Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty Five
Bianca
I don’t sleep.
I do that thing where you sit still and listen harder than you’ve ever listened, like you can hear something useful if you strain enough. Nothing comes except the muffled thump of footsteps passing at intervals outside and the low, constant hush of air moving through vents.
That’s all after I searched the entire room for an exit, that is.
I didn’t find one.
It’s a nice room. Obscenely nice, considering.
The bed is big and carefully made, sheets smooth and cool, duvet in a fancy ivory that looks and feels expensive. Someone ironed the pillowcases. There’s a faint smell of linen and something woody, not perfume, more like cedar.
Currently, I’m sitting against the headboard, eyes on the door. The headboard itself is upholstered in a textured fabric, cream with a faint herringbone.
Across from the bed is a low dresser with a shallow bowl on top. In that bowl are three smooth stones and a sprig of rosemary. Beside it is a clock with no numbers, just hands.
To the right, a pair of tall windows reaches almost to the floor. They’re fitted with sheer curtains that move when I walk past and heavier drapes that were pulled back before I arrived, knotted neatly with braided cords.
Beyond the glass is a courtyard I couldn’t stop watching in the dark—stone paths, clipped green, a fountain.
Security rotated through it all night. The windows open, but not much.
A safety catch sits in the track. I learned that around 3:00 in the morning, when I tried to pull it open to escape despite the security.
A small sitting area sits in front of the windows. Two chairs and a small round table with a carafe of water and a glass.
Next to the bed is the bathroom with a pocket door.
Inside, it’s all limestone and old money.
A long vanity lines one wall, a glass shower along the other.
Bath products are in unbranded amber bottles with black pumps.
I took the cap off one and smelled citrus and something herbal.
I didn’t shower. I splashed water on my face, counted to sixty, and did it again.
There’s a closet. Double doors, flush, almost invisible. Inside: empty hangers, a shelf with extra bedding. No clothes. No shoes. No luggage. The only personal item in the entire space is me.
The door to the hallway is solid wood, heavier than it looks.
A small brass plate sets the handle off-center like a design choice.
No deadbolt on my side, but when I put my ear to it, I heard the soft slide of something internal catching when it closed last night.
Locked from the outside. I tested the hinges.
I tested the frame. I tested my own patience and found the limits around midnight.
A wool rug spreads under the bed and sitting area in a not-quite-beige that keeps footprints like a memory for a few seconds and then releases them. I’ve been tracing my own marks, back and forth, like a tether.
I haven’t been fed, and I’ve been too afraid to drink the water. I’m not really hungry, but my throat is pretty dry.
I remember the arrival too clearly. The car driving through a wrought-iron gate. The curve of a drive lined with clipped hedges. A big house bathed in shadow. The brief wash of light when a door opened, then closed.
A woman with a neat bun and an unreadable face led me up one flight, then another, palms tucked politely against her skirt like I was a guest instead of a prisoner.
“Here,” she said, opening this door. “If you need the bathroom, it’s there. If you need water, there.” She didn’t say, “If you try to leave…” She didn’t say, “If you scream…”
Those weren’t necessary.
No one has laid a hand on me. No one has said what they want.
Last night, when the courtyard finally went quiet enough for me to hear my own pulse, I stood at the window and made a list in my head: doors, windows, schedule, guard rotation, hinges, catches, the drop to the flagstones below, the distance to the fountain.
The list didn’t add up to escape. So I erased it and started again.
I sit back against the headboard and fold my arms. The linens rustle. The clock’s hands tick softly around the face.
It’s a beautiful room.
It’s a cage.
The lock turns.
A clean mechanical slide, then the knob turns. My body is rolling off the bed and up before my mind catches up. The door opens inward on its silent hinges, and I’m already on my feet.
It’s the woman from last night.
Tidy bun. Smooth skirt. Calm face with a neutral expression. She carries a tray set with a pale linen napkin and porcelain that clinks as she walks. A warm, savory scent follows her: coffee, eggs, something stewed with tomato, buttered toast.
