Chapter 4
816 Words
Carlo's face darkened instantly. He probably thought it was another one of my reconciliation stunts.
He sneered and tossed the box into the trash can.
Clara happened to come by with soup. Seeing this, she giggled and threw herself into his arms. "Carlo, you only love me, right?"
"Yeah," Carlo said, kissing the top of her head, "I only love you."
I looked at the package in the trash with some regret.
I knew it was probably another part of my body, or something else.
The weather was hot. Within a few hours, a foul stench spread from the office. The source was the package Carlo had thrown away.
"Don," Tony frowned and cautiously suggested, "maybe open it? That smell is off."
Under everyone's gaze, Carlo grimly sliced open the package with a knife.
Inside was a mass of blackened, putrid flesh and shattered finger bones wrapped in oilcloth, next to an old thumb drive.
I took one look and recognized it as the part below my right wrist—the hand that had taken a bullet for Carlo, leaving me permanently disabled.
Carlo stared at the mess, silent.
One of the men plugged the thumb drive into a computer. There was only one video file on it.
In the video, a woman's blurry figure appeared.
The lighting was dim. I couldn't see her face.
As the machine started, the frame shook violently, and the woman screamed hoarsely, "Carlo! Carlo!"
That was the most humiliating recording of my life.
The video was short, only a few minutes.
When it ended, the office was dead silent.
One young enforcer couldn't hold it in and rushed to the bathroom to throw up. Even Carlo instinctively took half a step back.
He stared at the arm in the video. There was a clear scar.
That was from seven years ago, when I tested a misfiring modified pistol for him.
Back then, he just clicked his tongue, annoyed that I had dirtied his floor.
"She's fine," Carlo's voice suddenly cut through, short and dry.
"That's not her. The Lucchese bastards are f*****g with us, trying to throw us off."
"Right, definitely not Ms. Avery," Tony quickly agreed.
Seeing they were no longer suspicious, I felt only a pathetic sense of relief.
Even then, how could Carlo not realize it was me?
The clothes in the video—that shirt he had tossed to me when we first got together, an old one of his.
He never even asked if it fit, but I had worn it for years because it was one of the rare bits of kindness he had shown me.
We had known each other for eleven years, been together for seven.
Even without seeing the face, just from the body shape and that scar, couldn't he recognize me?
But he didn't. I was used to it.
My heart had been numb for a long time. It didn't hurt that much.
"DNA test! I don't care how you do it. I want results by tomorrow!"
Carlo finally exploded, kicking over a chair.
He was about to pressure the tech department when his phone rang.
It was the estate butler, his voice trembling:
"D-Don! The main house... in the dining room... they found a box... on the seat Ms. Avery usually sits in... it's, it's big!"
Carlo's knuckles went white around his phone.
No matter how badly he didn't want to go back to that house, he had no choice now.
He cursed the whole way there. "Where the hell is Avery?! How did this happen in my own house?"
He didn't know I wasn't just somewhere. I was dead.
And the moment he opened that dining room door, the answer would be right in front of him.
The dining room was deathly silent.
On the table, the dishes I had made five days ago were covered in mold, the silverware still in their places.
That was my spot, where I waited for him every night to come home and eat.
And now, sitting in that spot, was a new cedar box.
The lid wasn't fully open; just a small section of a pale finger was visible.
On the ring finger, the wedding band was still in place.
A tiny line of text was engraved on the inside of the ring.
Forever, Carlo.
He had had it engraved on our wedding day.
Carlo's face finally changed.
He walked towards it step by step, as if afraid of waking something, or proving something.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch the ring, the phone next to it lit up.
It was my phone.
The screen showed the last message he had sent me:
Carlo: Avery, you worthless piece of s**t, where the hell are you?
At the same second, Tony's phone rang.
The voice of the tech guy was shaky on the other end.
"The DNA results are back."
- Writer
