Chapter 10
Angela
Iwas getting so used to being in here that I had started to recognize the way the light looked at different times of day.
There was a way the light came in at ten a.m. that made the apartment look clean, even though it was not.
Even though, if you ran your finger along the inside of the kitchen cabinet, you’d get a little fur of white dust, the kind that came from too many wipes and not enough actual dirt to justify it.
The city outside looked colder than it was—glass and steel and the flat glare of winter sun.
I was alone in the kitchen. Pietro was in the other room on operational calls, voice low and precise, the rhythm of his words as steady as the clock on the oven.
It was day three. I had been good for seventy-two hours. So good. Such a terribly, dreadfully, perfectly good girl.
I made coffee. Drank it black. I had two eggs, microwaved, the quickest way I knew to make them.
The contract was a living thing inside me now—every rule, every check-in, every soft prompt from his side of the table.
I didn’t even have to look at the list anymore.
I was running the routine like I had done it forever.
I wanted to check the perimeter. I wanted to sweep the apartment, check every window for a new angle, see if the tape over the peep hole had shifted even a millimeter.
But we’d spoken yesterday. Daddy had asked me not to carry out any self-initiated security rounds.
I was supposed to trust him to keep the world from getting in. I was supposed to be present.
I tried. I really did.
I read for an hour—pulp, old airport novels, the kind with guns and lawyers and a protagonist who never made the same mistake twice. I did the crossword in the Trib. I watered the basil and put on the radio, a low buzz of NPR that made the place sound like any other morning in any other city.
But I couldn’t sit still. In spare moments, my mind raced. I worried about people finding me, even though I felt safe. I felt anxious that we hadn’t got to the bottom of the situation, that there was still a threat out there. So, I did what I always did, and took matters into my own hands.
I got the laptop out. Not the safe house one—the real one, the one from before, wiped and flashed and rebuilt six times but still mine in a way no device would ever be again. The power button was stiff; I held it down until the blue light came on.
I sat at the table and stared at the search bar. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.
Just my name. Just once. Just to see if anything had surfaced.
He’d told me not to, but could it really hurt that much? Who was going to be checking up on me?
I could rationalize it a hundred ways. Pietro had been up until three, talking to some contact in Palermo, hunting down which channel the leak had come through.
The thread was quiet. No new attempts. Tonio had dropped off groceries at five a.m. and left without so much as a joke.
There was nothing moving. The danger was as low as it ever got.
But I knew the real reason I was about to do it.
I wanted to know if I still existed.
I opened a clean browser, not Tor, nothing fancy. I put the cursor in the search box.
I typed Angela Baggio. I hit enter before I had decided to.
Four pages of nothing. The same six articles that had been online for two years: hedge fund whistleblower; trial ends in four convictions; witness enters protection.
There was no new news, no sightings, not even a message board post from the underground weirdos who sometimes tracked federal witnesses for the hell of it.
It was like I’d been swallowed whole and digested.
I sat there, breathing. The absence of me was louder than the city outside.
I thought about the way a person could vanish, not just from the world but from every database and archive and gossip chain that mattered.
I thought about how long it would take for anyone to notice if I wasn’t here anymore.
I closed the browser fast, like I’d touched a hot plate.
It was fine. It was five minutes. Nobody was watching.
I shut the laptop and pushed it to the back edge of the table.
My chest felt hollow in the center, like the start of a panic attack, but quieter. Not the full electric storm—just the cold certainty, in the pit of my stomach, that I had done something incredibly, irreversibly stupid.
I went to the sink, poured out the coffee, and ran the hot water until it steamed. I watched it swirl down the drain and tried not to think about the next time he would ask, “What did you do today?”
I lied to myself: I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him after dinner.
But I already knew I wouldn’t.
Ispent the next three hours trying and failing to focus on a book. The words kept crawling off the page and hiding in the cracks of the apartment, which frankly was unhelpful.
By five, I was so restless I cleaned the kitchen twice and reorganized the condiments in the fridge. I kept thinking about the search, about the moment of seeing my own name reflected back at me. It replayed every time I blinked, a brief flicker of the screen, the dull ache in my chest.
