22. Aria
ARIA
T wo weeks later, I am still adjusting to this life.
Daylight breaks over the estate in strokes of soft amber, the kind of golden hush that makes everything look more forgiving than it is.
Light pools in the corners of our new rooms like a benediction, as if trying to soften the edges of a life that no longer fits into clear definitions.
Luca keeps Enzo very busy.
He is hardly here with his family.
But I know what comes with choosing this life, and what time he has with his son and me makes me grateful.
Now that I am back, it is with the determination to make this family whole, as it should be.
If that means staying with the Salvatores for as long as Enzo needs to, so be it.
This morning, I move quietly through the kitchen, barefoot on cold tile, spreading butter on toast while Gabriel swings his feet under the small table, frowning into his cocoa.
"I don't like it here," he mutters, not looking up. "It smells like old people and soap."
I pause mid-slice, forcing a smile. "That means it's clean."
"It means it's not home."
His voice is careful in the way only children learn to speak when they've already lost too much.
I cross to him and crouch beside the chair, brushing his curls back from his forehead. "I know, baby. But it's only for a little while. We're safe now."
I don't tell him the truth—that the school forms still sit unfinished in the drawer, that I haven't yet figured out how to let him leave the estate grounds each morning when enemies might still be watching.
I don't tell him that I've spent the past two weeks waiting to breathe, too afraid the walls might turn on us before I could call it safe.
Instead, I just kiss the top of his head and hope he can't feel how much of me is still bracing for the worst.
He meets my eyes with the kind of solemn clarity that always undoes me. "Is this like the other places? Are we going to leave again?"
"No," I say, and it's not a lie. "We're going to find a school nearby. You'll make new friends. Maybe even have your own room again."
He pushes the cocoa away. "I already had friends. Landon and Leo. And we had the tree we used to climb."
I draw him close, hold him until his small body relaxes against mine, until his arms twine around my neck like they used to when he was smaller, less burdened. "You still have them. But now you have more. This is a beginning, not an end."
But I also feel the absence of what we built, the rhythm of our quiet routines now disrupted by the creak of new doors and the heaviness of unfamiliar footsteps echoing through old halls. He doesn't cry. He hasn't cried in a long time. That breaks me more than anything.
Later, when he's curled on the window seat reading the same page for the fourth time, I slip out.
Enzo is away on an assignment, so there's not much else to do except explore the estate.
The morning is cool, the sky soft with clouds, the olive trees whispering faintly overhead.
I follow the stone path through the gardens, nod to a guard who does not nod back, and keep walking until I pass the iron arch that marks the inner courtyard.
There, I see Giovanni.
He is leaning against one of the pillars, a cigarette burning between two fingers, watching a pair of estate men unload a crate from the back of a van.
His shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, his sleeves rolled neatly, and the half-smile that curves his lips sharpens when his gaze finds me.
"Buongiorno, Signorina Lombardi," he drawls, flicking ash to the flagstone. "Enjoying the morning chill, or just avoiding our benevolent king?"
His tone is meant to sound like charm, but there's a twist to it that grates beneath the skin. I nod once, offering a neutral smile. "Just walking."
"You should take someone with you. Even the gardens can be treacherous if you step in the wrong place."
"Is that a warning?"
"An observation."
I step past him, and for a breath, he matches my pace.
"Your son—Gabriel, is it?—he looks like you. But he's got Enzo's eyes. Dangerous combination."
"You've been watching him?"
He smiles, and for some reason, it makes him look like a cackling hyena. "It's my job to watch everyone."
The conversation dies there, as I veer toward the orchard path and leave him behind.
But my hands are tight fists in my coat pockets, and something about his presence lingers too long.
By noon, I've returned to the south house.
Gabriel eats in silence and slinks away to watch television once he's done, worn down from sulking.
I read while the wind rattles the glass, but my thoughts spiral until I abandon the book entirely.
When dusk falls, I walk again. The halls are quieter now, the estate shedding its activity like skin.
As I pass through the long gallery outside the music room, I spot Valentina.
She is seated by the window with a book open in her lap and a cup of untouched tea beside her.
Her posture is relaxed but not loose, her presence always regal, always watchful. I stop at the archway. "You were right," I say softly.
