Chapter 22 Naomi
NAOMI
The jet levels out over a seam of blue that looks impossibly serene.
I fasten my seatbelt anyway, because discipline helps when courage wobbles. Somewhere behind me, Amalfi is already turning into a story; somewhere ahead, Milan awaits with its breath held, possibly hiding knives.
My old phone, traitorous and insistent, flickers to life the second we clear the patch of stubborn clouds. My heart lurches when I see a message from Pia, the events coordinator on Dillinger Island who knows where all the bodies and all the extra glasses are buried.
Heads-up. Harrison Kane has been calling trustees and a certain bored columnist in Boston. He’s using “temporary marriage” and “image rehab” in the same sentence. I shut down what I could. Thought you should know.
Dread tightens my tongue. I type back, Thank you. If anyone calls again, route to me. The three dots appear, vanish. Pia’s good at crisis; she’s better at timing. I take the hint.
Ninety minutes to Milan. That’s a war’s worth of time if you load the cannon fast enough.
I open my notes app—The Island: Stakeholders—and start dialing.
I call the trustee with a bird sanctuary named after his mother and remind him the lighthouse program funds a migration tracking partnership—his mother’s favorite thing—then promise naming rights for the hill path if he can rally two votes.
I call the preservation lawyer in California who has a fetish for milestones and offer a side letter with escrowed funds and a quarterly public audit.
I call the journalist friend in Copenhagen who owes me a favor the size of a small yacht after I quietly put her in the room where a prince cried in a linen suit last year; I give her a ‘hold’ line on the “vows at the lighthouse” program and tell her she can break it if anyone floats a “temporary farce” narrative.
I call a florist. “I need fifty candelabras and a hundred hurricane chimneys on the island by Friday,” I say, because beauty can drown a rumor if you pour it fast enough. “And an ocean of wildflowers. Make romance an act of God.”
I call Vecchio’s estate manager and spin a promise with a hook in it.
“The exchange program dovetails with ESG priorities—yes, I know, three phrases with simple meaning: do good, be seen doing good, keep doing it. We’ll fund the first cohort if the board votes firms.” He grunts in a way that sounds like a handshake.
When my voice starts to fray, I switch to gathering receipts.
I download the courier log that shows pickup, transfer, and the signature—H.
Kane—that signed for the necklace. I export every timestamped text from Harrison—the extortion in suede gloves—into a tidy PDF my lawyer can wave like a scalpel if necessary.
And because my grandfather taught me how to keep my own throat intact when everyone else is reaching for it, I save the call recordings I made with Harrison—legal in New York when one party consents; I consented with rage.
I don’t know if I’ll need any of it. I don’t know if Vasso will look at me and see a grenade or a shield.
I know this much: if anyone tries to paint him as a man propping up a paper marriage for a vanity project, I will burn the canvas and the gallery and the grantmaker’s Rolodex to keep the lighthouse lit.
The flight attendant offers water. I shake my head, then remember I’m human and take two bottles. “Thirty minutes to Malpensa,” she murmurs. I nod like I didn’t just auction parts of my soul in exchange for mercy.
Before descent, I press call on Grandpa Theodore. He answers on the second ring with the crackle of old radios in the background.
“Little star,” he says, and I immediately bite the inside of my cheek to keep from becoming twelve.
“Hi, Grandpa.” The plane dips; my heart follows. “Do you have a minute?”
“I have more minutes than the indulgent Lord knows what to do with. What’s wrong?”
I choke on a sob.
He exhales, slow and steady. “Tell me.”
I tell him. Not all of it—I keep the parts with velvet boxes and bad nights to myself—but enough. Harrison’s calls, his threats, the way he poked his finger into the trust’s eye and dared it to water. There’s a long silence at the other end that all regret being measured.
“I handed him the reins,” he says at last, voice low, not embarrassed to be old and wrong. “Thought I was teaching a boy to be a man. Should’ve taken the wheel back the first time I saw he liked the speed more than the road.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because there are no genius words for a man who outlived his mistakes.
He clears his throat. “Don’t take on my sorry. You carry enough, Naomi. Go do what you do. Set a table. Win a room. Be better than all of us. And when you’re back in Manhattan, you’ll take an old fool to lunch and let him tell you stories you’ve pretended not to hear before.”
I laugh, wet and grateful. “It’s a date.”
“Tell that boy of yours—” He stops, changes course. “Tell your husband the island deserves him. And so do you.”
“Grandpa,” I whisper, and the word is a bandage I’ll press to my ribs later. “I will. I love you.”
We disconnect.
I press my forehead to the window and watch Italy assemble underneath us like a lavish promise I want to believe. The city names roll through my head—Florence, Milan, Rome—as if they’re saints I can light candles to.
I don’t pray. I plan.
By the time the wheels kiss the runway, my voice is hoarse, my inbox is stacked with received and considering and send the draft responses, and my hands have stopped shaking.
The car Vasso sent is waiting on the tarmac with a driver I discover five minutes later, is unoffended by speed limits and trained in the art of not listening. I check the mirror once, fix the war paint at my mouth, and tell him Via Monte Napoleone.
The couture house sits behind an elaborate courtyard and the inevitable handful of photographers linger like pigeons who’ve learned the difference between stale bread and foie gras. Today I keep my face painfully neutral and hide behind oversized sunglasses.
Inside the air smells of tissue paper, heavy silk, and money. I’m greeted by an assistant with a tape measure around her neck who beams like she’s been told to love me.
I discover why a second later.
It’s not yet 3 p.m. But he’s already here.
Vasso, more handsome than the devil, stands at the far end of the salon under a chandelier that looks like a galaxy, sleeves rolled, tie disappeared, jaw clean-shaven for the kill.
He turns at the sound of my heels, and the look that hits his face is not for the public or for PR. It’s hunger more dangerous than any dinner.
I stop three paces away because there’s still a knife somewhere between us and I don’t know which of us is holding it. I open my mouth to say, I’m sorry, I fixed what I could, tell me what burned and where I should carry water—and get none of it out.
He dismisses all that fraught silence and takes me in his arms and kisses me like we just survived a shipwreck and the shore is a rumor.
It’s deep, unarguable, branded with fury and relief and the kind of claim that doesn’t bother sending a calendar invite first. I make a sound into his mouth that admits everything I spent ninety minutes pretending I could compartmentalize, and he swallows it like a vow.
When he lets me breathe, his forehead stays on mine. “We have a wedding to plan,” he says, voice low enough to be a promise, “and a war to fight.”
I nod because synonyms aren’t necessary and because my throat is full. Around us, a seamstress coughs delicately; another one drops a pin on purpose to cover the cough.
“We’ll ace both,” I say, and the calm in my voice surprises us.
For the first time since Amalfi, his mouth curves like he believes me. His hand settles at my waist, warm, steady, exactly where it belongs. The assistant trips over an apology and ushers us toward mirrored doors where breathtaking dresses hang in hushed waiting.
Somewhere in Florence, maybe a vote tips our way by one nervous hand.
Somewhere on Dillinger Island, Pia texts me a single anchor emoji and nothing else.
Somewhere inside me, a clock keeps time with my heart and, for once, the beat sounds like purpose instead of panic.
War in one hand, wedding in the other.
I square my shoulders, step onto the dais, and let Milan measure me for both.