It’s like a sick parody of the breakfast Gio brought me only a few days ago. My stomach contracts as if it’s just remembered it needs to eat.
She doesn’t look at me. She moves for the small table by the window and places the tray down. The curtains lift and settle around her with the air she produces. When she straightens, she steps back and to the side.
That’s when he fills the doorway behind her.
Not the man in my house. Not the driver. Someone else.
He looks mid-fifties, maybe more. Dark hair combed back neatly, gray at the temples. His suit is navy cut so well you don’t see seams, the shirt is pale blue, cuffs of his jacket fastened with small dark studs. No tie. A bulky black watch peeks out under the sleeve.
He doesn’t cross the threshold until the woman has stepped aside. When he does, he puts one hand in his jacket pocket, as if to show me he isn’t bringing anything else through the door.
“Good morning,” he says.
The voice is a surprise because it has no threat in it. It’s warm, polished, and cordial. It’s the voice of someone who’s had a lifetime of rooms listening when he speaks and never needed to raise it.
I don’t answer. My tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. I make myself breathe, but don’t move any closer.
As he steps into the room, the woman steps around him and exits. Her flat shoes make no sound on the hall floor. The door is open a fraction, and then, with an economical push of his fingers, it closes behind her. The lock does not catch again. It doesn’t have to. He knows I’m not going anywhere.
He pulls the chair at the little table back a few inches with two fingertips and sits, then gestures lightly to the other chair.
“Please.”
I don’t go anywhere. “Where is my mother?”
He folds a knee over the other, crosses his ankle. His attention stays on my face. “As promised, we have not touched her.”
“Who are you?” I ask. “What do you want with me?”
His expression doesn’t change. If anything, it settles. He tips his chin to the second chair again, a minimal invitation. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That would be unwise,” he says. He reaches for the carafe and pours water into the tumbler, then nudges the glass toward the edge of the table like he’s placing a gift on a threshold. “I will answer your questions. It will go better for both of us if you sit.”
“I asked who you are.”
Nothing moves in his face except his mouth. “A father,” he says. “Primarily.”
It’s not what I expected.
I realize my hands are in tight fists at my side. I’m still standing, but a step closer to the table has happened without permission. He notices; he notices everything. The corner of his mouth lifts just slightly.
“Eat,” he says.
“No,” I say, but I do take the seat across from him. “Answers.”
He studies me for a count of three, then nods, like a teacher who recognizes a particular brand of stubborn and decides to work around it instead of through.
“What I want,” he says, folding his hands on one knee, “is not you.”
I stare because the sentence makes no sense. “Then why am I here?”
“Because the someone who will come for you is—how shall we say—my concern.”
The breath leaves me in a quick puff of air. I don’t have to ask which someone.
“We’re not going to play with all the cards at once,” he says, still in that mild, conversational tone, “but I will give you enough so that we do not insult each other with pretense.”
He rests his fingertips against the edge of the linen napkin, then moves them away as if even stillness has to be tidy. “The Contis,” he says. “You know the name intimately.”
I don’t let my face change. I don’t think it listens. Heat moves under my skin in a rush that has nothing to do with blush and everything to do with fear.
“What do they have to do with—”
“Everything,” he says, with the smallest edge under the word. It is not anger. It is steel wrapped in velvet. “They killed my son.”
The sentence is plain. My world tilts. Revenge. This is for revenge. But why would they think any of the Contis would care about me?
“I don’t—” I start, then stop.
He only watches. “My only son,” he adds, as if the modifier matters to the math. It does to him.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. Because loss is loss, no matter whose it is.
His eyes acknowledge the words like a polite nod at a funeral and move on. “The Contis took him from me,” he says.
I have to believe they wouldn’t just…do something like that. I think of Giovanni, the kindness he’s shown me. Then again, what do I really know about them? They have the reputation they do for a reason.
And yet…
“Why?”
