place to take my stance, but I knew too many guys too arrogant to call a cab who’d ended up injured or worse driving about after one too many shots. Besides, the walk would go a long way to clearing my head—and not just of all the booze.

 

I still couldn’t quite believe she’d asked me what she had. Her words were moving around my head as if circling a drain, but I couldn’t quite get them to vanish. She had never said the words outright, but it wasn’t as though I could pretend that wasn’t what she was asking for—I wasn’t a complete idiot, and I could read between the lines. Had she been planning this for a while? Maybe seducing me and getting me to fall for her had all been part of the plan. She played the airhead in front of her father to keep him off her tail, so who’s to say that she wasn’t playing some kind of character when she was around me, too?

 

The couple who had been making out across the street were still there—Jeez, get a room, I thought to myself grumpily. Why did they have to rub it in my face? I could almost guarantee that the guy in question didn’t have to murder his girlfriend’s pop for the two of them to be together. As I walked past, I coughed loudly, and the two of them jumped apart, faces grinning and guilty. The guy glanced at me, and I glared back—I didn’t intend to do anything but these two were pissing me off no end. He leaned over to whisper something in his girlfriend’s ear, and she giggled and nodded before the two of them vanished off down the road.

 

They couldn’t have been that much younger than me, but I couldn’t remember a time in my life when a relationship had been completely without complication. No, everything came with its own pile of difficulties, whether it was my involvement with the Stiches or them not liking the fact that they could never know what my job was or, you know, the fact that I couldn’t be with the woman I was falling for because her father was a mafia boss who she and God knows how many other people wanted dead. It had never been easy for me, and I couldn’t help but feel kind of short-changed because of that.

 

I clenched my hands into fists partly to try and ward off the cold, but also because I felt kind of like punching someone or something. I knew that wasn’t going to help the situation, but I wanted to let out everything I was feeling somehow, and I wasn’t sure how many twenty-four-hour therapists I was going to find at this time of night. Well, I could probably find a couple, but their therapy was probably far from traditional and I doubted they went by such a traditional moniker.

 

I just felt…God, I couldn’t sort out the feelings dashing around my head. I was frustrated at my own stupidity, wondering if I could have avoided all of this if I had just made an effort with her in the first place, if I hadn’t fucked out of what we had as soon as the going got tough. When she’d gotten a little grumpy, and when the Stiches started jibing me about it, I’d dropped her so fast—no wonder she was convinced she couldn’t trust me. She was probably terrified that I would just go and do the same thing all over again.

 

And why wouldn’t she think that? She hadn’t known me for long enough to know that I was a better person that that—or at least, that I wanted to be. She had no reason to believe for a second that anything that came out of my mouth was true—so it was natural that she wanted me to prove it for her. I couldn’t exactly fault her for that, because it’s exactly what I would have done in her situation—pick a task so difficult and dangerous that doing it could only prove that the person in question was in this for you and no one else.

 

But her father? Lucca D’Orazio? He might not have been the most powerful man in the city on paper, but anyone who knew anything knew that he might as well have been. He had more influence over this place than any politician, any statesman, any activist. He was the one who held the future of this city in his hands, more so than any other crime boss the entire state over. His power was virtually unlimited—at least within the confines of the city.

 

Did she really think that someone like me was going to be able to get even remotely close to a guy like that? I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten out, but if she thought it was of the same level of difficulty as getting in, she couldn’t even imagine how wrong she was. He knew who I was, so it wasn’t like I could slip in at one of his parties and just pretend I was part of the crowd. No, this was a virtually impossible task she had set me—and she knew it.

 

Maybe that was the point—she didn’t actually want to be with me, and she knew that presenting with this ridiculousness would be a way for me to fail on my own terms so she didn’t have to shoot me down too viciously. And if I did succeed? Well, what was there to say that we had to end up together? She would have the filthiest dirt on me, so I couldn’t exactly push her on our deal—not that I would want to, in all honesty. If she didn’t want to be with me, there wasn’t much I could do to change that.

 

I hadn’t realized how quickly I’d been walking, so fast that I was getting a little short of breath. I pressed my hand up against a wall next to me and sucked in great gasps on the cold air into my lungs. It felt good—cathartic, even. I had quit smoking a few years previously, and the way the cold burned my lungs made it feel as though I had never stopped. I was craving one so badly at that moment that it was getting hard to think straight, but instead I stared at the ground and tried to remind myself that it wasn’t worth it since I’d probably be dead soon anyway—either from going after Lucca D’Orazio, or having him come after me. I had been dumb enough to call Maria’s phone instead of the hotel, so now they would have a record of our communication if they did find her and shit, I was fucked either way, wasn’t I?

 

I never thought someone would affect my life the way she had. I began to walk again, in the direction of the hotel once more. She was the only thing on my mind—hell, I couldn’t pretend to be surprised by that, but still. Every little detail I’d picked up on over the last few months was engraved on to my brain, and I was going through them all carefully to try and figure out whether or not this was worth it.

 

Once my breathing had calmed down, I looked up, continuing my way down the street. I had already made it to the less salubrious side of town, a few streetlights broken above me as I wound my way through the streets, towards the hotel, towards her. Her words echoed in my brain over and over again, and I examined them carefully, wondering if there was some way I could have misinterpreted what she was saying, even though I knew that couldn’t be the case.

 

Maria had spent her whole life dancing around the point, conveying what she needed to get across without actually coming out and saying it. She knew what I would take from that conversation, and that’s exactly what she wanted me to do. But the question was—could I do it? Was the payoff worth it? Was Maria D’Orazio equal to the value of her father’s life?

 

The question curled around my brain like smoke, and I shook it loose. I couldn’t bear having them there any longer. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, drawing myself ever closer to the woman who had changed my life—and might well change it again if I gave her the chance.