Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty Four
Giovanni
I lie there for half a minute and let the first thought pass through me.
Bianca.
She insisted on going to her place when we got back yesterday. She was polite about it and firm in the way that means no argument will change the answer.
Time alone, she said. A shower in her own bathroom. Clothes that were hers. I gave her that space like a civilized man. I stood at the curb, put her in the sedan, told the driver 6:00, and watched the street swallow them.
It was a mistake to let her go.
But I let her have the night, and the logic for doing it still holds: she’s not property, she’s not on a leash, she asked for time and space, and I gave it to her.
It doesn’t stop the irritation at myself that sits just below my ribs. I throw back the sheet, stand, and the floor greets me with the faint chill it gathers through the night. I stretch. Vertebrae check in. A knot in my right shoulder whines; I make a note to punish the knot at the gym.
The mirror over the dresser throws me a half-lit version of my face—jaw shadowed, hair not yet civilized.
I pull on the track pants I leave folded on the chair and a t-shirt that has seen better mornings.
The apartment yawns to life when I step into the hall: motion sensor lights, the quiet hum of the HVAC.
I step into the shower and let the hot water come, hands braced on tile, head bowed as if there’s something to confess.
The spray hammers the back of my neck, and I think about how Bianca stood under a different shower, eyes dark and bright, mouth raw from choices she asked me to make for her and then thanked me for making.
I close my eyes and let the heat of the memory move through me. Then I turn the water colder until discipline takes control again.
By the time I’m dry and dressed, the sky has found a color. I move through the kitchen without turning on any lights. The glass wall gives me enough light through the rise of the buildings on either side. I open the refrigerator, look at nothing, take out nothing, close it again.
No need to make breakfast. Bianca is being picked up at 6:00. I wish I’d insisted on 5:30.
I can put a cup of coffee in her hand when she walks through the door and decide whether I want to draw it out over breakfast or if I want to kiss her brainless first. That is the kind of problem I enjoy.
I check my watch. Fifteen minutes.
The phone on the counter sits silent and dark. I reach for it anyway, thumb waking the screen out of habit. Nothing yet. I set it down, force myself to step away from the counter, and make a circuit of the apartment instead.
It’s mindless and useful: a quick eye across the table where I left the file for a 10:00 a.m. meeting, a glance toward the gym bag near the door, a check that the envelope for the courier is still where it belongs. Everything is where it belongs. I live alone. Everything is always exactly in place.
At 6:00 on the dot, I call the driver.
“She hasn’t come out yet, sir,” he says, the engine noise soft in the background. “I’m giving it a few more minutes.”
“She’ll be ready,” I say, and end the call because hovering is a habit I don’t keep.
I put a cup under the machine to give my hands something to do. The pour is a neat, dark ribbon, a small domestic performance I could do asleep. I don’t drink it. The surface winks while the crema settles.
I pick up the phone again. Put it down. Three minutes. Five. Seven. This is stupid. She is not a teenager. She is not late because she is playing. She is not late because she is punishing me. She is late because mornings happen, because keys hide, because hair has a mind with its own mood.
At 6:12, the phone rings.
I answer so fast, it doesn’t have a chance for a full ring.
“Sir,” the driver says, not panicked, not calm, pitched in that middle register trained men use when they know the next sentence will elicit a response.
“What,” I say, and every trace of sleep leaves my voice. “Speak.”
“I’m at the address,” he says. “Been here since 5:58. No answer to the text. No answer to the call. At 6:10, I went to the door. No response to the knock. I tried again. Still nothing.” A beat. “I called her phone. I hear it ringing inside.”
“Get in,” I tell him.
“Yes, sir,” he says automatically.
“Deadbolt’s on,” he adds. “No chain.”
“Don’t wait.” I’m already moving—wallet, keys, gun. “Force it. Minimal damage if you can.”
A muffled grunt, wood giving. Then his breath in my ear as he steps through. “Front hall. Lights off. Boxes stacked. Suitcase by the stairs.” A pause. “Her phone’s on the dining table.”
Cold drops through me, clean and absolute. “Bedroom.”
“I’m going.” Footfalls, floorboards complaining. “Bed’s made. Looks untouched.”
“Bathroom. Back door. Windows.”
“I’ll clear the ground floor.” Another beat. “Rear door locked from the inside. Kitchen’s tidy. No sign of a struggle.”
Which is somehow worse.
“Stay put,” I say, already at my door. “Touch nothing else. I’m two minutes out.”
