10. Rosa
TEN
Rosa
The door was ajar when I reached Paolo's landing—an impossible, raw invitation. I stepped inside before I could talk myself out of it.
"You're not allowed to leave me a note and a jar," I said, hands curling around the strap of my bag because I needed something to hold. "Not like that."
He looked up from where he stood by the window, and for a second the palazzo went quiet around us.
He wore the same dark shirt he always wore when he couldn't decide between formal and undone; it hugged his shoulders and skimmed a slope of muscle that made my breath shallow.
The scar at his neck flashed pale when he moved. My pulse thudded, hot and traitorous.
"You came," Paolo said. His voice was close, measured. He had that way of speaking that made everything a little more dangerous and a little more true.
"I came to hear the truth from you," I told him. "Not from a note. Not from a jar of dirt."
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I understand."
Antonio was in the doorway with his coat half on, a tired apology in his posture.
"I'll give you two a minute," he said. He hesitated, then set a folded paper on the little table—formal-looking, my stomach tightening at the sight of signatures.
"This will buy you...space," he added, meeting Paolo's eyes.
"Space," Paolo echoed, a small, private joke between them that made my skin prickle. Antonio left before either of us could protest. The click of the outer door was a punctuation; the flat felt suddenly like a small and dangerous room of their own.
"You left," I said again. "You packed and left."
"I thought I was protecting you," he said. He came closer, each step folding distance into pressure. Up close I could smell him—lemongrass and something smoky—and my hands remembered where his pulse lay under my palm. I felt my knees soften.
"Protecting me by abandoning me?" My voice sharpened because fear sat under everything, raw and old. "Paolo, you can't decide my safety for me."
He flinched. "I know. I know that now." His hand hovered near the small of my back, a gesture that had once steadied me and that I understood could steady me again. I didn't pull away. He let his fingers rest, light and deliberate.
"Tell me," I said. "Tell me everything you remember. Tell me what you did. Tell me whether you hurt me."
There was a long inhale. "I remember fragments.
A chapel at Porto Vecchio. Wet wood. Men with smooth faces.
A closing door, and—" His jaw tightened.
"I have flashes. They don't always make sense.
Sometimes I see a woman in a dark coat with soil on her hands.
Sometimes I see a gun. Sometimes I see myself—ordering, watching—and I wake in a sweat. "
My stomach dropped as if someone had lifted me by the ribs. I had never told him the small, brutal details of that night; he hadn't needed to. The mention of soil made something in my throat close.
"You saw me," I said. The accusation was quieter than I meant. "Was it me?"
He shut his eyes. For a second I could see a child counting his fingers, the boy in him that learned to measure the world in ledgers and safety.
"I don't know," he admitted. "And the not knowing—that uncertainty—it's why I thought leaving would be safer for you.
If I pulled away, if I removed myself, then anything I might have done before couldn't hurt you now. "
"You think absence is a cure." My laugh was small and bitter. "Absence is a wound."
He reached and cupped my cheek, thumb brushing the swell below my eye where I'd cried when I'd found his note.
His hand was warm; his fingers were callused in the way that made me imagine them on every surface of my skin.
"I don't have cures," he said. "I have choices.
And I'm trying—Rosa—I am trying to make the right ones. "
"Prove it," I said. "Not with speeches. Prove it with something I can hold."
His mouth worked. Then he opened his hands and put something on the table between us: a small, delicate locket in a case that looked older than him. He lifted the lid with a slowness that felt ceremonial.
"My grandmother gave me this," he said. "It's the only thing from before...before that night that I kept because it reminded me of who I wanted to be. I want you to have it."
My fingers hovered over the metal. It was simple—oval, worn at the edges. I thought of my own tiny silver locket against my chest, the one I couldn't take off. My throat tightened hard.
"I can't take that," I said. "I can't be a consolation prize."
He shook his head. "Not a consolation. Two pieces. Carry them together." He swallowed. "Keep both. Let them—us—be connected." He surprised me by dropping to one knee with the locket in his hand, the gesture so old-fashioned it took my breath. "Not as penance, Rosa. As a promise."