He inclines his head. “Because Gabe was a fool,” he says evenly. “I won’t deny it. Not born one. Made one. By proximity, by appetite, by men who taught him that you take what you want.”
My fingers press dents into the linen on my side of the table. “And you don’t believe the same?”
“To an extent but not absolutely.” A small breath, the barest lift of shoulders. “He went where he should not have gone. Attempted to take what was not his to take. Threatened something they consider… non-negotiable.” His gaze touches my face like a fingertip. “In return, he was corrected.”
“Corrected,” I repeat, because the word is too tidy for death.
Another small lift of shoulders, as if we were discussing the weather.
“What did he try to take?”
His eyes don’t flicker. “He set his sights on a person important to the Contis. A woman who, by their rules, is untouchable.”
A woman important to the Contis. There could only be three possibilities.
One of Luca’s daughters, Caterina or Lucia. Or Elena, who just had his child. A much more valuable target.
“You’re saying he—” I can’t make myself finish it. I clear my throat. “That sounds like self-defense.”
He accepts that without argument. “It may have been, in the moment. The result remains the same. He left my house one afternoon and never came back to it.” A pause. “The Contis knew exactly whose boy he was. They did not call me.”
“You wanted a phone call?” The words fall out before I can stop them.
“I wanted a world in which he was not dead.” He says it the way he’s said everything else—as fact. Then he tips his head a fraction. “Failing that, I wanted the courtesy of truth delivered directly.”
“Courtesy,” I repeat, disbelieving.
What world do these people live in?
I swallow. The room feels smaller, like the walls have closed a fraction. “And so you brought me here.”
“You understand the stakes,” he says. “So they do.”
“You think they’ll come for me.”
“I know they will.” A flicker, not quite a smile. “The Contis possess a particular vanity about what belongs under their hand. They touch something and believe they have marked it forever. It is a very old problem.”
His eyes rest on me just long enough to make the point. “He will come.”
A beat of silence opens between us. I don’t fill it. He seems pleased by that.
“You could have called him,” I say, and hear my own voice steady some. “If what you wanted was a conversation.”
“What I want is not a conversation.” The warmth doesn’t leave his tone; it simply refracts. “What I want is a reckoning.”
“With Giovanni.”
“With all of them. Where one goes, they all go.” He smooths a thumb along the edge of the napkin, a precise gesture, then leaves it alone. “You are the bridge I require. You are also, for the moment, an honored guest. Eat.”
The tray sits between us, untouched. The steam has thinned but not vanished. I hold his eyes and shake my head.
He considers me again, a long, clinical sweep. “You think abstaining is a form of resistance.” The slightest tilt of his head. “It is not. It is only discomfort.”
He lets that settle, then continues in the same patient cadence.
“I am not interested in frightening you into compliance. Fear is a blunt tool. It breaks what it strikes. I prefer precision.” He gestures toward the window, toward the courtyard I kept count of in the dark.
“You have seen that I am orderly. Orderly men offer terms.”
My throat is dry. “What terms?”
“You will eat, you will sleep, you will be moved when I decide to move you, and you will not be harmed so long as the men you are thinking about now do as men like them always do.” His gaze doesn’t waver.
“If they come to take you, I will end them. If they choose not to, I will end you and deliver you to their door. Either outcome suits me.”
I stare at him. He says it like a weather report. No flourish. No threat-voice. That is the part that chills.
Finally, he stands. The motion is unhurried. He sets the napkin he didn’t use back on the tray with the care of a man replacing a book on a shelf. “Eat,” he says again. “You will be here a while.”
He takes two steps, then pauses with his hand on the knob. “You want to believe the best of him,” he adds without looking back. “That would be a mistake.”
The latch clicks. The door closes. The lock slides with that same clean mechanical sound.
I sit there for a while, breathing through the tremor in my hands, watching steam lift in thin ribbons from a plate I can’t make myself touch. Outside the glass, the courtyard brightens by degrees, the fountain’s arc catching the morning.
And despite what he said about not wanting to frighten me, I am afraid.