Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Amanda
The Casa Aurelia courtyard transforms overnight.
When I left for dinner, it was a quiet stone garden with climbing jasmine and a cracked fountain that didn't work.
By seven a.m., it's a full production set.
Lighting rigs, reflective panels, garment racks draped in plastic, a catering table with espresso and cornetti that nobody touches because every person here runs on black coffee and nerves.
I love this. Every part of it.
"Amanda, the lighting team needs the shot list for the afternoon setups." Giada, the campaign coordinator, appears at my elbow with a tablet and an expression that says she's already put out three fires this morning.
"Sent it last night. Check your spam folder. The file was too large."
She scrolls. Finds it. Her shoulders drop half an inch.
"You're a lifesaver."
"I know. Go."
She goes.
I clip my lanyard badge to the waistband of my trousers and take a slow lap around the courtyard. This is my favorite part. The hour before cameras roll, when everything is potential. The clothes hang perfect on the racks. The set looks like a painting. Nothing has gone wrong yet.
Elio stands near the courtyard entrance in a dark jacket, arms crossed.
He's done what he promised — stayed invisible.
He found a position that gives him a clear view of both the main gate and the interior archway without standing in anyone's frame.
Security professionals from the building don't give him a second look. He fits.
I catch his eye and nod. He nods back. That's the extent of our communication in a week.
The models arrive at seven-thirty.
There are six of them. The agency — Agenzia Luce — sent their roster last week, and I approved the final selection with the creative director.
The girls file through the archway in street clothes and oversized sunglasses, carrying tote bags and iced coffees.
Their booker, a sharp-faced woman named Irina, leads them like a tour guide herding students through a museum.
"Ladies, hair and makeup is through the second arch on your left. Fittings begin at eight. Please be ready."
The models scatter toward the makeup stations. I watch them go — assessing, the way I always do. Not their bodies. Their energy. A good campaign needs models who understand the brand. Casa Aurelia is about understated Italian luxury. Quiet confidence. The girls need to project that.
Most of them do. They're professionals. They move with the easy self-awareness of women who've been photographed a thousand times.
One doesn't.
She's the youngest in the group — nineteen, maybe twenty, according to the comp card. Her name is listed as Katya. Last name something long that ends in -ova. She's beautiful in that striking Eastern European way — high cheekbones, pale eyes, the kind of bone structure that cameras worship.
But she walks wrong.
I don't mean her gait. I mean the way she crosses the courtyard. Her shoulders pull in like she's making herself smaller. Her eyes move too much. Scanning the exits, the crew, the equipment. She holds her tote bag against her chest like a shield.
Models are used to chaos on set. They walk into unfamiliar locations with strangers touching their hair and face and body all day long. It's the job. You develop a comfort with it or you don't last.
Katya moves like someone who has never been comfortable anywhere.
I file it. Keep walking. Check the garment racks with the stylist. Review the afternoon schedule. Normal work. But my eyes keep drifting toward the makeup station where Katya sits in the tall chair under the ring light.
The makeup artist — Lucia, veteran of a dozen campaigns — works on Katya's face. Foundation. Concealer. More concealer. Lucia's brush pauses over Katya's left cheekbone. She tilts the girl's chin toward the light.
I'm close enough to see what Lucia sees.
Under the foundation Katya arrived wearing, there's a bruise.
Yellow-green at the edges. It wraps from her cheekbone toward her temple, just above the jawline.
Lucia covers it without a word. She's professional.
She's seen bruises before. Models bump into things.
Models are clumsy off-camera. There are a hundred innocent explanations.
Lucia moves to the other side of Katya's face. Her brush pauses again. A second bruise sits below the right ear. This one is newer, still dark at the center.
Katya stares straight ahead. She doesn't flinch. Doesn't explain. Her hands sit in her lap, fingers laced together so tight the knuckles are bone-white.
I walk to Giada.
"The girl in chair three. Katya."
Giada glances over. "What about her?"
"She's got bruises. Both sides of her face."
Giada looks at me the way people look at you when you're pointing out something they already decided wasn't their problem.
"She's a model, Amanda. They bruise. Lucia will handle it — that's what she's here for. It won't show on camera."
"Both sides of her face, Giada."
