Chapter 13: What He Carries
She found the folder three nights later — not
snooping, she would insist later, just looking
for a lighter in the pocket of his jacket where it
hung over a kitchen chair — and instead found
her father's signature sitting directly beside the
word Moretti, in ink that had gone brown with
age but was still perfectly, damningly legible.
She didn't confront him with anger, not at first.
She confronted him with the folder laid open
on the table between them, her hands pressed
flat against the wood like she needed it to keep
her standing upright.
"Tell me this isn't what it looks like."
Romeo said nothing, which was, in its own way,
a complete confession.
"He killed your parents." Her voice cracked on
the word killed, cracked and kept going
anyway. "And you've known. For how long,
Romeo?"
"Eleven days." "Eleven days." She laughed, short and
disbelieving and utterly without humor in it.
"And you were just going to — what — live
inside this with me and never say a word? Kiss
me on that porch and never once mention that
my father murdered your family?"
"I didn't know how to say it!" The words tore out
of him louder than he'd intended, louder than
he'd let his voice get in years. "How exactly do
you tell the woman you're in love with that her
father murdered your family, Isabella? Give me
the sentence. Give me the words that make
that conversation survivable, because I have
spent eleven days looking for them and I
haven't found a single one."
She was crying now, quiet and furious at once,
wiping at her face with the back of her wrist
like she resented the tears for showing up. "So
what happens now? What do you want — do
you want him dead? Do you want me to help
you, or hate you for even considering it?"
"I don't know what I want anymore," he said,
and for the first time in seventeen years, that admission was the truth, and it terrified him
more than any lie ever had.