Rafael
She said she needed space. I decided to give it to her.
I walk the villa’s grounds instead of going back inside, tracing the same perimeter out of old habit, checking sight lines and shadows and anywhere a man like Vito might be watching from without my knowledge.
It’s easier than sitting still. Easier than replaying the look on her face when I told her the truth.
Familiar voices carry from the kitchen window as I circle back toward the house. Maurizio and Adagio are awake far earlier than I expected.
I find them at the table when I step inside, Maurizio is working a whetstone against a blade that doesn’t need sharpening, Adagio is slouched in the opposite chair as if he hasn’t decided yet whether the day calls for coffee or wine.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.
“Doesn’t look like anyone did.” Maurizio doesn’t glance up from the blade. “How bad was it with her?”
“Bad.” I drop into the third chair, rubbing a hand over my face. “She needs space. I’m giving it to her.”
“Since when do you give anyone space?”
“Since I don’t have much of a choice.”
Adagio reaches for the open bottle of wine sitting on the counter rather than bothering with a glass, then he drops back into his seat.
“So,” he says, “are we going to talk about the elephant in the villa, or are we going to keep circling it ’til dinner?”
“Nothing to talk about,” I say. “I told her the truth. She’s angry. That’s fair.”
“Angry’s an understatement based on the look she gave you last night.” Adagio takes a pull straight from the bottle. “But hey, at least you finally told her. That’s growth, Calderone. I’m almost proud of you.”
Maurizio sets the whetstone down, his expression sharpening. “Growth is nice. It doesn’t matter much if Vito decides to move before you’ve got the chance to fix things with her.”
“You think he already knows,” I say.
“I think a man like him doesn’t wait long once he knows he’s been played. We should be watching the perimeter tighter than usual tonight. All of us. Not just the men on the gate.”
“Cheerful,” Adagio mutters.
A silence settles over the table, lasting several seconds ’til Jayla passes by the kitchen window outside, cutting through the garden toward the terrace, her voice drifting faintly as she hums to herself.
Maurizio’s eyes track her the whole way across the window before he catches himself and looks back down at the blade in his hands.
“You want to tell me what that was?”
“What?”
“That.” Adagio sets the wine bottle down with a thud, the easiness draining out of his tone. “You just watched her cross the garden like you were counting her steps.”
“I watch everyone. It’s my job.”
“Bullshit.” Adagio leans forward, elbows on the table. “You don’t look at anyone else like that. Not the men on the gate, not Portia, not me. Just her.”
Maurizio’s jaw clenches. “She’s yours, isn’t she? What is there to complain about?”
“She is mine. Which is why I’m questioning you. So either tell me I’m wrong or tell me why I’m not.”
The two of them glare across the table, unspoken tension crackling between them. With the mess I’ve already got to deal with, I decide it isn’t my fight to referee this morning.
“Enough,” I say. “We’ve got bigger problems than this.”
Maurizio breaks first, looking away, saying nothing in his own defense. Adagio holds the look a moment longer before pushing back from the table.
“Bigger problems,” he agrees. “Right. On that note, I’m going to go find my girl.”
He heads out toward the garden, and Maurizio watches him before gathering his knife and whetstone and heading off to check the grounds himself.
I sit alone in the kitchen a while longer, turning Maurizio’s warning over in my mind ’til it starts to feel less like caution and more like premonition.
Dinner is a quiet, strained affair, everyone at the table performing normalcy for each other’s sake and failing at it in different ways.
Portia sits across from me, pushing food around her plate. Every time our eyes meet, she looks away first. I don’t blame her. I’d look away from me too, if I could.
“You two are killing the mood,” Adagio says, leaning back in his chair with a glass of wine dangling loosely from his fingers. “Somebody say something. Anything. I’ll even take a fight. At least a fight’s entertaining.”
“Not everything’s entertainment, belloccio,” Maurizio mutters.
“Everything’s entertainment if you frame it right.” Adagio winks at Jayla, who huffs out a laugh despite herself, still favoring her left ankle under the table. “Isn’t that right, tesoro?”
“Don’t drag me into this,” she says, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I catch Portia watching the table too, an unreadable flicker in her eyes.
“Fine, we want conversation. I have a few ideas,” Portia says with a clear of her throat. “What exactly is the plan for our future? How are we going to handle the Belluccis, you know, considering they control almost all of Sicily?”
Adagio casts me a look that warns he might crack a joke to distract from the questions at hand. His way of jumping in at my defense.
I remain composed, setting down my knife and fork and taking a sip from my glass of wine. It’s only a slight pause that gives me a second or two to think up how to answer Portia’s questions without turning dinner into another sparring match.
“We’ve discussed this,” I say coolly. “We’re in the intel-gathering phase. The plan is to figure out a way to dismantle the Bellucci empire from the outside in.”
“That sounds amazing on paper,” Portia counters. “But how are we going to do that?”
“You’re not going to do anything. You and Jayla are not involved.”
“We became involved the second we became fugitives of the United States government.”
“I’m a fugitive,” I say plainly. “You’re viewed as my captive—and you are, as far as anybody’s concerned. You’re innocent and, therefore, not involved.”
“Protecting me again. Noble concept, Rafael. Except for when you’re keeping important things from me… like my parents’ death.”
“Portia—”
“You can try to rationalize it all you want, but this isn’t just your life at stake. Ours are too. Why don’t you seem to understand that?”
I can’t bring myself to answer her question. It dies on arrival as the others seated around the table exchange looks and busy themselves with their food and drink.
A moment of tense silence goes by where nobody dares challenge it.
Portia stands before dessert even arrives, chair scraping against stone, muttering that she’s tired before heading toward the staircase.
I don’t follow. At least not yet. She made herself clear enough this morning, and pushing now would only prove her right about the parts of me that don’t know how to leave well enough alone.
It’s well past midnight by the time I finally head upstairs myself, the villa engulfed in silence, only the waves at sea filling the night air.
Portia’s door is closed when I pass it, no light bleeding out from underneath.
I hover outside her room a moment longer than appropriate, tempted to knock and ask for a private word. Then I force myself to keep walking, heading down the hall to my own room.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. It rarely does anymore.
I lie still staring at the ceiling, replaying the terrace conversation in fragments, turning over everything I could have said differently and didn’t.
I don’t know what wakes me first: some instinct honed from years of sleeping with one eye open, or the unnatural acrid smell polluting the air.
I sit up, senses sharpening as I realize the stench isn’t part of my imagination. My instincts aren’t firing off for no reason either; they’ve alerted me because something’s wrong.
Smoke.
Faint, but unmistakable, drifting in from underneath my door.