Read In a Heartbeat for Free Online Page B

wallet out and took out a hundred-euro note. ‘For your time,’ I said, giving it to her.
    She didn’t touch it. ‘I don’t want your money.’
    ‘So what do you want?’
    ‘I don’t want to ever see you again. I left that life, you understand?’
    I nodded. ‘Understood.’
    She left, and I ordered a sambuca. An asylum. Is it possible that the blow I got to the head was that bad? I was half drunk and high when Max gave me that beating. The fact that I had barked and yelled at Ines seemed likely. And then what? Had I kept walking around yelling and screaming until they came and took me away? I drank the sambuca without tasting it. Maybe the amnesia was only the first sign that my brain was cracking up. Maybe in a while I’d be making puzzles with my own crap again.
    The fear from the night before came back. Everything could disappear in a puff of smoke, the café and the table where I was sitting. I could drift away and never come back again. I dug my nails in my palms, and the pain brought me back to reality. I wasn’t disappearing. I was alive, breathing and reasoning, but how long would it last?
    As I reflected, a shadow slid past on the other side of the street. It looked familiar. I paid the bill then went outside for a better look.
    A cold, damp wind kicked up and the sky was dark. The guy was walking, keeping the flaps of his camelhair overcoat closed. It was that fat guy from the tram. I had no doubt that he was following me. My foul mood turned into anger. I ran up and grabbed him from behind. My idea was to turn him around and punch him in the nose, but he weighed a ton and my body didn’t move like it should’ve done. I felt like I was moving underwater, slowly and clumsily. He fended me off with a slap, and I fell on the pavement.
    ‘Denti, what the hell are you doing?’ he asked.
    I got up, slipped under him, reached, and punched. Slow, too slow. He warded off my swings easily, and then he grabbed me by the arms, pulling my face towards his. Underneath the fat he had muscles, unlike me.
    ‘Enough.’
    ‘Let go of me!’ I tried to knee him, but he pushed me away.
    ‘Enough. Goddammit!’
    I looked at him, panting. I couldn’t beat him. I calmed down.
    Keeping an eye on me, the guy wiped his mouth with a napkin. He was the type that frothed at the mouth like my secondary school maths teacher who we all avoided because of his bad breath.
    ‘You didn’t answer your mobile, and at work they said you were at home. I saw you come out, so I followed you,’ he said. ‘If this bothered you I’m sorry, but I’ve got to lay low for a while, and we’ve got some unfinished business.’ He balled up the napkin and put it in his pocket.
    ‘Unfinished business?’
    ‘Are you drunk? C’mon, let’s go.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘To my office. Don’t worry, it’s just us.’
    ‘And what if I don’t want to go?’
    ‘That would be unfortunate.’ I felt his grip on my arms again. His fingers were long with thumbs like hammers. This freak who read tarot cards at the African Bazaar told me that powerful hands were a sign of homicidal tendencies. I didn’t believe him until that moment. I could have turned on my heel and run, but the guy knew who I was and where I lived. I, on the other hand, had no idea who he was so I had to go with the flow.
    ‘Fine,’ I said.
    He smiled, showing his yellow teeth. His car was parked a few metres away. It was a dirty Fiat that reeked of fags. As he drove he explained that he had followed me until the end of the line and then lost me between the pigeons and the tourists.
    ‘I thought that you’d taken a taxi, and I found out which one from one from my sources. It’s a part of my job to get the right information. You should know that.’
    From his way of doing things, I imagined his job wasn’t something you would find written on a business card, but when we got to his office, in a building next to a construction site filled with excavators and rubble, I had to change