Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gemma
The bathwater has gone lukewarm and I'm still in it, because this is the first tub I've sat in since before Nina was born and I don't fully believe it's real.
Nina is two doors down in Lily's room. I left her there. I keep turning that over, the fact that I walked out of a room and left my daughter in it, in a house owned by people who kill for a living.
I can't explain why I trust Kristen. She makes me feel that at some point she understands me. I've never met another woman who made me feel that. Maybe that's not a reason. But I needed this bath at this moment.
I pull the plug and stand up before I fall asleep in there and drown in a mafia compound, which would be a stupid way to go after everything.
One towel goes around my hair, twisted up the way I've done it since I was twelve. The other goes around my body, tucked at my chest. The mirror's fogged over so I don't have to look at myself, which is fine. I've seen enough of the new blonde today.
The bedroom is warm. Somebody thought about heat in this house, actual working heat, no radiator knocking like a fist. The bed is big and made up in grey. I lie down on top of the covers looking at the ceiling. It's smooth and white with no water stains, and I count that as its own small miracle.
My shoulders start to drop. My jaw unclenches for the first time since this morning, I let one long breath out through my mouth.
The door opens.
No knock. Just the handle turning and the door swinging in, and I'm off the bed both hands pinning the towel to my chest, back to the window.
Luca stands in the doorway.
He stops. Whatever he came in to say doesn't come out. His eyes go from the towel on my head down to my neck, down the line of the towel, down my legs to my feet, and back up. He does it slowly.
My heart is slamming from the scare.
"You didn't knock," I say.
He doesn't answer. His jaw is set and his hands are at his sides.
"Luca. The door. You just opened it."
His eyes come back to my face and stay there, and there's a beat where neither of us moves.
Then he lifts both hands, palms out, like I'm holding a gun.
"Fuck. Sorry."
He steps backward through the doorway without turning around, watching me all the way, and pulls the door shut. The latch clicks soft, like he's making up for how it opened.
I drop the towel and grab the clothes off the chair.
The bra hooks catch on the second try because my hands haven't settled yet.
I pull the sweater over my head with the towel still on my hair, realize that doesn't work, unwind the towel, and finish the job.
Jeans, socks. My hair is wet and leaving a dark patch on my shoulders, but that's not a problem I can fix right now.
He came in for a reason.
I take one breath, deep enough that my ribs push against the sweater, and turn the handle.
Luca stands across the hall with his back against the wall and his arms crossed. His eyes come up to my face and stay there this time, and I step back to let him in because standing in a doorway staring at each other isn't a plan.
He walks in and stops near the foot of the bed. He clears his throat.
"I was coming to ask you to follow me," he says. "We need to talk. I booked us a restaurant."
I wait for the rest of that sentence to make sense. It doesn't.
"A restaurant," I say.
"Yes."
"We're in a house with a kitchen the size of my old apartment. Why can't we talk in here?"
He scratches the back of his head, which I've never seen him do. His hand goes up rough and drops fast, and he looks at the window instead of me.
"I don't stay for dinner in the compound," he says. "Never have." He shifts his weight off his right leg. "You and I haven't eaten. So we eat, and we talk, because what we need to discuss is important, and I'd rather do it somewhere that isn't this house."
There's a story under that, the same way there was a story under the thing he said about a parent watching a child get hurt. I don't ask because he wouldn't answer, and I've learned that pushing him on his past just ends the conversation.
"Okay," I say.
He nods once, and his shoulders come down half an inch, which tells me he thought I'd fight him on it.
Then I remember I'm not one person.
"What about Nina?"
"She stays here."
"No." The word comes out before I've built anything around it. I shake my head to back it up. "I can't leave her. Not today. She hid behind a bed this morning while men shot at us, Luca. I'm not walking out of a building and leaving her in it."
"Kristen will watch her. Lily's there. There are more armed men in this house than in half of fucking Chicago. She's safer here than anywhere I could take her."
"That's not the point."
"I know it's not the point." He steps closer. "Trust me on this one thing. You will not want Nina hearing this conversation. Not one goddamn word of it."
My stomach drops.
"Is it that bad?" I ask.
His jaw is tight. "Get a coat."
That's not an answer, and we both know it.
I think about the fact that every single time this man has told me to do something, doing it kept us alive.
"Okay," I say. "But if she asks for me, someone calls. I want a phone in my hand the entire time."
"Done."
Luca
The elevator climbs ninety-five floors and my ears pop somewhere around sixty. Gemma stands in the corner with her hands folded in front of her, watching the numbers change. She hasn't said a word since the bedroom.
The doors open. Pearl and black, laid in a pattern all over the floor. A piano plays somewhere past the host stand, and the whole far wall is glass, the city spread out below it.
Gemma stops walking. Her eyes go to the windows first, then the exits, then back to the windows. She counted the doors before she let herself look at the view. I know because I did the same thing.
A man in a black suit comes toward us with a leather book under his arm.
"Good evening. Do you have a reservation?"
"Farro," I say.
He doesn't check the book. He nods once and leads us across the floor, past tables of people who don't look up, to a two-top against the glass. The chair he pulls out for Gemma faces the room. I take the one facing the elevator.
Gemma sits with her back straight and her hands in her lap.
The menus arrive and Gemma reads hers for a long time. Then she leans across the table and lowers her voice.
"Luca. This place is expensive."
"Pick what you want to eat." I say.
She goes back to the menu. Her jaw works while she reads. I watch her run her finger down the page and stop at the cheapest thing on it, and I know what she's going to do before the waiter reaches us.
"Have you decided?" the waiter says.
"The salad, please," Gemma says pointing her finger on which salad she means.
I close my menu. "We'll take the salad shared. Then she'll have the whitefish and the beef, same as me. Both of us, the full plates."
The waiter writes it down without blinking. Gemma opens her mouth and shuts it again.
"Wine," I say to her. "White or red?"
"I don't mind." She says.
"Red, then. Whatever pairs with the beef." The waiter names a bottle and a year and I nod like the year matters to me. It doesn't. Nothing on this floor matters to me except the woman across the table and what I have to say to her before the food comes.
The waiter leaves. The piano keeps going, low, some slow piece I don't know.
Gemma is looking at the table.
"You didn't have to do that," she says.
"Yes, I did." I lean forward so I don't have to raise my voice.
"Listen to me. Until I leave you alone, you'll stop treating yourself like it doesn't matter.
You'll eat the whole meal. You'll drink the wine.
You won't order a goddamn side salad in a place like this because you're doing the math on what you think you owe me. "
She holds my eyes for a second. Then she nods, small, and her hands come up from her lap and settle on the table's edge, and she still looks like a woman waiting for the bill to come due. The nod isn't agreement. It's surrender to the fact that arguing won't work.
I sit back.
The bad part is that she's uncomfortable now, and in a few seconds she's going to be worse, and there's no version of tonight where I spare her that. I've been turning the words over since Bruno's office and none of them come out clean. There's no clean way. There's only saying it.
The sommelier comes, pours a taste, waits. I drink it and nod. He fills both glasses and disappears. Gemma doesn't touch hers.
"Okay," she says. "You said we needed to talk. Away from Nina." Her fingers find the stem of the wine glass and hold it without lifting it. "So talk. What's going on?"
The city sits below us, a thousand feet down, all those lights and none of them help me. I put both hands flat on the table where she can see them. She watches hands. I want her watching mine when I say it.
"In three days," I say, "we're getting married."