She laughs again, louder this time, as she intentionally mispronounces my middle name. Reaching over, I grab the passport to snatch it back but she grips it tightly, fighting for control. "No, wait, I'm not done."
Yanking from my grasp, she shifts her body so it's out of my reach. Shaking my head, I relax back into the chair, giving up. I don't have it in me to be annoyed, or angry, even as she snickers to herself. It takes a brave soul to mock me. She knows who I am, and what I'm capable of, but she's not afraid of my reaction.
Deep down, she's not afraid of me.
She's forgetting again, I think. Forgetting she's supposed to hate me. Forgetting what sort of monster I can be.
I can't be upset in the slightest over that.
It makes me smile, even if it's at my own expense.
"No, really, why the hardcore Italian name?"
"You'd have to ask my parents," I say. "I had nothing to do with it."
"What are their names?"
"My father's name is Giuseppe."
"And your mother?"
I hesitate, knowing she's going to laugh again, but I can feel her gaze as she awaits my response. I finish my espresso in silence as the dealer who always handles my car steps out into the lobby, his gaze scanning the area before settling on me.
"It's Michelle," I say, pronouncing it the feminine way. "Her name is Michelle."
Standing up, I throw my cup in the trash when Karissa snorts with laughter, just like I knew she would. My name might be the Italian equivalent of Michael, entirely masculine, but it's undeniable—I was named after my mother. She laughs long and hard as I step toward her, carefully leaning down, my hands on the arms of her chair on both sides of her. She looks at me, a hitch in her laughter as she inhales sharply.
I inch toward her, slowly, my expression dead serious.
"Laugh it up," I say, staring her in the eyes, the tip of my nose brushing hers as I move toward her ear, whispering, "we'll see how funny you find my name the next time I make you scream it."
Her eyes widen, her amusement quickly fading, a flush creeping up on her cheeks. I pull away from her, turning to the dealer. He grins at me—another fake, forced smile that I always get around this place, as he holds out some paperwork, including the bill, and my spare key.
"I ordered a replacement key, but it won't be in for a week or so," he says. "The one you have here will still work fine. I remotely deactivated the key that was stolen, so it can no longer start the car. It can, however, unlock the doors and the trunk, but in that case the alarm will sound, and nothing short of you cutting it off with your key will stop it. We can make an appointment to have the manual locks changed, if you'd like."
"I'll think about it," I say, nodding as I turn from him. "Thanks."
I start back toward Karissa when the dealer calls out to me. "Uh, Mr. Vitale, about the damage. The, uh… bullet holes."
Karissa's eyes drift to me when he says that. I turn away from her again to look at the man. "What about them?"
"Would you like us to fix it?" he asks. "There's no interior damage, of course, since it's an S-Guard… and thank God for that, right? But the body shop can take care of the cosmetic damage."
"Maybe some other time."
I head over to the main desk and pay the bill, pulling the cash straight from my pocket, mourning the loss of my wallet, before heading back to Karissa. Wordlessly, I motion for her to follow me, and the two of us head out of the dealership to where my car's parked near the garage service doors. I open the passenger side for her, and she pauses, regarding me warily. I can see the curiosity in her eyes, and I have all the answers in the world, but she never asks the right questions.
Without commenting, she slips into the passenger side, letting me shut the door. I climb behind the wheel and start the car, merging into Manhattan traffic right away.
She sits in the cool leather seat, still holding onto my passport. She opens it again as I drive, scanning through the pages, a contemplative look on her face. "No Italy."
"Excuse me?"
She holds up the passport. "There are no stamps from Italy in here."
"Oh, yeah, they never bother to stamp it."
"Why?"
"I don't know." I've never given it much thought, always grateful to be waved straight through whenever I've landed in Rome. "Why does it matter?"
"Because you told me you've been to Italy."
I turn to her as I pull up at a red light, surprised by her accusatory tone. "I have."
She looks torn as to whether or not to believe me, and I realize then why it matters so much. She's still looking for a reason to doubt me, looking for justification to hate me, grasping any smidgen of skepticism that comes along to try to convince herself that she shouldn't love me.
She doesn't want to love me.
I don't blame her.
But the fact remains that she does.
She loves me.
And she probably hates that fact more than she hates me most days.
I look away from her when the light turns green. She seems to, for the moment, decide to believe what I'm saying. She glances back at the passport, scanning over the few stamps I've collected before closing it.
She tosses it in the center console and slouches in her seat, shifting her body so she can lean against the door and stare out the window. "Do your parents still live in New York?"
"Yes."
"Here in the city?"
"Yes."
"And you don't see them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
I sigh as I pull up at yet another red light. Traffic is heavy today. It's going to take a while to get back to Brooklyn at this rate. I'm exhausted, and nauseated, and my body is really starting to ache.
I cut my eyes at her, seeing her inquisitive look. "You sure you're not writing a book about my life?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm just trying to figure out who you are."
"You know who I am."
"No, I don't." Her voice has a hard edge to it, a slight hint of anger that makes my skin prickle. "You're like a caricature to me, Naz… you're an outline of a man, a vague sketch of a person, and I'm just trying to fill in the rest of the picture, add some color between all these black lines, and I don't know how to do that, how to figure out who you really are, without prying it out of you."
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything," she says. "I want to know everything about you. And I know you told me the answers might not be pretty, but I don't care. If we're going to have any chance in hell of doing whatever it is we're doing, of actually building something together, I'm going to have to understand what makes the answers so ugly in the first place."