CLAIMED BY MY HUSBAND'S KILLER

The first shot didn’t sound like a gunshot. I thought somebody dropped a glass in the kitchen. My brain just went straight to the most normal thing. Accident. Clumsy waiter. Whatever. Then Lorenzo folded. Not like in the movies. No big dramatic fall. He just… crumpled. One second he’s standing there in the white shirt I ironed that morning, next second he’s on the marble floor and there’s blood everywhere. So much blood. I remember thinking that’s never gonna come out of white. Never. I don’t know how long I stood there frozen. Long enough that the champagne glass I was holding slipped and shattered at the bottom of the stairs before I even realized I’d let go. The guy who shot him didn’t run. He didn’t even look nervous. He just crouched down next to Lorenzo’s body, real casual, and wiped the gun clean with a cloth he pulled from his jacket like it was the most normal thing in the world. Folded the cloth nice and neat, tucked it away, then looked straight up at me. Not at the room. Not at the thirty people who’d gone dead silent. Just me. Like I was the only thing worth looking at. I don’t remember walking down the stairs. One second I was up there, next I was on my knees in the blood, pressing my hands against his chest. It was so warm. That’s the part I wish I could forget. His mouth was moving, trying to say something, and I kept repeating his name like an i***t. “Lorenzo. Lorenzo, stay with me. Look at me—” Nothing came out. Just this wet little sound. And then he was gone. Just… stopped. That kind of still you only see in dead things. You know it when you see it. You can’t un-know it. --- When I finally looked up, the guy was still crouched there a few feet away, watching me. Elbows on his knees, totally relaxed. Like he was waiting for a bus or something. Scar through his left eyebrow. Open collar. Hands just resting there like they hadn’t done s**t. I stood up. Don’t know why. My dress was soaked in my husband’s blood, my legs were shaking, I probably looked insane. But I wasn’t staying on the floor in front of him. f**k that. “Who the hell are you?” It didn’t even sound like a question. My voice was flat. He didn’t answer right away. Just stared at me with this look I couldn’t read. Not happy. Not sorry. Nothing normal. “What do you want?” Still nothing. Then he stood up, slow. He was bigger than I thought. Not just tall—something about the way he took up space. Like the air moved for him. He reached into his jacket. I braced myself, waiting for the second bullet. But he just pulled out his phone, glanced at it, and put it back. “My name is Rafael De Luca,” he said. Like that was supposed to mean something. Like that explained why my husband was bleeding out on our floor. “I know who you are,” I said. Everybody in our world knew the name. Lorenzo had only said it once in four years, and his voice got weird when he did. I’d noticed. I just never asked. I was asking now. “Then you know,” he said, calm as hell, “that when I decide something, it stays decided.” The whole room was so quiet I could hear myself breathing. “What did he do?” I asked. He looked at me for a second. “A lot of things. Over a long time.” That’s all he gave me. I wanted to scream. I wanted to lose my s**t. Instead I just stood there in my ruined dress and said the stupidest thing I could’ve said: “Get out.” He took one step closer. I didn’t back up. He stopped right in front of me, close enough I could see the scar clearly, close enough to smell him, close enough to feel how still he was. Like a loaded gun that hadn’t decided to go off yet. He looked at me for what felt like forever. Then he said, low and quiet: “Don’t scream.” “I’m not gonna hurt you.” And the messed up part? I believed him. Standing there in my dead husband’s blood, talking to the man who just made me a widow… I actually believed him. That scared me more than anything else that night.