CHAPTER 41
"There are nights you make love like someone saying goodbye. Not because you're leaving. Because you might not come back."
Valentina MORETTI
The hotel was called the Lucia.
I laughed when I saw the sign. Laughed to myself, in the back seat of the car, with Matteo looking at me without understanding.
Hotel Lucia, on Via Velia, in Salerno. My mother's name, in blue neon letters on top of a four-story building at the edge of the gulf.
The room was a corner one. A view of the sea, a big bed, a heavy wine-colored curtain. Luca was already there when I came up.
He came to me, didn't say anything, just took my face in both hands and kissed me—brief, held back, the way a man does when there's work before pleasure.
"Bella mia."
"Twelve days," I murmured.
"Twelve." He rested his forehead against mine. "We'll talk after; right now it's work."
Raffaele was at the table, the map open.
I took the hotel's letterhead—Hotel Lucia at the top, and I laughed again on the inside—and drew Villa Salina with the pen from the room.
I'd been there three times in childhood, but a house stays in a child's head forever.
"The main staircase is here," I said, marking it.
"It goes up in a single flight, turns right.
Salvatore's study is here, at the end of the east wing, window to the sea.
" I marked more. "The kitchen is down here.
There's a service door that opens onto the back garden, by the old tank.
No one watches that door because no one remembers it exists. "
Raffaele took it down.
"And the safe?" Luca asked.
"Behind our great-grandfather's portrait, on the study wall." I set the pen down. "But I don't care about the safe, Luca. The documents that matter are already with me, in the Mondello box. The safe is money."
Luca looked at me, nodded once.
"Brava."
Matteo was standing behind me, looking at the map over my shoulder. When Raffaele's finger passed over a name written in a corner of the planning sheet—Acquaviva, internal contact, 2018–2025—Matteo locked.
"Carlo?"
Luca turned to him.
"Sì."
"Carlo Acquaviva."
"He's dead, Matteo."
My brother sat down on the edge of the bed, slowly, running a hand over his face.
"He came to see me in Capri."
The sentence from the cellar.
"When?" I asked.
"Twice." Matteo looked at the floor. "In 2022, and again at the start of 2024.
He brought books, said he was negotiating my return with Papa, that I had to be patient, that he'd get me out of there when it was safe.
" He laughed, bitter. "I believed him. Cazzo, I believed him.
I was happy to see him, I thought he was a friend. "
And there, in that hotel room with my mother's name on it, the sentence my brother had given me in the cellar—ask her who else used to go to Capri to visit me—finally closed.
Bianca wasn't the only one.
Carlo had been confirming to Salvatore that Matteo was still alive and held. The two of them kept my brother as a chip.
Forty years as the Morettis' consigliere, and he was on the other side the whole time.
"Figlio di puttana," Matteo murmured.
"He's already paid," Luca said, low.
Raffaele folded the map.
"Tomorrow at four in the morning," he said.
Matteo stood. Before he left, he squeezed my shoulder. He didn't say anything.
The door closed, and it was just the two of us.
"Tomorrow could go wrong, bella mia."
Luca said it with his back to me, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie. The window behind him showed the gulf of Salerno, dark, with the lights of the boats sitting still on the water.
"I know," I said.
"It could go very wrong."
"I know, Luca."
He came to me and took the ring from the inside pocket of his jacket—Lucia's emerald, the one I'd left in Posillipo in the rush of the escape to Capri.
"You forgot it."
"I know."
He took my right hand and put the ring back on the ring finger.
"Don't forget it again," he murmured.
I looked at him a little longer than I needed to. The white shirt half open, the hair mussed from a whole day bent over a map, the scar on his eyebrow.
Only his black eyes, which that night were different—more open, in a way I'd never seen. As if the man who feared nothing had finally found something he was afraid of losing.
It was me.
That man was going to destroy me, I thought. And tomorrow I could destroy him just by existing on the wrong side of a bullet.
I pulled him by the shirt, and he came slowly.
His mouth found mine with no hurry at all. It wasn't the kiss from his room after the attack, with blood and adrenaline. It wasn't the brutal kiss from the fight in Positano.
It was a kiss with time inside it—time and fear, the two mixed together, as if he were saving the taste of my mouth for something.
His fingers moved up the nape of my neck, into my hair, and held it. His other hand moved down my back, found the zipper of the dress, and opened it slowly, tooth by tooth, in no hurry.
The dress fell to the floor of the room. I stood in a white slip in the lamplight. He took a step back—just one—to look at me. His black eyes moved down from my face to my neck, from my neck to my chest, from my chest to my belly.
And they stopped there, on my belly.
I held my breath.
But he didn't say anything, just kissed me again, and this time his mouth moved down—along my chin, my neck, my collarbone, the top of my chest over the silk.
I slid my fingers into his hair, felt my knees go weak.
He drew the slip's strap down one shoulder.
Kissed where the strap had been, drew the other down and kissed the other shoulder.
The white slip slid to my waist and stayed there, caught on my hips, and Luca ran both hands over my bare waist, slowly, like a man storing something in the memory of his fingers.
"Lie down with me," he murmured.
I lay down, but this time I didn't want to be on top.
That night I wanted his whole weight on me. I wanted the Latin tattoo against my chest, wanted his rough jaw on my neck, wanted to be covered entirely by him, as if his body could protect me from everything that would come in the morning.
