Chapter 33 #2
I sit, finally, in the chair that was always mine. My back finds the groove it knows. It shouldn’t be comforting, but it is.
I tell myself to think through tomorrow like a mise en place list. Wake up at 5:00. Shower. Coffee here, not there. Call my mother. Tell her I’m back, that everything is fine, that Italy was beautiful in the way Italy always is, and that I’m tired but happy.
Not a lie, exactly—just not the whole story. Decide what to wear that is clean and professional and does not make me feel like a pretend version of myself. Tie my hair back. Tie my heart back. That last one is harder.
My phone sits where I put it on the table, face up, dark now. I could text him something else. I could make a joke about 5:30. I could say “goodnight” hours early. I could ask him a real question—not the kind that can be answered with an imperative.
I don’t. I stand, wash the glass, set it upside down on the drying mat, and feel ridiculous for the way the small chores make me steady.
The bedroom smells like sheets that haven’t been slept in for a week and a hint of lavender from the sachet in the drawer.
The bedspread is tight; the corners are crisp.
I loosen them with the heel of my hand. Control has never been my problem.
Permission is. I consider unpacking my suitcase, but just sit on the edge of the bed staring at the closet.
My brain offers—helpfully, cruelly—a reel: the hillside under us, the blanket, the sky draining color like it had been wrung out; his palm heavy at the back of my neck; the sound he makes when he slips inside me.
I breathe in, breathe out. Shame tries to press a palm against my mouth.
Desire presses back. I am not going to referee them tonight.
Time alone. That was the plan. I need time alone.
The moment I close my eyes, my brain tries to counterpoint: or you could call him.
Or you could ask him to come by. Or you could simply replay him standing in the doorway with a tray and the way your name sounded when it passed his lips.
I drag the heel of my hand over my face and let the thoughts shuffle past. No, not tonight.
I check the time on my bedside clock. Early enough to eat. But late enough to sleep without an excuse.
I slice an apple in the kitchen because it’s there, because it’s simple, because it requires a knife, and my hands are always steady when handling one, no matter what’s going on in my mind. The rest of the knives, I put back in the roll and store in the pantry.
I’ll deal with it first thing in the morning, I tell myself as I close the door.
The guilt eats at me a little.
For now, I want to eat this apple, shower, and crash.
The apple is half gone when I hear it.
Not a house noise. Not the little settling sighs old wood makes. This is sharper, newer—something bumping a table leg. It comes from the front of the house, then nothing, the kind of nothing that makes your skin prickle, your hair stand on end.
I grip the little knife tighter in my fingers.
“Hello?” I call because that’s what fools do in horror movies, and I guess tonight I’m a fool.
The house answers with quiet.
I tell myself it’s the boxes. A stack shifted. A hanger slipped. A window draft tipped a frame.
I set the apple down and wipe my fingers on a towel with one hand. Holding the knife tighter, I walk to the doorway.
The entry is dim. I didn’t turn on the hall light when I came in, and now the fading street glow paints everything in that flat dusk color. My suitcase sits where I left it. The garment bag hangs off the banister. The boxes look exactly the same.
I take two steps onto the old runner, and the floor creaks. The house gives away my position like it always has.
I stand still.
Another sound. Softer this time. A sigh of fabric.
“Who’s there?” I ask, lower now. “I have”—I almost say a gun. I don’t have a gun—“a phone.”
I don’t, of course. My phone is still sitting on the table, right where I left it.
Silence holds a beat too long, and the hairs on my neck say run. I don’t. I hate that I don’t. I edge toward the living room, shoulders tight, chin tucked like that will help if something flies at my face.
A man steps out from just beyond the doorway.
I stop so fast that my feet slide on the runner.
He’s mid-forties maybe, lean the way runners are, not bulky. Dark hair cut close, a few silver strands. He’s the kind of average that hides in a crowd. Medium height, medium build. A face you’d forget if not for the eyes.
No, you’d remember those. Flat, dead. The kind of eyes that you can’t help but notice. The eyes of a very dangerous man.
He doesn’t posture or spread his arms or do the movie-villain smirk.
He just steps fully into the hallway light and lets me see him.
One hand is empty and open at his side, palm relaxed.
The other holds a phone, screen dark against his fingers.
He takes me in quickly—shoes off, the little knife in my hand, the breath I’m not quite catching.
“Bianca,” he says, like he’s confirming a reservation.
My grip tightens on the paring knife. “You need to leave,” I manage, and hate that my voice isn’t as firm as the words. “Right now.”
He scans the room once more, then looks back to me. “I will. With you.” The voice matches the eyes—level, unhurried, the kind of tone that assumes compliance because no one’s ever said no to it.
“No,” I say. I reach behind me without looking, fingers finding the moldings on the doorframe. “You’re leaving. I’m calling the police.”
Though my phone is closer to him than it is to me right now. And he probably knows it.
He doesn’t move toward me. He lifts the phone and taps the screen with his thumb, turns the display so I can see.
It’s my mother, in her living room, the same throw on the back of the couch, the same bad lamp I keep telling her to replace.
She’s standing at the window with a mug in her hand, looking out like she hears something on the street.
The video jitters slightly—someone shooting from across the way, through the glass.
The timestamp in the corner is tonight. It’s live.
I feel the floor drop out from under me without moving an inch.
“Don’t,” I say, and I’m not sure whom I’m saying it to. Him. The phone. The terrible possibility curling at the base of my spine.
“We won’t,” he says. “If you come with me. Quietly.”
I look at the knife in my hand like it can fix any of this. My fingers loosen. I hate the sound the knife makes when I set it on the console table—small, defeated.
“And if I don’t?” My tongue feels thick.
“If you don’t,” the man in my entry says, “my colleague will go inside and speak with your mother.”
“Speak,” I echo, stupid.
He gives me the nearest thing to a smile I’ve seen yet. It doesn’t reach anything but his mouth. “You don’t want him to speak with her.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask, forcing each word through a throat that wants to close.
He doesn’t answer. He tips his head toward the door instead, a patient usher. “Shoes,” he says, like he’s reminding me not to forget my coat at a restaurant.
“I’m not—” The rest dies in my mouth. On his phone, my mother sets the mug down and reaches to adjust the curtain. A shadow slides across the frame. My stomach ices over.
“Now,” he says, still mild.
“Don’t touch her,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “She hasn’t done anything.”
I haven’t done anything either. Nothing but sleeping with a Conti…
He nods as if we’ve concluded a deal. Then he steps aside, inviting me to go first.
I slip my feet into the nearest pair of shoes.
“I need my phone,” I push.
“You won’t need it.” He gestures again, courtly as a host.
The night air hits my face like a wake-up slap as we step outside. A dark sedan idles at the curb. He opens the rear door.
I look back once, into the house, at the slice of kitchen I can see from here, the stupid lemon bowl with one fruit off-center. Then I get in.
My last thought as we pull away from the curb is: Gio.
I wish you were here.