CHAPTER 18
"There are men you hate in the afternoon and want at night."
VALENTINA ROSSI
The crossing back took twice as long as the trip out.
Not because of the sea—the sea was the same—but because of the silence.
I sat on the deck, and he stayed in the cabin. We didn't look at each other for the two hours back.
I looked at the water, at Capri vanishing on the horizon, at the profile of Vesuvius growing on the other side. Inside, I kept replaying the cellar scene.
Not a room, the cellar.
I replayed my brother's face crying on my shoulder. I replayed Luca saying, You're going to Posillipo, like someone handing down a sentence.
And deep down, I replayed something worse: I had agreed without agreeing.
I hadn't screamed, hadn't fought. I had come down the stairs of the pink house, gotten into the electric cart beside him, boarded the yacht without saying a word, and let my brother be put into the trunk of a black Mercedes with two armed men I didn't know.
I had allowed it.
The convent Valentina was disgusted. The new Valentina—the one who'd kissed Luca—was confused.
And between the two, I was furious.
At myself. At him. At my father. At the pink house. At everything.
We reached Posillipo at four in the afternoon.
I got off the yacht without waiting for his hand. I went up the staircase of Villa Moretti without looking back and crossed the salon.
I didn't go to my room, but to the service wing.
I'd walked this house enough in three weeks to know it had a cellar. I'd heard the name—south cellar—twice since I arrived: once in the meeting I overheard through the wall, once in his call with Acquaviva just now.
I didn't know exactly where it was, but I knew the service stairs went down another flight past the pantry, and that the door at the bottom was always locked.
I reached the door and saw a soldier.
I didn't know the man. In his thirties, black suit, military posture, hands clasped in front of him.
He saw me coming, but he didn't step back, didn't even greet me.
"Signorina. Don Moretti asked that you not come down. Go back up."
"Is my brother down there?"
"Go back up, Signorina."
"I can go down. I'm the bride."
"Signorina," he said, his voice firmer. "Go back up."
The man wasn't going to let me past, I knew. And I also knew that if I insisted, he'd call Luca, and Luca would come down, and that would be worse.
I went back up the stairs, but I swore, on every step, that I would have that conversation.
I knocked on his office door without waiting for an answer.
I pushed it open. He was sitting at the desk, jacket over the back of the chair, sleeves already rolled, a glass of whiskey on the desk.
"Bella."
"Let my brother go."
"No."
I walked to the desk and braced both hands on the edge, looking at him.
"You don't have that right."
"I have the right."
"You just promised me, nineteen hours ago, that he was your fratello."
"I promised he was," he said plainly. "Not that he automatically stayed that way."
"You're being cruel."
"I'm being exact, Valentina. That's different."
"Cruel!"
"Bella." He stood up slowly and came around the desk. "If I let your brother go now, in forty-eight hours your father will know. In seventy-two, he has Matteo back in Palermo. In a week, he has Matteo dead for real this time. Or he has Matteo armed against me. Which do you prefer?"
"I prefer my brother out of a cellar."
"The cellar is the only thing keeping him alive until we sort out the rest."
"You could have put him in a room."
"Rooms have windows. Windows have a line of sight to the street. The street has your father's soldier on it within twenty-four hours. There's no safe room in this house, Valentina. Only the cellar."
I looked at him. His black eyes were closer than I wanted, the scar through his eyebrow, the smell of the cigar. Him.
"Luca. I can't hate you when you talk like that."
"Then don't try."
"I have to try."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know who my family is anymore."
The sentence came out before I could think. It came out with a little of what I'd been holding in since the pink house.
Luca looked at me, and then he held out his hand.
Not to hold me, to offer it. The palm open, between the two of us, at the height of his chest.
I looked at his hand, then at his face, and put my hand in his.
He pulled me. Not to the bed, not to the desk—to him. He put his other hand on my waist and brought me inside his space.
My chest touched his. My forehead, his chin. I felt his heart beat through the white shirt, slow—slower than mine—and that was worse than any kiss.
"Bella mia."
"Don't call me that right now."
I lifted my face, and he kissed me.
Today it was possession.
His mouth came with more force, more decision, one hand at the nape of my neck and the other rising from my waist to stop in the middle of my back, opening the palm like someone checking the size of what he has in his hand.
I answered. I ran both hands up his back, over the shirt, feeling his ribs, feeling his broad shoulders through the fabric, and I grabbed. I fisted his shirt in my hands, pulling him.
He laughed against my mouth and pressed me against the edge of the desk.
The desk hit the backs of my thighs. I felt his hands come down from my nape to my waist, and from my waist to my hips. They stopped there, gripping me.
"Bella. Stop now, or you won't stop at all."
I swallowed.
His mouth came down along my chin, along my neck, stopping at the spot where the neck meets the collarbone.
He kissed me very slowly. And I, who'd had control of my fingers my whole life, discovered in that second that the control of my fingers was no control at all—because they'd gone up on their own to the nape of his neck and were pulling his hair back without my having decided it.
"Stop, Luca. Please..."
He stopped. Without complaint. Then he lifted his head and put his forehead to mine, breathing fast.
"Capisco, bella."
"It's not that I don't want to."
"I know."
"It's because my brother is in a cellar in this house."
"Capisco."
He stepped back half a step and let go of my waist. Then he took my hand and kissed my fingers—one by one, slowly, without theatrics—and let go.
"Bella. Next time, you won't be able to stop."