He understood without my saying it.
He took off the shirt and the rest. He lay down on top of me, propped on his elbows, with the care of a man who doesn't want to hurt even while wanting everything.
His skin was warm, mine was covered in goosebumps.
His mouth found mine again. His hand moved down my belly—and stayed there, open, on my womb, the way he'd been doing for weeks without knowing why.
I closed my eyes.
His fingers moved lower, slowly, and I arched against his hand and bit his shoulder so I wouldn't make a sound—because Raffaele was in the next room, and Matteo in the other, and the walls of the Hotel Lucia were thin as paper.
"Madonna," I whispered.
"Bella mia."
"Don't stop."
"I won't."
He readied me slowly, his mouth on my neck and his hand between my legs, until I was trembling, until I was pulling him by the shoulders, by the hair, by the ribs.
"Now."
When he came into me, I held his face in both hands and opened my eyes.
I wanted to watch, wanted to see his black eyes while we did the thing that could be the last time.
He looked back at me without turning away, and he went slow, and he went deep, and he went with a tenderness that hurt more than any hurry.
His free hand stayed on my belly, and that was the moment I almost told him.
The word rose to my throat.
Luca, I'm pregnant. Luca, there's a child of yours in here, right under your hand. Luca, I don't know if you know that your body already knows.
But I held it back.
If I tell him now, I thought, he won't let me into that house tomorrow. He'll lock me up in Salerno with three soldiers at the door, and I have to go in. He's my father, I have to be there when this ends.
So I swallowed the word, swallowed it down along with a stubborn tear that ran from the corner of my eye.
Luca stopped moving and kissed the tear. He didn't ask where it came from.
"Ti amo," he murmured in my ear, low, rough. "Ti amo, bella mia. Did you hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Say it back."
"I love you." My voice broke in the middle. "Madonna, Luca, I love you. More than I wanted to, more than was safe."
He started again. Deeper now, slower still, his forehead against mine, and I wrapped both legs around him and held on to his back, to the muscles of his back, to the family tattoo rising and falling under my hands.
I came first.
It was long, and it was silent, and it was with my face buried in his neck to smother the sound. My legs trembled, the air went out of me all at once, and I held him with everything I had as the wave passed.
He waited for me to breathe. Then he went harder, finally, his mouth on my collarbone, and came right after—his whole body locking once, in silence, the way he did, with a rough sound swallowed against my skin.
Then he stayed on top of me.
He didn't pull out. He stayed there, all his weight, his breathing fast against my neck, and I didn't ask him to move.
I ran my hand through the wet hair at the nape of his neck, slowly, and we stayed like that—without words, just the two hearts beating, coming down in rhythm little by little, in the corner room of the Hotel Lucia with the gulf of Salerno dark outside.
His hand stayed open on my belly.
"You feel different," he murmured, again, against my hair. "Since Capri."
"I know."
"You still won't tell me what happened."
I swallowed hard.
"The day after tomorrow I'll tell you."
The day after tomorrow, I thought. If there is a day after tomorrow.
He raised himself on his elbow, looked at me in the half-light. His hand moved up from my belly to my face, brushed the wet hair off my forehead.
"You're afraid," he said.
"I am."
"Of tomorrow?"
"Of losing you tomorrow."
He was quiet for a while, then kissed my forehead.
"Me too," he murmured. "For the first time in forty-four years, I'm afraid to die." He rested his forehead against mine again. "Because before you there was nothing on the other side of the fear. Now there is."
I felt a knot in my throat.
"Luca. Promise me that if it goes wrong, you get out."
"No."
"Luca…"
"I'm not going to promise that, bella mia." He pulled me up onto his chest, finally coming off of me, settling me with my head over the Latin tattoo. "If it goes wrong tomorrow, I don't leave without you. Not even dead."
I closed my eyes against his chest. I didn't argue anymore; I knew I wouldn't win that one.
I woke at three.
Luca was asleep on his stomach, the tattoo on his back showing in the faint light coming through the gap in the curtain.
I took the phone, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom, closing the door and sitting on the edge of the tub.
I called Capri.
The nonna answered on the second ring. She never slept at night.
"Signora."
"Nonna."
"You're going into that house, aren't you?"
"I am, nonna."
"Then take your great-grandmother's dagger. And don't let your hand shake."
I swallowed hard.
"You knew I'd go."
"I knew when you played Chopin and didn't finish it, signora." Her voice was in no hurry. "A woman who doesn't finish the music is a woman who still has an account to settle."
I felt a knot in my throat.
"Nonna. Pray for us."
"I've been praying since 1995, signora. I never stopped. Come back," the nonna said, and her voice changed in a way that was almost imperceptible. "The house needs you. And you need to come back because of what you're carrying."
"Nonna…"
"Don't tell me anything, signora. I know. I knew before you did."
She hung up.
I sat on the edge of the tub at the Hotel Lucia, the silent phone in my hand, my free hand open on my belly.
She knows. The nonna knows.
I went back to the room. Luca was asleep, the dagger on the nightstand, beside his pistol, ivory handle next to steel.
I lay down beside him, put my hand on his chest, over the Latin tattoo.
Tomorrow I go back to the house where I was born with my great-grandmother's dagger in my boot and a child of my husband's in my belly.