Chapter 6 #2
I've been to Savannah's bar three times now.
The first two visits were brief, testing the social temperature of the compound after hours.
The soldiers drink in small groups, the conversations low and careful, the particular caution of men who are loyal to Leone and haven't decided whether the new arrival deserves their loyalty, their hostility, or their indifference.
Indifference is what they've settled on.
They don't talk to me. They don't look at me.
They don't go out of their way to avoid me either, which is a step up from the first night when two soldiers relocated to the opposite end of the bar the moment I sat down.
Now they stay where they are and pretend I don't exist, which suits me fine because I'm not here for the soldiers.
I'm here for the whiskey, which Savannah pours with a small smile and a nod. I'm also here because the bar is the one room in this compound where the hierarchy softens enough that people show their real faces and relax.
Tonight the bar is busier than usual. The briefing lit a fire under the compound, and the soldiers are processing the Replication Initiative intel through the medium they process everything, alcohol and proximity.
Emilio is at the end of the bar with Savannah, her hand on his arm, his mouth running at its default speed, which is constant.
Claudio and Charlotte are in their corner, nursing their drinks, watching the soldiers play darts and pool.
Carmelo is on his stool, a whiskey in front of him, the knife on the counter beside his glass.
Antonia is at the bar.
She's sitting four stools from Carmelo, which is the closest anyone that isn’t in the inner circle voluntarily sits to the man, and the proximity tells me the training sessions have built something between them.
Not friendship, but the particular respect of two people who carry blades and understand each other through the language of violence.
She's not drinking. She's spinning Vita on her right index finger, the idle rotation, the one I've been watching from a distance for days. She's staring at the bottles behind the bar, lost in thought.
She's beautiful. The word is inadequate and I don't use it in my head because beauty is a concept that implies admiration and I don't admire her.
I want to fuck her.
I want to rail her until she’s a mess and then smile, knowing that this infuriating woman gave it up to me, only to return to hating my guts the minute it’s over. The fantasy lives in my head far too long, but I can’t stop. My bride hates me and somehow that makes the image even better.
She wasn’t built for love and neither was I.
Giada is not sitting at the bar. Giada is in the middle of the room, music coming from someone's phone, dancing with a soldier who looks deeply confused by the attention and completely unwilling to make it stop.
She's got a glass of wine in one hand and the other hand on the soldier's shoulder and she's moving in a way that is technically dancing but is functionally a full-body weapon.
His friends are watching from a nearby table with expressions that range from amusement to envy to the particular terror of men who recognize that the woman dancing with their buddy is going to cause problems they'll have to hear about for weeks.
She catches me watching and points at me with her wine glass. "Hey, bestie’s husband," she calls across the bar. "You want next dance?"
"I don't dance."
"Boring." She spins and goes back to her business, and the soldier can’t take his eyes off her.
I go back to my whiskey, hoping for a moment of peace, but there’s no such luck with Savannah staring at me with a grin.
"So," she says. "You met her."
I don't ask who. There's only one her in this building that would prompt Savannah to initiate a conversation with me.
"We've spoken."
"You've spoken. That's what you're going with.
" Savannah picks up a glass, wipes it, sets it down.
The rag work is automatic, her hands doing a job while her brain does something else entirely.
"I've been behind this bar long enough to know the difference between spoken and whatever the hell happened in the corridor three days ago.
Emilio told me. The whole puppet and dowry exchange. Very cute."
"Emilio wasn't in the corridor."
"Emilio heard about it from a soldier who heard it through the camera’s audio.
In this building, the walls have ears and the ears have opinions.
" She picks up another glass. "Antonia doesn't talk to me about you.
She comes to the bar, she sits on that stool, she spins the blade, and she doesn't say your name.
Which tells me something whack is going on between you two. "
"What does it tell you?"
Savannah looks at me, her eyes rolling back. This woman doesn't perform. She doesn't charm, she doesn't posture, she doesn't wrap her observations in diplomatic language.
"It tells me you got under her skin and she's pissed about it.
Women who don't care about a man say his name all the time.
It's just a word. Women who are rattled by a man stop saying his name because every time they do, they feel something they don't want to feel.
" She sets the glass down. "She hasn't said your name in three days.
That's not indifference. That's avoidance. "
"You got all that from her not saying a name."
"I got all that from twenty years of bartending and a grandmother who could read a room before she walked into it.
" Savannah leans back. "I'm not going to tell you how to handle your bride, Billone.
That's your problem. But I'll tell you this for free: the women in this building are not decoration.
Antonia has blades. I have a bar. Charlotte has a brain that would scare the shit out of you if you saw it working at full speed.
Alex is brilliant at piecing things together that no one else can.
And Giada—" she glances at the dance floor, where Giada has moved on to a second soldier and the first one is sitting at his table looking like he's been through combat, "—Giada has whatever that is.
My point is, the men in this compound learned the hard way that the women here aren't side characters. Don't make that mistake."
"I don't underestimate women."
"Good. Then don't underestimate Antonia." She pushes off the counter and picks up the whiskey bottle. "Refill?"
"Please."
She pours and sets the bottle down and moves back to Emilio, who wraps his good arm around her waist and pulls her in and says something against her ear that makes her roll her eyes and shove him and then not move away from his body.
I drink and I watch.
Antonia is still on her stool. The spin hasn't stopped. Vita rotating on her finger in the steady, fluid cycle that I've learned is her baseline, the state she returns to when her brain is processing, and her hands need the rhythm.
Giada is on her third soldier. The second one is at the bar ordering a drink and staring at her with wistful longing.
She is laughing, full-bodied and loud, her wine glass somehow still full despite the constant motion, and the energy she brings into the room is so aggressively alive that even Carmelo glances at her once before going back to his whiskey.
Antonia doesn't look at me. She doesn't turn her head, doesn't acknowledge my presence four seats away, doesn't give me the satisfaction of knowing that she's aware of where I am in the room. But the spin changes, it's faster now.
I finish my whiskey, stand, and walk out without saying a word to anyone.
In the corridor, I stop. The bar noise fades behind me, Giada's laughter and the music and the low hum of soldiers talking, and the quiet of the second floor settles in.
Four days until the wedding.
I stood in that bar for forty-five minutes and the only things I learned are that Savannah reads people with terrifying accuracy, that Giada is a force that this compound is not prepared for, and that Antonia spins her blade faster when I'm in the room.
Three pieces of information, none of which helps me to gain a footing in getting my seat back, but it does serve to make me horny, furious and feel even more lonely than I did after my mother died.
I'm losing focus. The plan is slipping. The structure I've spent years building is being disrupted by a woman on a bar stool with a karambit on her finger and a refusal to say my name.
I go to my room and close the door.
Marry the Castillo, take my seat. That’s it, Matteo, that’s all we’re here to do. Nothing more, nothing less.