"She probably fell. Or had work done. Or her boyfriend's rough. It's not our business." Giada taps her tablet. "We're twenty minutes behind on fittings. Can you check on the second rack? The emerald gown has a broken zipper."
I go check the zipper.
But I look back once more at Katya in the makeup chair. Katya's face becomes flawless. Camera-ready. A blank canvas for someone else's vision.
Her hands are still laced in her lap. Still white at the knuckles.
I don't know what I'm looking at. Not yet. But I know the shape of a girl who's afraid, because I've seen it in the mirror on mornings I don't talk about.
This is different. This is worse. I just can't say why.
Valentino
The café sits on a narrow street behind the Duomo, three blocks from Casa Aurelia.
I've been here four times this week.
The Pellegrini connection is solid. Dante's surveillance confirms Alfredo met with Pavla twice more since Genoa — once in Bergamo, once at a restaurant in Brera that the Basile family uses for informal business.
Sergio's financial trail leads through three shell companies before it disappears into a holding group registered in Malta.
I have the shape of the operation. I don't have the proof.
Not yet.
The espresso is good. I drink it and watch the street through the window. Foot traffic moves in both directions. Tourists with maps. Business people with briefcases. A delivery driver arguing into his phone.
I pull out my phone and call Luca.
He answers on the second ring. No greeting. Just silence that says he's listening.
"How's Sicily?" I ask.
"Done."
One word. That's Luca. The job in Catania was straightforward — a problem that needed to stop being a problem. I didn't ask for details. Luca doesn't offer them. The work is clean or it doesn't happen. That's the arrangement.
"I need you in Milan."
A pause. Luca is always calculating distances, timelines, logistics. His mind works like a machine that never turns off.
"When?"
"Soon as you can move. I'm looking at something here. It's getting larger than one person can watch."
"What kind of something?"
"The kind that needs your eyes. Surveillance. Multiple locations. Possibly multiple targets. I'll brief you when you arrive."
Another pause. I hear nothing on his end. Wherever Luca is, it's quiet. He could be in a hotel room. A safe house. A car on a dark road. With Luca, it's impossible to know and pointless to ask.
"I can be there in two days."
"Good. I'll send you an address for the apartment. Keep it clean — we're not announced here."
"Understood."
The line goes dead.
I set the phone on the table. Pick up the espresso.
I raise my hand for the waiter. He brings a second espresso without asking. I nod.
The door opens.
I glance up.
A woman steps through the door.
And everything stops.
Not slows. Stops. The espresso machine. The traffic outside. The waiter halfway to the counter. All of it — gone. Just her.
She's tall — five-nine, maybe more in the heels. Long legs that move with purpose, not performance. She walks like she knows exactly where she's going and doesn't need anyone to confirm it. Platinum blonde hair falls past her shoulders in loose waves.
Her eyes scan the room as she enters. Blue-green. The color of shallow Mediterranean water where the sand shows through. Bright, quick, aware. She's reading the café the way I read a café, deciding if this place deserves her time.
She wears a blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers.
Simple. She carries herself the way women do when they've learned that beauty is a tool and they've decided to use it on their own terms. Her hands are expressive — one holds her phone, the other pushes the door closed behind her with a gesture that is both careless and precise.
She smiles at the waiter. Full, easy, warm. The kind of smile that makes the person receiving it feel chosen. The waiter straightens. Smiles back. Of course he does.
I know that smile.
I know that walk. I know the way she tilts her chin up when she enters a room, the slight lift that says she belongs here even if she's never been here before. I know the platinum waves and the blue-green eyes and the hands that never stop moving.
That's Amanda Catherine.
That's not possible. Amanda lives in Chicago. She's Vittoria's best friend.
But the woman standing at the counter, ordering an espresso in English with hand gestures that make the barista grin — that is Amanda Catherine. In Milan.
My hand rests on the table next to my phone. I don't move. I don't look away.
Amanda
Finally.
Two hours of Giada's clipboard. Two hours of broken zippers and wrong lens filters and a lighting director who keeps asking me questions Giada should be answering.
I need coffee. I need air. I need five minutes where no one needs me to fix something.
The café is small. Warm wood. I smile at the waiter because his face is the first face I've seen today that isn't wearing a headset.
"Un espresso, per favore."