10. Rosa #2
He closed his eyes. "I saw a woman with soil on her hands," he said again. "And a door closing. The rest is a wall." He squeezed my hand. "I hate that it's a wall."
"Don't protect me by hiding," I said, and the plea cracked. "If you won't be honest, I can't believe in the future you're offering."
He rolled so he was looking at me, his face a map of regret and longing. "Then ask me to stay," he said, urgent. "Ask me to choose you in front of them all."
I searched his face until I found the Paolo I loved—steady, lit from within. "Stay," I said. "Stay and prove it every day."
He kissed me then, hard and certain, and I felt the weight of the apartment settle into a small, stubborn promise.
He moved to get a blanket, his shirt half on, then stopped and drew me into him.
We spoke plans in half-sentences: a terrace garden at dawn, a shared pot of basil, the small life we could tend together.
He promised acts—not grand apologies—that built a life.
Antonio's voice came from the landing, low and deliberate. "Mr. Moretti?"
Paolo stiffened and stood. He looked at the door, jaw working. "Tell him I'm here," he said to me, almost a command and almost a plea. "Tell him I chose to stay."
I watched his hands. He had offered me the locket, signed a paper, kissed me into surrender. He looked like a man who had chosen, but something in his eyes had tightened into white fear.
The key turned in the lock, but not the flat's door—the hall door below. Heavy footsteps padded on the stone steps. My stomach lurched.
A voice I didn't want to hear called from the stairwell: "Paolo—there you are."
Paolo's shoulders collapsed a fraction. He didn't move toward the door. His fingers dug into my hand until I felt the ridges of his knuckles.
"Who is it?" I asked, every simple word suddenly urgent.
He didn't answer for a long, unreadable beat. Then he said, not to me but into the air between us, "They're not finished. Not yet."
Someone descended the stairs. The sound was measured, too-calm, like a man who wanted to remind us both that the past could still step into the room.
END
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Noemi
"I was sent to the wrong wing," I said before I could stop myself, because admitting the mistake felt safer than panicking.
The townhouse smelled of iron and sweat.
My palms were slick; I tucked them into my jacket like they belonged there.
Noemi Bianchi, crime analyst, on a midnight errand for a tiny data anomaly—an odd spike in a feed that shouldn't have existed—meant I had every right to be nosing around. I told myself that every step.
A door was half-open. I shouldn't have nudged it; I did anyway.
He was there, towel at his waist, shirtless under the single bare bulb. Angelo Ricci, tall and broad-shouldered with a faint scar at his collarbone, watched me like he had been cataloguing me since I stepped into the hallway. My mouth went dry.
He didn't look surprised so much as satisfied—with the sight, with my presence.
The raw, private hush of him made a careless heat climb my neck.
I noticed the five o'clock shadow along his jaw and the way his chest muscles shifted when he breathed.
My pulse sped. I tried to make my face neutral and failed.
"You shouldn't be in this wing," he said. His voice was low and even. "What are you doing here at midnight?"
"Consult," I said. "There was—" I gestured with a hand that trembled. "An anomaly. I was called in."
His gaze traveled my hands, my phone, the ID clipped to my bag. He tilted his head as if listening to a channel I couldn't hear. "You work for the police," he stated, not a question.
"Crime analysis," I corrected. Short. Precise. Professional. I kept my spine straight because my mother taught me to. My father didn't stay long enough for lessons about standing steady. He'd left when I was sixteen. I don't tell people that often. Two sentences, a fact that tightened my chest.
Angelo stepped forward until the light caught the scar under his collarbone, a pale line that cut the warm skin.
My eyes tracked the scar and then the line of his throat.
I felt like a voyeur—intrusive and electric.
This should not be happening in a private townhouse with a man who watched the city like a map.
"You're far from your lab," he said. His hand rested on the doorframe. Close but not touching me. "It's past the hours you usually leave."
"Someone called me," I said. "I came."
"No one else should be wandering this wing." He kept his voice flat. He kept me in it.
My rational brain offered procedure: step back, close the door, call my supervisor, log the incident. My body was louder. When he moved, my knees remembered running routes from college and the gym. My breath hitched.
A sound from the corridor—soft, deliberate knocks—tapped against the thick wood behind him. He didn't flinch. He listened.
"I'll be quick," I said.
He smiled then, small and almost private, and it loosened something in my chest that I had clamped down years ago. "Quick," he echoed. "Come in, then. Close the door."
For a second nothing else existed. The towel hanging over his shoulder.
The scar. The narrow pale line at his temple.
The way his shirt clung to a chair back, damp at the collar.
I noticed the calluses on his fingertips when he rolled the towel between his hands.
My mouth went dry again. My pulse hammered against ribs that suddenly felt tight.
"Why are you still here?" I asked, trying for brisk.
"Because this house has rules," he said. "And because tonight it has shapes moving where it shouldn't."
"You're insinuating I don't belong?" I bit. My voice came out sharper than I'd intended. Sharp felt safe.
"I'm insinuating nothing," he said. "I'm telling you. Stay. Sit."
He didn't tell me to leave so much as offer a command I didn't have the right to refuse. I sat in a heavy chair that gave with a low groan. It was absurdly domestic—leather, soft-scented air, the scent of his sweat tucked under cologne. I told myself it was the building's ventilation.
"You could have sent someone from security," I said. "Or a message."
"I did not." He folded the towel and set it on his shoulder like a casual gesture, then reached toward a small basin and splashed water on his face. Droplets hit the wood and made tiny, bright sounds. "I prefer to meet the anomaly myself."
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