Chapter 4 Elio
ELIO
Rosa spots us the moment we step through the café door.
Her eyes narrow, flicking between Violet and me with the kind of suspicion that comes from decades of reading people who walk into her establishment, before they turn to fear with recognition.
Smart woman. She knows who I am, knows I don’t belong here, with my tailored suit and my Maserati parked around the corner.
Knows men in my family don’t sit in places like this for the coffee.
But Violet doesn’t notice. She’s already moving toward her usual table by the window, the one I’ve watched her occupy for the past three weeks. The afternoon light catches the auburn in her hair, turning it to copper and flame.
Already mine. She just doesn’t know it yet.
The certainty settles behind my ribs. Not new. Just finally named.
“The usual?” Rosa calls out, still eyeing me with distrust and fear.
“Please.” Violet slides into her chair, dropping her bag beside her feet. “And one of those ricotta things.”
“Espresso,” I say. “Doppio.”
Rosa grunts and disappears behind the counter. I take the seat across from Violet, positioning myself so I can see both the door and the street. Old habits. The kind that keep men like me breathing.
“So.” Violet leans back, those green eyes studying me with the same careful attention she gives her crumbling frescoes. “Administrative review. Where do you want to start?”
With the way your pulse jumps in your throat when you’re nervous. With the fact that you haven’t stopped touching your collarbone since we sat down. With the eleven different ways I’ve imagined this moment ending.
“The east wall,” I say instead. “Your initial assessment indicated structural concerns beyond the surface damage.”
She blinks. Surprised, perhaps, that I actually intend to discuss her work. As if I haven’t memorized every word of her grant proposal, every photograph she’s submitted since, every email she’s exchanged with the foundation’s administrative assistant.
Knowledge is control. And I control everything.
“The foundation is sound.” She pulls her notebook from her bag, flipping to a page covered in precise sketches and notations. “But there’s water infiltration through the original drainage system. Whoever designed the restoration in the seventies didn’t account for the shift in—”
Rosa returns with our drinks. Violet’s usual, espresso with water and a small pitcher of steamed milk on the side. Mine, black and bitter, the way I prefer most things.
And a third cup, already prepared, that Rosa sets down between us with a pointed look at me.
“For the gentleman,” she says. “On the house.”
I meet her gaze. Hold it.
She knows nothing, this woman. But she suspects something. The instinct of prey recognizing a predator, even when the predator wears a civilized mask.
“Grazie.”
Rosa retreats. I don’t touch the cup she brought me.
Violet is still talking, her hands moving as she explains the drainage patterns, the salt crystallization, the way four hundred years of Mediterranean humidity has eaten into stone that was never meant to bear such weight.
She’s passionate about this work. It transforms her, strips away the careful reserve she wears like armor.
I’m fascinated by her hands as she speaks, the way her fingers trace invisible patterns in the air, the calluses on her palms from her tools, the stain of rust beneath her nails. She’s got working hands. Honest hands.
Hands I want wrapped around my—
“Are you listening?”
“Every word.”
She narrows her eyes. “You were staring at my hands.”
“You have interesting hands.”
“That’s a strange thing to say.”
“I’m a strange man.”
A laugh startles out of her, bright and unexpected, and she covers her mouth immediately, as if the sound embarrassed her. As if joy is something to apologize for.
Who taught you that? Who made you think your laughter was something to hide?
I add it to the list. The list of people who have touched her life and left her smaller than she deserves to be. I will find them, eventually. Learn their names. Make them understand the cost of diminishing something beautiful.
But that’s for later. Right now, I have more pressing concerns.
The vial in my pocket weighs nothing. A few milliliters of carefully calibrated sedative, pharmaceutical-grade, designed to work within minutes and leave no lasting effects.
I’ve used it before, on men who needed to be transported without incident.
It’s clean and efficient, merciful, even, compared to the alternatives.
Violet lifts her espresso to her lips.
My chest tightens.
Not yet.
I need her relaxed. Comfortable. The drug works faster when the body isn’t flooded with adrenaline. And despite her laughter, she’s still tense. Still watching me from the corners of her eyes, trying to solve the puzzle of my presence.
Clever girl. But not clever enough.
“Tell me about Phoenix,” I say.
