I stared at him. His face, neck and hands, the only parts of his skin visible, didn’t appear to be burned. “Where are they?”
He sighed. “On my back and shoulders.”
Lord. “Why are you out and about with third degree burns? Aren’t those really serious? Shouldn’t you go to a doctor?”
He released another ironic laugh. “I’ve been in and out of the hospital for nine months.”
“
And they’re still not healed?”
“They’ve improved some, but they’re not entirely healed, no.”
I touched his hand since I knew that part of him hadn’t been injured. “Marco, I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
For the majority of our discussion, he’d been glancing away, but now he looked into my face. Our gazes locked. Those dark eyes no longer seemed predatory. Instead, they seemed open and younger than they had. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time, the real him, and while there may be some rough edges to Marco Varasso, there was more to him than that.
A lot more.
He seemed fascinated by my concern for him and something else. Startled by it. As if he didn’t anticipate such a thing from me.
“You’re a kind person, Kelly Carr. And I’m sorry about your knee.”
So he’d noticed the scrape, good to know he wasn’t the type of guy to remain oblivious to his own actions. Still, I knew it’d been an accident. “I have my moments,” I said. He smiled, and while it brightened his features to a certain extent, it was also tinged by his discomfort. “Where’s your car?”
“Not far.”
I walked with him to his parking space beneath a streetlight. Along the way, I saw that what I’d taken as awkward movements were actually him trying to keep his back and shoulders stiff, as if he wanted to immobilize them. I didn’t know much about burns other than the sunburns I’d received as a child too foolish to wear sunblock, but I’d seen a few disturbing pictures.
Were Marco’s burns as bad as the images I’d glimpsed on the internet? I sincerely hoped not. What I remembered of those photos were… horrific.
His sedan was extremely nice, a luxury model I’d never been inside before. He sat behind the wheel but sitting didn’t seem to offer him much relief. “I know how to drive if you need me to take over,” I told him. He didn’t respond to this, instead, he handed me his phone. He’d activated a navigation app.
“Put in your address.”
I hesitated. Maybe it was silly at this point, if he’d wanted to harm me, he could’ve done it numerous times. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
“Nope. I only kill other bad guys, not sweet little servers from bistros I purchase.” I giggled at his joke. Good to know he had a sense of humor. “Besides, I have access to all the employee files. I could look you up the hard way, though I’d prefer not to go to all the trouble of that.”
Giving in, I plugged in the address to my parent’s apartment complex, and we were off.
6
Marco
For a while there, I thought I’d never get Kelly to let me give her a ride home. But being truthful with her had paid off. She seemed to trust me more than she had, and as I drove through the city, I felt grateful. I concentrated all my attention on following the route, doing my best to not think about anything else.
My doctors had told me that separating myself from my pain could help me when it got to be too much, and I was generally good at compartmentalizing my thoughts. Sometimes, it almost worked.
It was better than yelping like a terrified dog at any rate.
I drove northeast out of City Center and toward what used to be the working-class neighborhood of Fishtown, then east to an area I knew to be less than desirable. In fact, as I pulled into the complex Kelly had listed, I felt a sinking feeling around the region of my sternum.
This was one of the more impoverished areas of the city, a run-down section that had long ago begun to attract crime. I knew this because one of our main drug distributors, a contemporary of my father’s named Chai, brought a substantial amount of our product to complexes like this. Chai made lots of money from these places, and by extension, so did we.
Poor people tended to need an escape from their dreary and depressing lives, and we offered them a vast selection to choose from. I didn’t typically feel guilty for such things, business was business, but I did now. Knowing that Kelly lived in the midst of a drug den we’d helped create didn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies about dropping her off here.
I’d never tell anyone this, especially not my brothers, but there’d been a brief period of time when I’d given grave consideration to the idea of taking some of what we sold. Oxycontin, specifically. Especially since I knew I could get it without any real difficulty.