A warmth unfurled in my chest so wide it knocked the edge off my fear. I had never expected a man like Paolo to kneel for me. I could see the ledgered, controlled part of him folding into something softer. "Why me?" I whispered.
"Because you taught me the names of plants when I couldn't remember my own," he said. "Because your hands remind me I'm allowed to touch gently. Because I am selfish enough to want you."
My laugh broke; the edges of my guard softened.
He reached up and clasped the locket around my neck himself, fingers brushing the hollow at the base of my throat.
The contact was tiny and devastating. The metal lay warm against my skin.
I felt him watch me, watched him watch me, and in that gaze there was an entire aching invitation.
"Will you let me prove it?" he asked, voice low.
There was a list of conditions in my head: no secrets, full transparency, concrete steps. "I want honesty, not disappearing," I said. "And I want you to hand over whatever control you can without endangering anyone. Names, ledgers, access—something I can verify."
He straightened slowly and moved to the little table, picking up the paper Antonio had left.
He tapped a signature. "Antonio will sign oversight.
I've signed this to cede certain access.
I can't undo everything tonight. But I can start with numbers, with proof that I am choosing to step out of shadows and into accountability. "
I watched desire and relief cross his face in the same heartbeat. The sight of him—so determined, so vulnerable—made a heat pool low in my belly. I couldn't stop the image of my hand in his, exploring, mapping the scars and seams that made him whole.
"Show me," I said.
He came closer and took my hand again, but this time his fingers threaded with mine like a promise. "Later," he murmured. "Right now—" His mouth covered mine with a claim that was hunger and apology and celebration. My knees went soft. Everything in me answered.
The kiss was at first a slow, testing thing, his lips asking for permission and my response a quick, certain yes.
His hands moved with reverence, learning angles, finding bone and muscle under fabric.
I pressed my palm to his chest and felt the steady thump of his heart beneath his ribs.
It was a measure an accountant couldn't ledger—wild, real, alive.
"Is this okay?" he breathed against my mouth, each syllable a vow.
"Yes," I said, and there was no hesitation.
We left the sitting room for the bedroom by instinct.
Clothes became the unnecessary paperwork of the moment; he peeled away layers with a clumsy, earnest efficiency that made me laugh into a groan.
I noticed everything—the slope of his collarbone, the way his shirt clung over the line of his back when he reached for me, the scar at the base of his neck like a punctuation.
Desire was a physical ache I trusted now.
We named things as we moved. "Do you like—" "Yes.
" "Harder?" "Yes." Simple questions, breathy answers.
Consent threaded through every touch: a thumb asking, a nod granting, a whispered "stop" met with an immediate halt and a soft, "Okay.
Are you sure?" followed by a kiss at approval.
It was intimate not because it was frantic but because it was precise and present.
He memorized me with his hands and mouth: the hollow at my collarbone, the tiny freckle near my shoulder, the places that made me soundless.
Between thrusts he spoke truths in fragments.
"I will not hide ledgers from you. I will not send you away as protection.
" I answered with my own confessions, small and true, and the language we made of trust sank deeper than any apology ever could.
After, we lay tangled, chests rising in time. The night slid warm and safe around us. Paolo made tea—lemongrass, the smell filling the small kitchen—and handed me a cup like he was offering me the whole world in porcelain. I drank slow and felt sinuous peace settle into my ribs.
"Promise me you'll tell me everything you remember," I murmured, tracing the faint crescent scar on his brow with the pad of my thumb.
"I promise," he said, but there was a flicker behind his eyes. "There are fragments I can't place yet. When they come, I will tell you as they are, even if I don't understand them."
I nodded, satisfied and not. The jar of terrace soil he'd left in my kitchen still ached between us, a symbol of his cowardice and his love. I set my cup down and slid the locket's chain between my fingers, feeling the weight of both our histories hanging at my throat.
He drifted into one of those sudden, shallow silences that meant a flash was coming. His fingers tightened around mine. "There's something I can't say," he confessed. "When I have the flashes, sometimes there's a sound—metal on wood. It wakes something in me I can't look at."
"Tell me what you can," I urged.