She freezes, the cup halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“Your application mentioned you studied there. Before Florence.”
“I—” She sets the cup down. “How do you know that?”
“The foundation keeps thorough records.” A lie.
The foundation’s records are minimal. I know about Phoenix because I paid a very expensive investigator to build a comprehensive file on Violet Murphy’s entire life, from her birth certificate to her last grocery receipt.
“I’m curious about your training. It’s an unusual path to restoration work. ”
The tension in her shoulders eases, just slightly. A question about her work is safe. Familiar. Not the minefield of personal history I almost stepped into.
“I started in structural engineering,” she says.
“But I kept getting distracted by the buildings themselves. The history in them. The hands that built them.” She turns her cup in circles on the saucer, a nervous habit I’ve seen her perfom a dozen times.
“My advisor thought I was wasting my potential. Said I could be designing skyscrapers instead of crawling around in rubble.”
“And what did you think?”
“I thought skyscrapers were boring.” A small smile. “All glass and steel and ego. No soul. Nothing that would make someone weep in four hundred years when it finally came down.”
She doesn’t know what she reveals when she talks like this. Doesn’t understand that every word confirms what I already suspected. That she sees the world the way I do. That she understands the value of what’s damaged, what’s dying, what everyone else would discard as beyond saving.
We are the same, she and I. The only difference is that she restores broken things.
I collect them.
I lean forward, close enough that she has to look at my mouth when I speak. It’s deliberate. I’ve watched women respond to proximity before, the slight flush, the quickened breath, the way their eyes drop to my lips and stay there. Violet’s no different. Her pupils dilate slightly. Good.
“Finish your coffee,” I say. “Then show me your documentation on the structural concerns. I’d like to see your calculations.”
She nods, lifting her cup again as a small blush creeps into her cheeks. I wait until she takes the first sip before I allow myself to relax into my chair.
We talk for another twenty minutes. Technical details, mostly.
Things like load-bearing capacities, humidity readings, the chemical composition of the original mortar versus modern alternatives.
She grows more animated as we discuss her work, her hands dancing, her eyes bright with a fervor of someone who has found their purpose.
I listen. Ask questions. Memorize the cadence of her voice, the way she pauses before difficult words, the little furrow between her brows when she’s calculating something in her head.
This will be the last conversation we have as strangers. The last time she looks at me without fear or hatred or the complicated tangle of emotions that captivity breeds.
I find I want to preserve it. This moment. Her trust, fragile and unearned, offered up like a gift she doesn’t know she’s giving.
She finishes her espresso and reaches for the small pitcher of milk just as my phone rings. I ignore it.
“Would you like another?” I gesture toward her empty cup.
“I should get back to work.” But she doesn’t move to leave. “The light will be gone in a few hours, and there’s a section of the ceiling I still need to photograph.”
“One more. My treat.”
She hesitates. Then nods.
I catch Rosa’s eye, and signal for two more. She brings them quickly, her suspicion softened somewhat by the past hour of civilized conversation. The sedative goes into Violet’s cup while Rosa’s back is turned, a movement so practiced it might as well be breathing.
Violet adds milk. Stirs.
Drinks.
“This is good,” she says, surprised. “Better than the first one.”
It’s the same coffee, tesoro. You just can’t taste what’s underneath.
“Rosa knows her craft.”
Violet’s eyes flicker to mine for a brief second, a question forming. Then it passes. She doesn’t ask how I know the owner’s name when we’ve just met, when Rosa never introduced herself. The drug is already starting to work, dulling her sharp edges.
“She called me ‘sad American’ the first time I came here.” Violet laughs again, softer this time. “I think she felt sorry for me.”
“Do you need someone to feel sorry for you?”
“No.” Her brow furrows. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She blinks, slow and heavy. “Sorry. I’m suddenly very...”
“Tired?”
“Yeah.” She presses her palm to her forehead. “That’s strange. I never...”
“Perhaps it’s the heat. It’s warmer today than usual.”
“Maybe.” Her words are starting to slur at the edges. “I should... I need to...”
She tries to stand but her legs give out before she’s halfway up.
I’m around the table before she hits the floor, catching her weight against my chest. She’s lighter than I expected. Fragile in a way that sends something sharp and protective lancing through my ribs.