6. Paolo #2
Rosa's eyes were unreadable for a moment. Then she slid closer and wrapped her arms around my neck. The gesture was fierce rather than coy, as if she wanted to contain me. "Tell me everything," she said into my ear.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "I can't tell you everything because I don't have everything," I said. "But I'll tell you what I remember. If you want to stop?—"
"I want you," she said. "Right now. Even with missing pieces."
My phone buzzed against the counter, loud enough to make us both flinch. I saw Matteo's name flash. I thumbed the screen without thinking and put it on speaker because I wanted her to see every part of my life, even the ugly ones.
"Paolo," Matteo's voice said in the room like a knife. His tone was clipped, not formal but not kind. "You promised busy men would be at the palazzo by eight."
I opened my mouth to deflect. Rosa's hand tightened at the base of my neck. Matteo went on, words like ledger entries: "There are questions. Be careful what you collect."
Rosa's forehead creased. "Questions about what?"
Matteo's laugh had no warmth. "About what you bring into the family," he said. "About whether you remember why some things were done."
The kettle hissed behind us. I could smell burning sauce—someone had left the pan for too long—and my pulse speeded.
"Matteo," I said slowly. "That is not how we discuss..."
His voice cut me off. "Do not let memory make you soft, Paolo. Not now."
The line clicked dead. The silence that followed was louder than the call.
Rosa looked at me as if she were trying to decide which part of me to believe. "Is he…threatening you?"
"He is reminding me of what I owe," I said. The words tasted like metal. "Which is my fault. Not his."
She moved her forehead against mine. "Then don't pay more than you owe," she whispered.
I wanted to promise. To swear on every ledger and every stolen quiet moment that I would be different. Instead I nodded, and the nod felt like a thin shield.
"I will tell you the rest," I said. "If you'll let me."
"Tell me everything," she said again, softer. "And then we'll decide what to do."
I drew another breath. The name was on my tongue—Isabella—and the chapel at Porto Vecchio sat behind it like shadow. I opened my mouth to say the rest, to speak the sentence that attached the image to a deed, to either absolve or condemn myself.
Somewhere outside, someone banged a delivery crate so hard the windows rattled. The sound arrived like a verdict.
I stopped speaking. The room contracted to the space between my hands and her pulse under my fingers. My phone vibrated again. Mat teo's name flashed across the screen with another call, insistent.
I swallowed. "I'm starting," I said. "I will tell you?—"
A hard knock sounded at my apartment door, quick and authoritative, followed by a voice I didn't want to hear but knew too well.
"Paolo! Open up!"
I let the line go dead and felt the blood drain from my face. Rosa's hand went to my chest, steadying me. The air tasted of burnt garlic and something else—danger that had been at the edges for days.
She looked at me, eyes bright and fierce. "Tell me everything," she said again, and there was no hesitation now.
The knock came faster. Someone else called from the hallway: "We're not leaving until you answer, Moretti."
I could feel Matteo's presence on the other end of the calls, or men who answered to his name. My memory flashed—chapel, Isabella, hands in soil. My throat closed.
I had promised to be honest. I had promised to stay.
I reached for the doorknob. My phone buzzed one last time before going silent as the speaker died.
"Don't leave me alone with whoever's outside," Rosa said. Her voice was small and resolute. "Not tonight."
I wanted to clamp down on the guilt and the fear and the memory and press them into a neat accounting. Instead I turned the lock and opened the door. The corridor smelled of diesel and rain.
The men in the hallway stepped forward. One of them was Matteo's shadow—broad-shouldered and frowning. Behind him, the courier lugged another crate.
"Matteo," I said. My voice didn't hide the pulse in it. "What is this about?"
The cousin's smile was tight. "We need a word," he said. "And Paolo—" He leaned in so that only I could hear. "Remember what you owe."
The crate shifted in the courier's hands, and something clanged inside, metallic and certain.
Rosa's fingers hooked into the back of my shirt. "We're not going anywhere," she said.
I looked at her—the curve of her neck, the way the coat bunched at her shoulders, the small determined line at her mouth—and felt a choice spread before me like open ledger pages.
I had promised to be different. I had promised to tell her.
But the knock at the door and the words in the hallway made the ledger heavy again.
"Tell me everything," she said, and then louder, to the men in the hallway, "If you're here for him, say it to my face."
The courier set the crate down with deliberate care. The men exchanged looks. Matteo's shadow smiled with teeth that didn't reach his eyes.
"You shouldn't get involved, signorina," he said.
Rosa didn't flinch.
I closed the door with my back against it, feeling the weight of wood and the pressure of what I was about to reveal. My mouth opened to say the name and the place and the fragment that might be confession or absolution.
Before the words came, the courier unlatched the crate and metal clattered inside—chains, or keys, or something like a promise.
I had begun to tell her the truth. Now the choice waiting behind the crate would decide if telling would save us both or ruin what we had.
I breathed in. I let go of the doorknob. "Listen," I said, and started to speak the name.