CHAPTER 6 — Don't Flinch
ELENA
The deal felt real in my bakery, surrounded by the smell of yeast and sugar. It felt real looking at the maps spread across Matteo's desk. It felt like a plan, like something we could control.
It didn't feel real until the docks.
"Stay in the car," Matteo had said.
"No," I'd said back. "Antonio died here. If we're doing this, I'm not waiting in the car."
He looked at me for a long time, his face unreadable in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. "If I tell you to run, you run. No questions. You don't look back. You just go. Understand?"
"I understand."
I didn't. Not really.
We were watching a fish packing plant that had been closed for years. According to Antonio's notes, it was a place Vincent's men used for payouts. The gap in the logs was here. A half-hour every Thursday night where a truck was logged as "delayed due to traffic" when there was never traffic on this road.
We were tucked behind a stack of rusted shipping containers, the air thick with the smell of salt and dead fish. It was cold. I could see my breath. I could see the spot a hundred yards away where they'd found Antonio's body. I tried not to look at it.
A car pulled up, no headlights. Two men got out. One I recognized from the bakery — one of Vincent's. The other was a stranger. They exchanged a briefcase for a small, heavy-looking bag.
"That's it," Matteo whispered, his voice low beside me. "That's the skim."
He lifted a camera with a long lens, the kind professionals use. He was taking pictures. Evidence. This was the plan. Watch. Document. Leave.
But one of them, the stranger, stopped. He looked around, sniffing the air like an animal. His eyes scanned the darkness, and they landed on our position.
He saw us. I don't know how. A glint of the lens, maybe. A shadow that was in the wrong place.
"Matteo," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"I see him."
The man said something to Vincent's guy, who looked over, startled. Then they both started walking towards us. Not running. Walking. Cocky.
"Okay, Elena. We're leaving. Now," Matteo said, putting the camera back in its bag. He took my arm. "Walk. Don't run."
We turned and started walking back towards our car, moving through the maze of containers. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel behind us, getting closer.
"Moretti!" Vincent's guy called out. "What, you're taking pictures now? Making a scrapbook?"
We kept walking.
"We just want to talk to the girl," the stranger called. His voice was oily. "Antonio's sister, right? Heard you've been asking questions. That's not smart."
I felt a cold dread wash over me. This was my fault. I'd been asking questions. I'd been clumsy.
Matteo's grip on my arm tightened. "Don't listen to him. Keep your eyes on the car."
We were almost there. Thirty feet. Twenty.
Then they were running.
Matteo shoved me behind him. "Get in the car."
"Not without you."
He didn't have time to argue. Vincent's guy grabbed his shoulder. Matteo spun, knocking his arm away. The stranger came at him from the other side, and I saw the glint of a knife.
Everything slowed down.
It wasn't a movie fight. It wasn't a ballet of violence. It was ugly and fast and clumsy. There was grunting. The sound of a fist hitting flesh.
Matteo moved in a way I'd never seen. He wasn't the man who sat in my bakery. He wasn't the man who bled on my floor. He was someone else entirely. Precise. Economical. Deadly.
He disarmed the man with the knife, a brutal twist of the wrist that made a sound like snapping celery. The man screamed. Matteo didn't seem to notice. He drove his knee into the man's stomach, and as he doubled over, Matteo hit him in the back of the neck with the edge of his hand. The man went down and did not get up again.
It took maybe four seconds.
Vincent's guy had backed away, his eyes wide. He pulled a gun.
I screamed, "Matteo!"
Matteo didn't look at me. He already had his own gun out. I hadn't even seen him draw it.
There were two sounds, so close together they were almost one. A loud crack that echoed off the containers, and another, softer sound. A wet pop.
Vincent's guy stood there for a second, a look of stupid surprise on his face. A small, dark hole appeared in the center of his chest. He looked down at it, then back up at Matteo. He opened his mouth to say something, but only blood came out.
He fell.
And then there was silence. Just the hum of the city in the distance and the lapping of water against the pier. The smell of gunpowder burned my nose.
Matteo stood over the two bodies, his chest rising and falling. He wasn't even breathing hard.
I stared at the man on the ground. The one who had laughed at me in the bakery. His eyes were open. He was staring at the sky. He wasn't laughing now.
I was going to be sick. My stomach churned, and I bent over, putting my hands on my knees. I didn't throw up, but I wanted to. My whole body was shaking. This was real. This wasn't a story. This was a man who was alive thirty seconds ago, and now he was a pile of meat on the gravel because of me. Because of a notebook. Because of a sandwich.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, hard.
"Elena." It was Matteo. His voice was flat. Empty.
I looked up at him. His face was a mask. His eyes were the ones I'd seen in the newspaper photographs. Cold. Dead.
He saw the look on my face. The horror. The revulsion. He saw me looking at him like he was a monster.
"Don't," he said, his voice quiet but hard as steel. "Don't you dare flinch. Not now."
"You… you killed him," I whispered. It sounded stupid. Obvious.
"Yes," he said. "He was going to kill you. This is the deal. This is what it looks like. You wanted to see it. Now you've seen it. Do not flinch."
He wasn't being cruel. He was teaching me. This was the most important rule of all, more important than not finishing a drink or refusing food. Don't flinch. Because flinching was weakness. Flinching was fear. And fear was what got you killed on these docks. It was what got Antonio killed.
I took a deep breath. The air smelled like blood. I straightened up. I looked from the bodies on the ground to Matteo's face. I made myself meet his dead eyes.
"Okay," I said. My voice didn't shake.
Something flickered in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or respect. It was gone before I could be sure.
"Get in the car," he said, his voice a little softer now.
I got in the car. I didn't look at the bodies again.
He took a phone from his pocket, made a quick call. "Cannery. Dock four. Two deliveries. Handle it." He hung up.
He got in the driver's seat. His hands were perfectly steady as he started the engine. He had a small splatter of blood on his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand like it was dirt.
We drove away in silence.
I stared out the window at the dark city passing by. I had made a deal. I had wanted justice. I had thought I understood the price.
I hadn't.
The price wasn't a secret shared over coffee. It wasn't a tense family dinner. It was the weight of a body hitting the ground. It was the silence after a gunshot.
Matteo was right. I couldn't flinch. If I did, I would drown in this.
So I sat there, my hands clenched into fists in my lap, and I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just stared out the window and forced myself to breathe. In, out. In, out.
The girl who brought sandwiches and drew maps was gone. I had watched her die back there, right alongside those men.
I didn't know who was sitting in the car now.
But she wasn't flinching.