Pietro was out, doing something or other. I still felt a little uneasy about the fact that he was such a dangerous man. I hoped that he was safe, and I hoped that whatever he was doing wasn’t too gruesome.
At 5:17, the front door opened. He came in wearing black joggers and a shirt so clean it looked like it had never been washed before.
His hair was damp at the temples. His face was a blank, but not a neutral one.
I had seen that face before—at the trial, when the lead agent had played nice for hours before they dropped the photo on the table, the evidence of my own fuckup.
I sat very still at the table.
He put his phone down, plugged it into the charger, and filled the kettle. He was deliberate, not rushed, but not wasting motion either. He took down the tea, the good kind, not the supermarket bags. He set out two mugs, put the spoon beside mine. He did not say anything.
I could feel it—something simmering away.
The water boiled. He poured, steeped, waited the exact number of seconds on the timer.
He brought the mugs to the table and set one in front of me, then sat across, elbows on the wood, hands folded. He watched the tea as it cooled.
I wrapped my hands around the mug, hoping the heat would make the shaking less obvious.
He let the silence grow. He was good at that—better than anyone I’d ever met.
Finally, he said, “So. Tell me about your day.”
I tried for casual. “I read. I did the crossword. I made eggs.”
“Anything else?”
I ran the answer through my head: Do not lie. “I cleaned the kitchen. I watered the plant.”
He waited.
“And you?” I asked. The question sounded pathetic even to me.
“Well. I spent a little time on the internet.”
He slid his phone toward the centre of the table. It was open to a browser, the dark mode making the text stand out in a way that felt pointed.
He turned the screen to me. It took a second to register. It was a log. An access history. The time, the IP, the browser ID, the search string.
Angela Baggio.
My hands went cold. I felt the blood drop out of my face and pool somewhere around my knees.
He said, still gentle, “What do you have to say?”
I stared at the mug, waiting for the panic to hit, but it didn’t. What hit was worse—a deadening, like being held under water. I waited for him to fill the silence, but he did not.
I said, very quietly, “I’m sorry.”
He nodded, as if he had expected it. “I know.” His voice was so calm I almost cried. “But I want you to tell me why you did it.”
I shook my head. “It was stupid. I just wanted—” I stopped. It sounded petty. It was petty.
He waited.
I said, “I wanted to know if I still existed.” I tried to make it a joke. It wasn’t. “It’s been two years. I wanted to know if there was more danger. And I was just—” I struggled for the word. “Lonely, I guess.”
He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “You broke a rule.”
“I know.”
“I am going to discipline you for it.”
I stared at the mug again, the swirl of tea leaves at the bottom like a map I did not recognize.
He said, “Do you understand why?”
I nodded.
“Use your words, Angela.”
I looked up. I met his eyes, and for a second I felt the contract settle between us, a weight that was almost comfort.
“Yes, Daddy,” I said. “I understand.”
He stood up from the kitchen table with the tea still steaming, not a single word, just a flick of the fingers. I followed him down the hallway, to my bedroom. He let go of my hand just long enough to push the door open.
He sat on the edge of my bed, then he patted the space in front of him.
I stood, hands at my sides.
He looked up at me, just long enough for me to feel the weight of his attention.
He said, “Take off your jeans.”
My hands shook on the button, but I did it. The zipper was stiff. The denim clung to my legs, my hips, and I had to brace on the bed to pull them down. I kept my eyes on the carpet. My face burned.
I stepped out of them. I stood there in my t-shirt and underwear, socks balled up and half-off from when I’d kicked the shoes in the hall.
He said, “The underwear, too.”
I swallowed. “All of it?”
“Yes, Angela. All of it.”
I hooked my thumbs under the band. The cotton peeled off slow, sticky with sweat and something else.
I could feel the wet between my legs, the embarrassing confirmation that I was not just afraid, not just ashamed, but hungry for it.
I let the underwear fall. I stood, shirt barely covering anything, the rest of me open and bare.
He said, “Come closer.”
I did.
He took my wrist, gentle, and pulled me between his knees. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my t-shirt, and with the slowest motion in the world, dragged it up and over my head. My hair went wild, static popping off the ends.
Now I was naked.
He said, “Lie across my lap.”
I did not hesitate. That was the contract—do what you’re told, do not make it into a debate.