CHAPTER 7
"A woman warned by another woman is a woman armed—no matter which side the other one is on."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I woke with the sun on my face and the red dress crumpled on the floor like a pool of blood.
I'd slept in my makeup, with my hair still pinned up. I'd slept with the dagger still in my boot, too—the boot had fallen beside the bed, and the dagger lay there looking up at me like a question I hadn't answered.
I stared at the ceiling for five minutes before I moved.
Allora. So this was how you woke up on the first morning of your new life—with the taste of Barolo in your mouth and a different name to hate.
Because that was what was left of the night before, deep down, once the poetry of Luca's office had cooled and the convent voice had come back: suspicion.
A man who takes off his shirt, rolls up his sleeve, and talks slowly isn't being sincere, Valentina—he's selling something.
The Mother Superior would have said that, and she'd have said it looking him right in the eye.
I got up and went to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face three times.
"Good morning," I said to the mirror.
The Valentina in the mirror didn't answer.
My father was in the breakfast room, alone at the head of the table, eating a cornetto with fig jam, as if the world belonged to him.
He only looked up when I came in, but he didn't smile.
"Did you eat well at dinner, figlia?"
"Yes."
"Red is the color of a bride or a widow, Valentina. It's not the color for an engagement dinner."
I sat down in the chair across from him and poured black coffee, no sugar.
"It was what was in the closet, papà." I looked at him over the cup. "Donna Beatrice picked it out."
"I see."
"Papà. Luca told me something yesterday."
"Told you what?"
"That the two of you were partners."
"We were. For twenty years."
"And that Matteo spent summers at the Morettis' house on Capri."
Now he looked at me. His small dark eyes narrowed.
"Luca told you that?"
"He did."
"Correct." He set down his fork, wiping his mouth with the napkin. "And did Luca tell you why Matteo stopped spending summers there?"
"No."
"There it is."
He took a sip of coffee, watching me over the cup.
"Ask him, figlia mia. Ask what happened in the summer of 2015." He set the cup down on the table. "And if he gives you a pretty answer, ask again. He has a habit of giving three versions of the same story, and the truth is never the first one."
"What summer of 2015?"
"Ask him, Valentina."
My father stood and wiped his hands on the napkin. Then he kissed my forehead quickly, without affection, with the institutional coldness of a father going through the motions.
"I leave at eleven," he said before he went out. "Take care of yourself. And don't trust the man before the contract's signed."
He left, and I sat there holding the cold cup.
Summer of 2015. Matteo was twenty-eight. He was alive. He was alive and he'd gone to Capri every year until that one, and never again.
And I'd never thought about it.
I found Bianca in the rose garden at ten.
She hadn't left. She had a cream cashmere coat thrown over her shoulders, a glass of sparkling wine in her hand at ten in the morning, walking among the roses as if the house were hers. When she saw me, she came over smiling.
"Valentina! Good morning."
"Bianca."
"How did you sleep?"
"Like a bride."
"Ah." She laughed and took a sip of the sparkling wine. "I've been a bride in this house several times too, but I never got married."
"What a shame."
"Isn't it?" She took my arm with the familiarity of someone who'd grown up in a rich house and never learned that an arm is offered, not taken. "Walk with me. The roses smell different at this hour."
I walked. There was no way not to.
"I wanted to give you some advice," she said quietly, like someone offering a cigarette.
"I didn't ask for any."
"That's why it's advice." She smiled openly. "Advice you ask for is instruction. Real advice comes uninvited."
I didn't answer.
"Luca," she began, "has a very specific habit, Valentina. He takes the women he wants to keep close to a room in the house he doesn't use for anything else. An office, upstairs, with a mahogany desk facing the bay. You know it?"
My heart almost stopped for two seconds.
"No."
"You don't?"
"I already said no."
"How strange." She took another sip. "I thought he'd taken you there last night."
"He didn't."
"Hm." She smiled again. "Allora. Forget what I said."
We walked two more steps and she stopped. Then she looked at the sea down below.
"I'll tell you one thing, Valentina. Woman to woman.
When he takes you there, takes off his jacket, rolls his sleeves to the elbow, and opens a leather folder on the desk—that's the signal, you know?
He does that exact same gesture. With me, he did it in June 2018.
Exactly the same. Same room, same gesture, same folder. "
She let go of my arm, still watching me.
"The story was beautiful too. I cried and I believed it. You're younger than I was, bella. You'll believe it faster."
She took the last sip and walked off across the garden gravel, leaving a scent of Chanel hanging in the air.
I went up the west-wing stairs.
I didn't think, I just walked—crossed the upstairs corridor, turned left, and stopped in front of the door to his office.
The door was unlocked.
I pushed it open. The room was empty and the window open—the wind off the bay coming in, stirring the white curtain. The smell of last night's cigar still in the air. And on the mahogany desk facing the bay, exactly where he'd left it, exactly as Bianca had described...
The leather folder.
I looked at the door behind me. No footsteps, no voices. I walked to the desk and picked up the folder, then the envelope, and opened it.
The papers were all there. The letters, the broken contracts, the transcribed recordings. I started going through them—my hand shaking a little, I'll admit—page by page, reading the dates.
It was a letter from my father to Luca's father, handwritten, with the Rossi crest at the top. I recognized my father's handwriting immediately—the way he makes a capital S, with the bottom curve wider than the top. I recognized it like it was my own.
The date, in the top right corner, read: 15 ottobre 2019. But the 9 had been written over another number.
I moved closer to the window to see better in the light.
The number underneath was a 5.
October 15, 2015.
Summer of 2015.
Someone had changed the date, taken a letter from four years before the war and altered the number to make it look like it dated from the break.
And I didn't know if it had been Luca, or his father, or my father, or someone who still didn't have a name.
I heard footsteps in the corridor. Boots. Heavy. Coming toward me, slow, unhurried, the way a man walks through a house that's his.
I looked at the letter in my hand, then at the door.
I had three seconds to decide what to do...