Ray looks apprehensive, his eyes shifting from me to my car in the driveway. "Who did this?"
A lie is on the tip of my tongue. I try to swallow it back, but it springs free. "I don't know."
I've never lied to Ray before.
"You don't know?"
"No," I say. "They blindsided me, stole my wallet and my keys, then panicked and shot me."
"And you don't know who it was?"
"No," I say. "I don't."
His eyes meet mine again, guarded, as he seems to consider all of it. He doesn't believe me, I see it in his eyes, but he, too, knows I've never lied to him. He doesn't want to think things have changed between us. I don't want to think it, either, but I feel it.
I feel the shift before he even addresses it.
"You're getting soft, Vitale. You let someone shoot you. You let them rob you and get away with it."
"Just because they got away last night doesn't mean they'll get away with it," I say. "I always get my revenge."
"Revenge," Ray echoes, letting out a dry laugh. "I'm starting to think we have different definitions of that. I thought revenge meant payback, justice, an eye for an eye… a family for a family… not taking the easy way out."
Easy. I shake my head. "That's where we differ, Ray. You seem to think what I did was easy for me, that letting go of a plan I spent almost two decades plotting was easy, but you're wrong, because there was nothing easy about it. I still feel like I failed, like I didn't get any justice for Maria."
"You didn't," he says, matter-of-fact, those words piercing me like a knife to the chest. "You pissed on my daughter's memory by letting Carmela live."
"Yeah, well, that's only temporary."
After last night, there's no way around it.
I can't let Carmela continue to walk the streets after what she just did. I tried to give her a pass, a chance to flee for Karissa's sake, but it's too late now.
She made a grave mistake.
"And their kid?" Ray asks, turning to look at me. I don't look his way, but from the corner of my eye I can see his serious expression. "Karissa?"
"What about her?"
"You're just going to let her live," he says. "You let her go on breathing, living in that house that should've been my daughter's, sleeping in your bed, sleeping with you, giving her the life my daughter should've had, the life my daughter could've had, would've had, and you're going to fucking give it to her? Her?"
Every word from his lips stabs at me, eating away at my insides like festering poison, tearing me apart one syllable at a time. He's not saying anything I haven't thought myself more than once, the sense of betrayal already existing inside of me, but the accusatory tone in which he spews it only stirs it up more.
I feel like I'm going to pass out.
"The daughter of my daughter's murderer," he mutters. "That's who you chose, who you let replace her."
"Nobody will ever replace her," I say, having to force the words out through the swell of emotion in my chest. "I'm not trying to replace anyone, but I can't help how I feel about Karissa."
"Guess we disagree there, too," Ray says. "You could've helped it. You could've avoiding all of this by slitting that bitch's throat like you were supposed to. Isn't that what you said, Vitale? Make her choke on the filthy blood that created her."
I damn near flinch when he says it, the anger in his voice an echo of mine the first time I said those exact words. It was only months ago, weeks that somehow turned me into someone I don't know. I get Ray's confusion. How can he understand what I'm still coming to terms with? For damn near twenty years I dreamed of bleeding every single one of them dry, and now that it's within my reach, I hesitate.
No, I don't hesitate.
I change my mind.
I do a full reversal, a fucking one-eighty, practically overnight because of Karissa.
She's not just under my skin, she's in my organs, wrapped up in my cells, infecting me.
"I'm just trying to understand, Vitale," he says. "Just trying to understand how you can bear to breathe the same air as that girl and not spend every second of it thinking it should be my daughter breathing instead. That it should be your daughter, or your son, instead of Johnny's kid. How can you be with her, fuck her, do things with her you used to do with my daughter, and not still want to slit her fucking throat because of how unjust it is?"
I'm not sure what to say, how to respond to that. I sit there for a moment, not moving, still staring out the window. "She wasn't part of the original plan."
"Plans change."
"Exactly," I say. "And they've changed again. Killing her would make me no better than Johnny, and that's not the kind of man your daughter loved in the first place. Killing Karissa won't do Maria's memory any justice. Killing Karissa will just make it all worse."
I climb out of the car then, not bothering to thank him for the ride. I start to close the door, hearing his voice just before it slams between us. "Another thing we'll have to disagree on."
Standing on the curb, I watch as the limo pulls away, disappearing down the street. Shaking my head, I turn to the house, staggering that direction.
The first thing I see when I step inside, the first thing my eyes are drawn to, are the smears of dried blood all over the floor around my bare feet. I glare at the streaks of dark red, sighing exasperatedly, as Karissa steps into the foyer in front of me.
I close my eyes.
Deep breaths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I can't clean it up now.
I'll do it later.
Don't worry about it.
When I reopen my eyes, Karissa's right in front of me. She reaches around where I stand, securing the locks on the door, as I run my hands down my face.
It's probably senseless.
I'm not sure if Carmela knows where I live. It's not listed on my license, but if she knows, if she finds out, she now has a key to the place. I know she's smart, but she's also proven to be fearless, and that can be a deadly combination.
As if I weren't paranoid enough before…
Karissa helps me upstairs the best she can. I collapse on the bed on my back, legs hanging off the edge, as my eyes drift closed right away. I don't want to sleep, I shouldn't risk it, but I can't help it. She says something to me, her voice gentle, her fingers even gentler as they run through my chaotic hair, but I don't comprehend it.
The pull is too strong to fight.
Appear as you may wish to be.
I sleep deeply, long hours lost in the abyss, time slipping away, before I finally regain consciousness. I lay in the darkness and stare up at the ceiling as I blink rapidly, trying to come back around.