She looks up. "About what?"
"About what it would take to survive."
A small smile ghosts across her mouth. "You look well for a woman on trial."
I step closer. "May I?"
She gestures to the seat beside her, and I take it.
We don't speak for a while.
The silence between women like us is never empty.
It is full of everything we've had to swallow.
Eventually, Valentina lifts her gaze to the window.
I look in the same direction to see Giovanni getting inside a limo. A snort leaves me before I can stop myself.
Valentina chooses not to comment at first, but smiles— a wry, acerbic little tilt of her lips—moments later. "You still don't trust him, do you? Giovanni."
I shrug and fiddle with a loose thread on my sleeve. "He presses all the wrong nerves."
She hums faintly. "He's clever. Smarter than he lets on. That's his gift and his flaw. He's leaving for Florence right now. Visiting family, returning in two days."
Her face is unreadable as she delivers this information to me, but somehow, I think she's handing me a key, if I can use it right.
I keep my face still.
But the intel clicks into place so cleanly I feel my breath leave my lungs.
Valentina doesn't seem to notice.
Or maybe she does, and chooses not to comment.
"Does Luca know you tell me these things?"
"Luca knows many things. He also forgets what it means to be underestimated."
I rise, thanking her with a touch to her shoulder.
She squeezes my hand once, and I see it in her eyes—this world may eat its daughters, but not without a fight.
When I return to the south house, Gabriel is asleep again, curled around his lion.
The light from the hall seeps into his room in a thin line, enough to show me that he is breathing deeply, the tension finally unraveled from his small shoulders.
I brush his hair back once, gently, and close the door with the kind of silence only mothers learn to manage.
Before I go, I write a quick note on the chalkboard near the kitchen. A promise. "I will look into your school tomorrow. We'll find one with books and lunchboxes and art class. You'll be okay."
The words feel like a shield. A hope that he can read in the morning if he wakes before me.
Everything about this place feels engineered for silence that listens.
It's the kind of hush that records who walks where and when.
I move carefully through the corridors, barefoot, the soles of my feet brushing against the polished stone that once terrified me as a child.
Now, it just feels cold.
Familiar.
It's a place built for secrets.
Giovanni's room is on the upper floor, a detail I pick up during a quiet exchange with the kitchen cook, who seems far more in need of a friend than a recipe.
It is near the guest wing no one uses but everyone watches. I take the stairs slowly, counting the steps in my head, letting my body memorize the rhythm like a dance I cannot afford to forget.
The hall beyond the second landing curves inward, like the estate's spine, and the carpet grows thicker, swallowing my steps. I find his door.
The handle is polished brass.
The lock, subtle.
Not an old keyhole, but a newer make, the kind that would laugh at most amateurs.
But Giovanni, for all his charm, had not counted on someone like me. I learned to pick locks in the space between survival and desperation, years ago in a city that swallowed names like mine.
From the pocket of my cardigan, I slide out the hairpin. Twist it once. Flatten the curve. Insert. Twist again.
The door opens with a sigh.
Giovanni's room is not what I expected.
Not decadent.
Not showy.
The bed is large, but the sheets are crisp and undisturbed. The walls are bare save for a single framed map, an old sea chart rendered in curling black ink.
A desk near the far window glows faintly from the light of the moon, and that is where I go first.
I start at the desk.
Not because I expect the answers to be sitting there waiting for me, but because that is where men like Giovanni always begin.
The top drawer contains nothing more than crisp stationary, two pens, and a slim file of blank documents embossed with the Salvatore crest.
But the drawer beneath it is where the mask begins to slip.
At first, there's nothing unusual.
Papers.
A few folders.
A list of shipments for olive oil, textiles, wines, all marked with familiar coastal ports.
But there's a problem.
One of the shipping lanes runs through Varo, a port that was closed two years ago after a chemical fire.
And another uses a route I know was redirected by the local government last winter.
These are not live records.
They are fabrications.
Designed to look real, down to the stamps.
I skim through the folder, and that's when I find it.
Tucked between the sheets is a folded newspaper clipping.
The ink has yellowed slightly, the corners curling with age, but I recognize the masthead.
It's not local.
It's foreign.
From across the sea.