Twelve
Chiara
I wake slowly, awareness returning in layers. Ciro crosses the room, naked and unhurried. Man, do I like watching him coming and going. I watch him until he disappears into the bathroom and then close my eyes and hold onto the image.
Last night doesn’t fade with sleep. It stays close, like heat under my skin. I can still feel his hands, the pressure of them, the way he watched my face instead of my body.
I told him I would stay until he tried my mother’s lamb ragu. That was the agreement—something contained.
Dinner tomorrow night.
It was supposed to be a courtesy, not a turning point.
I stare at the ceiling and try to separate the food from the feeling. If no one had come through that door, would I have found a way into his bed?
I was always attracted to Ciro when he came to my coffee cart, I just didn’t think I would ever have the opportunity.
And now that I have, I want to make the most out of the time we have.
Because I shouldn’t be reconsidering the terms of my exit before breakfast, but the thought of leaving now feels less like strategy and more like retreat.
Dinner is meant to close this chapter. Instead, I’ve complicated it.
By the time I swing my legs over the side of the bed, I hear the shower start, water hitting tile in a steady, controlled rhythm.
I don’t move right away.
I reach for the sheet and pull it around me, more out of habit than modesty, and let my gaze drift toward the closed bathroom door. Steam curls faintly beneath it, softening the edges of the space.
I stand, cross to the chair, and reach for my robe, tying it loosely as I move. By the time I push my hair back from my face and glance once more toward the door, the shower has shut off.
A beat of silence.
The door opens, and Ciro walks back into the room, buttoning his cuff, steam still clinging faintly to his skin. His hair is damp, his expression composed in a way that feels deliberate.
“You’re awake.”
“I am.”
I keep my voice even and don’t reach for the sheet, even though I’m aware of how little I’m wearing. Last night sits between us, unspoken but present.
“What’s your plan today?” he asks. “You can’t go back to the coffee cart.”
“I know. I need to put it up for sale, I guess.” I sit down on the bed. “I’ll work on my dinner. Today, I make the sauce. Tomorrow, we’re making the noodles.”
His gaze flicks once, brief and controlled, before returning to my face. “If you need to go out to get anything, take Katie and Victor.”
“I don’t need an escort to buy groceries.”
“It’s not an escort. It’s security management.”
There’s the faintest suggestion of a smile at his mouth. I don’t return it.
“I’ll think about it.”
He steps closer and presses a restrained kiss to my forehead. The gesture is measured, almost formal, and that restraint unsettles me more than anything else.
Ciro moves through the kitchen as if this is a routine morning, jacket on, cufflinks fastened, his attention split between me and whatever comes next.
“She sent it from a burner,” I say, still looking at the phone. “That photo.”
“That’s what Jim’s team said.” He tamps the grounds and then locks the portafilter into the espresso machine.
“I keep trying to decide if she knew.” My thumb traces the edge of the screen. “Alyssa doesn’t know how to embed tracking software.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t used.” He places a teacup on the machine and pulls out a lemon rind and twists it as the coffee begins to fill the cup. “Or that she wasn’t told to send it.”
I take that in. Told to send can come in a lot of forms and that would fit.
The photo looked harmless. Our friends that I miss so much. And that she tells me often that they miss me. I invited the picture when she mentioned it. It was something I thought I needed to see. I opened it without hesitation. Enlarged it and I saved it.
“If someone handed her a phone and told her to send it to me, she would,” I say. “She trusts easily.”
Ciro studies me. “Do you?”
I think about the timing, about how quickly they found me after I opened the file.
“I did.”
The silence that follows isn’t awkward. It carries weight.
“I can’t even call her without it being monitored.”
“That’s intentional.”
Of course, it is. I look around his kitchen, everything in it deliberate and controlled. “I shouldn’t still be here.”
His attention sharpens, not in volume but in focus. “You were tracked before you stepped into this house.”
“That doesn’t mean I should stay.” I hold his gaze. He looks composed, but I know what sits underneath that control. I felt it in his hands last night. “If I go somewhere else, at least you’re not in the blast radius.”
“We’ve talked about this. They can’t track you, and my guess is they assume you ran. Let them waste time looking outside San Francisco while you build a life here.”
He steps closer without touching me, the space narrowing in a way that feels intentional. “Does she benefit from you being located?”
“No. Maybe. She wants me back, but she knows Palo is trouble, so I don’t believe she’d do this on purpose.”
He shrugs and takes a sip of his espresso. “Then she was used.”
I turn toward the window. “If they can reach her, they can reach anyone around me. My brother will do whatever my father asks.”
“When you’re ready,” he says evenly, “I want to understand why they’re this invested in bringing you back to Chicago. This goes beyond a runaway daughter.”
“I told you. I was promised to someone.”
