Chapter 3
LUCA MORETTI
I saw it all from my office window.
Not the conversation—I couldn't hear it, but I saw Valentina go into the music room at five past eleven.
I watched through the courtyard's glass roof, and took in her bearing as she walked in—shoulders back, chin level, the book under her arm like a polite weapon.
I noted when she sat down on the piano bench, and I saw when Bianca, sitting on the sofa, faked a smile and uncrossed her legs.
Then, when Valentina stood and walked to the door, she stopped in the doorway a moment longer than necessary to say something that made Bianca lower the Vogue and go still on the white sofa like a statue.
I put out the cigar.
"Cazzo."
Valentina had come back from Palermo knowing something I didn't yet know. And she'd chosen to start using it.
Not on me. On Bianca.
I rested my hands on the windowsill.
Inside: Pericolosa.
But, for the first time, no weight to the word. No menace. Like someone recognizing, at last, a partner.
I smiled briefly, very slowly.
"Brava, bella mia," I said to the window.