“Yes, sir.”
I end the call, pocket the phone, and take the hall in a sprint.
It’s all just as he described it.
Boxes stacked in the narrow hall. Suitcase sat next to them, handle up, as if she planned to move it “in a minute” and never did.
I walk farther in. The sole of my shoe barely creaks on the old boards. Her phone sits on the dining table, screen dark. It feels wrong. She does not leave without it. She does not step out to the curb without checking three times that it’s in a pocket. She would sooner forget her shoes.
I put the phone back where I found it and go into the kitchen.
Half an apple sits on the board, browning. A glass on the mat, beads of water still clinging around the rim.
“Sir.”
The voice comes from the front room. Alessio. He steps in but doesn’t cross the threshold to the kitchen. He knows enough to leave the room undisturbed until I’ve finished reading it.
“What,” I say.
He tilts his chin toward the street. “Paolo’s got something.”
“Here or on the line.”
“Here.”
The living room is clean but lived-in. A plant on the windowsill awaits water. Two books sit on the arm of the sofa—one spine-creased, one still new. The curtains are pulled shut.
Paolo waits just inside the door, a tablet in his hands.
“Show me,” I say.
He turns the screen and taps a file open. A grainy rectangle blooms to life. The angle of the footage is a little too high and to the left. A neighbor from across the street who got just a triangle of Bianca’s stoop in it.
“This is at 6:52 last night,” he says.
The picture stutters. The street is empty. A car’s hood nose is idling nearly out of frame in front of Bianca’s house. Then the door opens into the slanted eye of the camera, and Bianca steps out.
My body stills.
She’s in the same outfit she was wearing on the plane. Jeans and a soft sweater, hair down. She walks calmly down the steps of the stoop.
A man walks out behind her.
Inside me, everything tightens.
He’s taller than she is by a head, shoulders narrow, dark hair. Nothing outstanding. They step down. He scans once and keeps moving. She gives the door a small backward glance.
No hand on her. No drag. No panic. She walks with him to the curb.
The car that was idling out of frame rolls forward slow enough that the front quarter panel finally shows. Paolo has frozen the image on the plate numbers and zoomed on the first run, but I make him play it straight through once.
The man opens the rear door, waits for her to get in, then follows. The car eases away.
“Run the plate,” I say.
“Already did. Covered,” he answers. “But I’ve got traffic cam angles on the next block, two intersections over. We’ll build the route.”
“Do it.”
He starts to back out. I stop him with a look. “Faces.”
“We’re enhancing now,” he says. “We’ll compare to our files and to DMV. I’ll have you a short list in minutes.”
“Not a list,” I say. “A name.”
He nods and disappears.
The house goes quiet again. I walk back into the kitchen.
The half apple sits on the board.
But where’s the knife?
The apple isn’t bitten. It’s cut. There’s no knife next to it, no knife in the sink, or on the drying mat.
Maybe she washed it and put it away. A woman like Bianca wouldn’t leave one of her precious knives sitting out.
I look around carefully, opening drawers. I find a set of knives. Not Bianca’s. Not the set I saw her pack away carefully in her flat in Italy.
Maybe she hasn’t unpacked those yet. But something feels off about it.
The tote bag she had them in the whole trip home sits on the counter. So where are the knives?
I open more drawers yet, searching. Maybe she didn’t intend on unpacking them here. Maybe she wanted to bring them to my kitchen. Then where are they?
I step out of the kitchen and look around.
Boxes on the floor in the entry, suitcase next to them, phone on the table. Nothing else is out of place.
I walk to her bedroom. Bed untouched. She didn’t even unpack yet.
I step back into the kitchen. A small pantry sits next to the fridge with a small, slightly tilted door. I open it and find the roll of knives.
Carefully, with respect to her, I pick it up and take it to the counter. Expecting to find the full set, I unroll it.
Right at the end, where the paring knife is supposed to go, is an empty slot.
I scan the counter again, then the sink, the drying mat, the open drawer. No small blade. No wet towel. Nothing that says she finished and put it away.
I move back toward the hall, eyes tracking every flat surface. A faint glint on a console tucked away in the corner.
There it is.
The paring knife sits on the wood like it was set down in a hurry. Not washed. A few pale flecks clinging along the edge, the tacky sheen of apple starting to dull.
Fear flashes through me, quick and electric.
She may be anal about leaving her phone behind, but she would never—never—treat one of her knives like this.