Page 55 of The Hitman
“I don’t date. I have no children. I’ll never have children. And I never would have brought youhereif I thought I had a choice.”
“And why don’t you want children?” she asks.
“I think two generations of monsters is enough.” There’s nothing more to say as far as I’m concerned.
“Did you terrorize the locals so much that decades later they still remember and hate you so much they also hate your son?”
“No,” I grind out. “But I’m working on it in Naples.”
“Right, well, get back to me in a generation about that.”
It’s my turn not to get it.
She squeezes my arm again. “I’m not a psychologist or anything so, you know, don’t run with what I’m saying, but it strikes me as significant that you don’t want to be like your father, and you’re doing all you can to make sure that you don’t repeat his crimes.”
“I’m committing my own crimes,” I tell her. “I killed my father.”
“Yeah, and congratulations. Again, not a psychologist. I’m just saying, you’re not a good man, but it’s possible to be a different kind of bad man than your father was. Also, no judgment, but it sounds like he kind of deserved it.”
I stare at her in complete confusion. The car is quiet again for a few seconds. This time, the silence is broken by the sound of Zahra’s stomach rumbling.
“Oh, wow. I’m really hungry.” She looks into the back seat at our bags of groceries. “I’m going to take those inside and get started on dinner. But you can stay out here for as long as you want. I have no problem eating alone.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out, and Zahra takes that as an invitation to leave.
She squeezes my arm and brushes her hand along my jaw again. I watch as she pushes the car door open and pulls open the back door to grab the grocery bags. We make eye contact, and she smiles as if I haven’t just told her all that I’ve seen and only a fraction of what I’ve done, before slamming the door and carrying the bags toward the house.
Her shoes are too tall, and there are too many bags. She stumbles, and I rush out of the car before I can think. I grab the bags from her arms, unlock, and push open the door to the house. I walk in first and take mental note of the gun at my back — the gun I’d honestly forgotten I had on me all day — and make sure that nothing looks out of place as I walk through the house toward the kitchen, with Zahra on my heels.
I help her unpack our bags, and we move around the kitchen together as if we’ve done this before. As if I’ve known her longer than two days. It feels so normal, it aches.
This is where I’m supposed to be, I think. Not in this house, but with her.
“So do you want pasta? Or pasta?” she jokes, holding up the packets we picked up at the grocers’.
“That’s it?” I ask her.
She laughs, “That’s all we got, yes. Maybe next time we’ll do better.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, still confused. “You’re not going to go running into the night to get away from me? You’re not going to interrogate me about all the other bad things I’ve done? You’re not going to hit me over the head with something heavy repeatedly and do the world a favor?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know, for someone whose job probably depends on them being very levelheaded, you’re very dramatic. Also, we’ve established that I can’t run in any of my shoes. So, pasta?”
“Pasta,” I tell her.
“Excellent choice,” she laughs to herself.
I’m still confused. None of this makes any sense. And yet in this moment, I only feel even more certain that Zahra would do best to get as far away from me as possible. The problem, I can see now, is that I think we’ve passed the point of no return.
I don’t want to let her go.
19Zahra
“Do you want more?”he asks.
I shake my head, even though I kind of do.
I wanted to come to Italy for the food, but I’ve been here for days, and I’ve only had a single real meal since I arrived. I’ve been surviving on wine and fruit and the occasional piece of chocolate. But a good homemade Italian meal like the ones that I’d imagined and pinned to every version of that Pinterest board? This is as close as I’ve gotten, and I cooked the pasta.