CHAPTER 10
"There are hungers you know you'll feel one day. The surprise is never knowing when."
VALENTINA ROSSI
The clocks in the house struck three in the morning when I finally made up my mind.
I'd spent four hours sitting on the bedroom floor, my back against the door, listening to the house fall asleep around me—a maid's footsteps in the kitchen, a car engine in the drive, the neighbor's dog barking at something that maybe wasn't even there.
Four hours thinking about the word hook. Four hours thinking about its weight, about the way Luca had said it without hesitating, like someone saying something very old and very settled.
Always was.
I stood up. My legs protested, and I waited a minute for the blood to come back.
I didn't change clothes; I kept on the black linen pants and the white blouse I'd worn to the library. I was barefoot, not because it was sensual—because it was silent.
I opened the bedroom door and crossed the west-wing hallway without making a sound. The candelabra had each been left with one candle lit—an old Moretti custom, Catholic insurance, so the house was never left entirely in the dark. The flames trembled as I passed.
I went down the marble staircase.
I crossed the grand salon; the smell of the dinner from two nights before still clung to the curtains. I crossed the east hallway and reached the office door.
There was light under it, and I pushed it open without knocking.
Luca was standing on the balcony, his back to me, smoking. White shirt open to the third button, no jacket, sleeves already rolled. The photo Acquaviva had left—I saw it from the corner of my eye—was lying face down on the desk.
He didn't turn around, but I knew he'd heard me.
"You should be asleep, Valentina."
"So should you."
"I'm working."
"So am I."
That was when he turned around.
He looked at me for two seconds. From my head to my bare feet. And then he drew on the cigar.
"Allora." He leaned his shoulder against the balcony doorframe. "What do you want?"
"I want you to explain to me what a hook is."
His hand with the cigar paused half a centimeter.
"Excuse me?"
"I heard you, Luca." I walked to the desk and rested both hands on the edge.
"I went down the service stairs and put my ear to the wall.
I heard you say that Salvatore's coming Friday, that you let him take me to Palermo, that if he suspects anything you lose the hook. That I'm the hook. Always have been."
I waited.
When he spoke, it didn't sound like the Don's voice he'd used at dinner. It was the voice from the vineyard balcony, the low voice from the small hours of the twisted ankle.
"You heard right, but you didn't hear everything."
"Then tell me the rest."
He put out the cigar in the silver ashtray on the desk. He didn't come over to where I was—he stopped on the other side of the desk again, the wood between us, the way he'd been on the night of the confrontation.
"You'd better sit down."
"No."
"Sit, Valentina. Please."
The word "please" threw me off balance more than the rest of the sentence did. He'd never said "please" to me.
I sat down in the leather armchair with my hands in my lap.
He rested his fists on the edge of the desk and looked into my eyes for a long moment.
"When your father promised you to me, two years ago, I didn't accept for the reason he thinks I did."
"What reason does he think?"
"A political pact. The end of the war. Rossi blood turning into Moretti blood, a son who'll inherit two houses, peace in southern Italy," he said dryly. "That's his reason."
"And yours?"
"Mine is simpler, bella. I accepted because as long as you were here, in my house, promised, your father would keep coming, would keep sending word.
He'd keep coming and going to see his daughter, and he'd stay close.
" He stopped. "And I need your father close, Valentina.
I've needed it for seven years. Because it's the only way for me to find out what he did, with whom, and when. "
"So I'm the bait."
"You're the one thing he can't not come for."
"I'm the bait."
"I didn't say that."
"You said hook. A hook is bait, Luca—it's not a pretty metaphor. It's the thing you sink into a fish's mouth so it can't get free."
He didn't answer.
I stood up and walked to the balcony. I looked out at the bay in the dark, the boat lights, Vesuvius.
"When were you going to tell me?"
"Maybe never."
"Why?"
"Because as long as you didn't know, you were convincing."
That was when I turned around.
"You're despicable."
"Sì."
"You know you are."
"Sì."
He said it plainly, without defending himself. It was worse than if he'd argued.
I walked back to the desk and stopped in front of him. He stayed leaning on his fists, not moving, the desk between the two of us.
"What changed, that you're telling me now?"
He gave me a long look.
"What changed is that you heard."
"Before that."
"Before?"
"Before I heard, Luca. What changed yesterday, the day before, last week? You weren't telling me anything—I know you weren't. You were going to use me until next Friday and let me go to Palermo with my father without warning me."
He dropped his eyes to the desk.
"The photo changed some things."
"What photo?"
"The photo my great-grandfather captioned."
My breath caught for half a second.
"You knew I'd find it."
"I let Raffaele take you to the blue book on the shelf, Valentina. I told him to take you to the blue book." He raised his eyes. "You think he decided on his own which book to pull from a shelf of four thousand volumes?"
"You used your brother."
"I used the book."
"You used your brother to plant the book. That's different."
"I planted the book a month ago, bella, expecting just any bride. It was you who showed up."
He came around to my side of the desk, very slowly.
He didn't touch me—he stopped a foot and a half away. I caught the smell of the cigar, the smell of the whiskey, and underneath, that smell—different, but good—that I still hadn't been able to name.
"I'm telling you now," he said, low, "because you deserve it. Not because it's strategic. This is wrecking my strategy, but you deserve it, Valentina. And I can't keep doing this to you the way I did the first week."
"Why can't you?"
He didn't answer; he only looked at my mouth, then back up to my eyes.
"You know."
And that was what threw me off balance.
It wasn't him coming closer, much less the smell. It was him saying "you know" as if it were something that had been obvious between the two of us for days, as if it were something we'd already talked through without words since the vineyard, and I could no longer pretend I didn't know.
I took half a step back.
"I'm going to my room. You won't stop me."
"I'm not stopping you from anything."
I walked to the door, put my hand on the knob, but stopped, without turning around:
"Luca... when my father gets here Friday, I'm going to Palermo with him. And I'm coming back."
"I know."
"But not as the hook."
Then I turned.
He was standing on the other side of the desk, the yellow lamplight hitting his face from below, the scar through his eyebrow gleaming, and his black eyes waiting.
"I'm coming back," I said, low, "as the fisherwoman."
He smiled, very slowly.
"Brava."
I left the office.
I went up the service stairs barefoot and reached my room.
I sat down on the bed. And for the first time in ten days, it wasn't anger I felt rising.
It was hunger.