Chapter Seventeen #2
Lemons. Flour. Almonds. Vanilla.
Ingredients for the biscotti she was supposed to make with Angela tomorrow morning.
Angela stands at the sink, staring through the window at the darkening terrace.
The untouched roses lie on the table behind her.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“No.”
I lean against the island.
“Me neither.”
She wipes her hands on a towel, though they aren’t wet.
“Did you know?”
“Not until they left.”
“Would you have stopped him?”
“Yes.”
She looks at me.
I don’t know whether she believes me.
I’m not certain I believe myself.
Marco had forty-eight hours. If he’d told me exactly when he planned to move her, I would have put Lucia in a car and driven until neither family could find us.
Perhaps that’s why he didn’t.
“He’ll bring her back,” I say.
Angela looks toward the unfinished flowers.
“He’d better.”
She picks up Lucia’s grocery list and folds it once.
Then again.
“She was going to dip half of them in chocolate.”
“The biscotti?”
“She said you liked them that way.”
My throat tightens.
“I do.”
“I know.”
Angela sets the folded list beside Lucy’s bowl.
Neither of us mentions that Lucia remembered too.
#
The next twenty-four hours pass slowly.
Dario arrives for his shift and finds the book Lucia ordered for his niece sitting beside the security monitors. He picks it up, turns it over in his hands, and looks toward the empty library before setting it down again.
Bruno brings a pastry box into the kitchen before remembering there is no one here to save the last one for.
Armando never comes in for his usual breakfast.
Angela cooks enough food for the household, but no one eats much. The serving dishes cool untouched in the dining room before she carries them back to the kitchen.
Marco doesn’t appear at all.
By midnight, his office light is still burning.
At two, it goes dark.
I’m awake when that happens.
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, remembering the bookstore.
Lucia’s face when she found her mother’s novel.
The way she held it against her chest.
The ridiculous seriousness with which she compared two nearly identical copies before choosing the one with fewer damaged pages.
I remember lunch.
She sat across from me near the back of the restaurant, laughing because I claimed the waiter was flirting with me.
She didn’t see Yevgeny across the street.
Neither did I.
If I had, she would still be here.
The thought follows me out of bed.
I walk down the hall toward her room.
The door is open.
Marco sits on the edge of the bed.
The lamp beside him casts a narrow circle of amber light. Lucia’s photograph of Maria Rossi rests in his hands.
He doesn’t look up when I enter.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re in her room at two in the morning.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you decided to make yourself miserable somewhere more appropriate?”
His thumb moves across the edge of the photograph.
“She left this.”
“She didn’t know she was leaving.”
“I know.”
Anger stirs again, but it has nowhere left to go.
I lean against the dresser.
“You love her.”
Marco’s hand stills.
He doesn’t deny it.
That hurts in a way I didn’t expect.
Not because I’m surprised.
Because I hoped I was wrong.
“So do you,” he says.
“Yes.”
The admission comes easily.
I’ve spent weeks pretending infatuation was too ridiculous a word.
Love is worse.
It also happens to be true.
Marco looks down at Maria’s face.
“She trusted me.”
“She trusted all of us.”
“I put her back in the room she escaped.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens.
“She begged me not to.”
My eyes close on a broken sound.
I don’t want the detail.
He deserves to carry it, but I don’t want it.
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t have a choice.”
I laugh without humor.
“She must have loved that.”
“She said I always had a choice. I simply didn’t choose her.”
The words settle into the quiet room.
Lucia was right.
That’s the worst part.
Marco made a choice. A terrible one, perhaps even the only one he believed he could make.
But it was still his.
I look around the bedroom.
She has put so little of herself into it. A few dresses hang in the closet. Books are stacked on the nightstand. A jar of bath crystals sits open beside the tub, its faint floral scent lingering in the room.
As though some part of her always knew this place could be taken away.
“What happens when Aniya is confirmed safe?” I ask.
“Everything Mikhailov owns becomes vulnerable.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Marco finally looks up.
The control is gone from his face.
The brother sitting before me is the one no one else sees. The one our mother understood. The one who feels everything and believes hiding it will make the feeling useful.
“What happens to Lucia?” I ask.
“I get her back.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You’d better figure it out.”
“I will.”
“No.”
I move closer.
“Not because she belongs here. Not because Angela misses her or the men like having her around. Not because you and I love her.”
Marco’s gaze hardens.
“Then why?”
“Because she belongs to herself.”
The words hang between us.
“You took that away,” I say. “You put her back in Mikhailov’s cage after promising you’d never close the door.”
“I know.”
“Then get her out.”
He looks down at the photograph.
For a moment, he says nothing.
Then he places it carefully on Lucia’s nightstand and rises.
The man who stands is still bruised. Still exhausted.
But something has changed.
Purpose replaces the emptiness in his eyes.
“I intend to.”
He walks past me and into the hall.
A few seconds later, the light in his office comes back on.