“I heard you. Promises can be broken.”
I keep my focus on the street out front. “This one can’t. It ties two families together—business, influence, protection. If I walk away, it destabilizes more than my name.”
“And you’re the collateral.”
“I’m the leverage.”
His gaze sharpens, not surprised, just recalibrating. The word hangs there longer than it should, dense and immovable.
“They’re willing to send men into my home over leverage,” he says, quieter now.
“That’s what you’re up against.”
His jaw moves in a controlled grind. “It just seems extreme, is all.”
“They want to make an example of me.”
He leans back a fraction, not retreating, creating space to think. “That reinforces my position,” he says, even and precise. “Leaving doesn’t remove the threat. It removes the only controlled environment you’re in.”
“You really think this is organized?” Massimo and my father react. They don’t anticipate.
“They embedded spyware in an image file,” he says, like the answer should be obvious. “That’s not improvisation.”
“And my friend?”
“Na?ve or compromised.”
He straps on his watch, the motion exact, practiced. Then he reaches for his jacket, already moving past the conversation instead of out of it.
“After Victor drops me at my office, he’ll be close. If you need anything.”
He doesn’t kiss me goodbye or say anything. The door closes behind him.
I head back to the guest room and start looking through my drab clothes. I miss designers, but it’s easier to blend in here in San Francisco with a T-shirt and jeans.
As I debate my options, a knock brings me out of my thoughts.
“Chiara?”
Victor stands where he always stands when I open the door, contained, unobtrusive, every line of him controlled.
“We’ve restricted private access to the house,” he says. “Biometric only. No external override.”
“Because of me?”
“No. Because of the incident. They just accelerated the need.”
I nod.
“There will be additional coverage outside today,” he continues. “Unmarked vehicles. Rotating positions.”
I let that settle before I ask, “Can I leave?”
“You can. We would prefer to accompany you.”
Prefer. Framed as choice. But it really isn’t.
When I close the door, I rest my palm against the wood for a second longer than necessary. Nothing here looks different. The windows are still glass. The terrace doors still open. But the perimeter has tightened around something I can’t see.
I wander through the house without direction, noticing what I missed before—the cleared counters, the absence of anything personal, the sense that nothing here is left unfinished.
The urge to pack flickers, sharp and decisive, and then fades just as quickly. Leaving would feel like control. It would also be exactly what they expect.
Staying gives me something they don’t account for. Access. Visibility. A way to see what they’re actually doing instead of reacting to it.
Through the terrace doors, the pool holds the morning light, still and uninterrupted.
I change into the only swimsuit in my suitcase. It’s not practical, but it’s immediate.
Outside, the air cuts colder than I expect. The first step into the water pulls the breath from my chest. I stay there instead of stepping back, letting the cold settle, letting it take instead of resisting it.
Then I push off.
The rhythm comes fast, steady, and contained. I fall into it without effort, counting laps, tracking distance, and letting each turn at the wall reset something I don’t want to name.
I push off again.
Alyssa surfaces whether I want her to or not—the photo, how easily I opened it, how quickly I dismissed it. I don’t know which answer is worse.
I shower and dress in something simple.
It’s too early to start dinner. I pick up my book and settle into the chair, but the words don’t hold. I turn a page, and then another, and realize I don’t know who anyone is or what just happened. My mind keeps sliding off it, looking for something to do, something to fix.
The book stays open in my lap, unread.
Finally, I give up and head downstairs.
Katie is already in the kitchen when I come down, sleeves pushed up, flour spread across the counter like she’s been here long enough to claim the space.
“Would you like some lunch?”
I shake my head. “I had some of the strawberries you left upstairs, thank you.” I pull one of her aprons off a peg on the wall. “I was coming down to work on my dinner.”
Katie helps me pull the ingredients together, and we talk while I cook. She asks a few questions about the sauce as I brown the lamb.
“The real trick,” I tell her, “according to my mom, is balancing a little sweetness with umami. It deepens the flavor and brings out the richness of the lamb.”
“I’ve heard that before.” She leans against the counter, watching me stir. “I use soy sauce in a lot of things. Never thought about adding it to ragu.”
We spend the afternoon cooking and talking, and the conversation shifts into something easier. I know she’s part of the team assigned to protect me, but we have more in common than I expected, and little by little, she’s starting to feel less like security and more like a friend.
She drags the spoon through the sauce, watching how it holds before it settles back.
“Salt.”
I try it. She’s right. I add it, stir once, and then stop.
She tastes, considers, and then gives a small nod.
We keep moving. No questions. No adjustments that haven’t already been made. Just the next step, and then the one after that, the rhythm clean enough that no one needs to think about it.
Katie wipes her hands on a towel and looks at me. “You’re settling in.”
Not a question.
I don’t answer.