CHAPTER 23
"A woman who sleeps with the enemy wakes up mistress of the house—or mistress of nothing."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I woke to the sun hitting his chest.
Not mine—his. I was lying on my side, my head against Luca's right shoulder, my hand open on the Latin tattoo on his chest.
The eight o'clock morning sun came in through the window and fell in a golden stripe right over the words, and for a few seconds I just lay there looking—not moving, not breathing too deeply—before I realized where I was.
His room. His bed. No clothes.
The white sheets were twisted around my waist. His sandalwood scent in my hair.
The weight of his arm over my shoulder, holding me against him the way a man holds a woman when he's slept beside one his whole life—without thinking, without care, with the instinctive possessiveness of someone who can't imagine waking up alone.
I breathed slowly. And then his chest moved under my hand.
"Bella."
His voice was rough, his eyes still closed.
"Good morning. You're awake."
"I woke up when you did."
"You didn't move."
"I didn't want to."
I lifted my head and looked at him.
His black eyes opened. They took a second adjusting to the light and to the fact that I was there. And then he smiled—slowly, and this time without the hard scar at the corner of his mouth.
A new smile, one I'd never seen before.
"Bella mia. You're more beautiful in the morning than I calculated."
"You calculated."
"I calculated everything, Valentina. Weeks ago."
I laughed in spite of myself and put my face back against his chest.
His hand moved up into my hair, fingers running through it, very slowly.
"How are you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You know."
"Different. In a good way."
"Bene."
His hand kept moving through my hair, and we stayed quiet for a couple of minutes. I could hear his heart through the skin of his chest—slower than yesterday, steadier than any heart I could remember resting against.
"Luca, I'm hungry."
He laughed. Louder. For the first time, a real laugh—his chest rising, the sound coming up out of his throat with nothing held back.
"Bella mia, me too."
He reached over and picked up the intercom on the nightstand, pressing a button.
"Donna Beatrice, send breakfast for two up to my room." A pause. "Yes. For two."
He hung up and looked at me.
"In fifteen minutes she'll knock on the door with a look on her face like she doesn't know a thing."
"She knows."
"She knew the moment she saw me carry you down the hall yesterday. The whole house knows, bella. In Donna Beatrice's jurisdiction, you've been signora Moretti since last night."
"I'm not signora of anything yet."
"You are to her. To me. And to yourself, if you're honest."
Donna Beatrice knocked fifteen minutes later.
I was wrapped in a black robe of his, big enough to go around me three times. I sat on the bed, legs tucked under me, my hair in a loose, half-undone bun, no makeup at all.
He opened the door in pajama pants and a white shirt with the top three buttons undone—his wounded shoulder bandaged, but no visible pain.
Donna Beatrice came in without looking at me, without looking at him. She set the tray on the low table between the two reading sofas and straightened the sugar bowl by a centimeter. Then, before she left, she stopped in the doorway and looked at me.
"Signora Moretti. Would you prefer your pancakes with honey or with jam next time?"
"Honey."
"Capisco."
She left, and Luca looked at me.
"Bella…"
"Shut up, Luca."
He smiled again and sat down beside me on the sofa, picking up a cornetto from the tray, biting off half, and offering me the other.
We ate in silence for about five minutes.
Black coffee. Cornetto. Fruit. Fresh bread with buffalo mozzarella. A family eating breakfast.
Aside from the detail that he was the Don of the Camorra and I was the daughter of the man he wanted to kill, it was the most domestic thing I'd experienced in that house.
"Luca. The attack…"
"I was going to tell you after breakfast."
"Tell me now."
He nodded and set the cup down on the saucer.
"There were three men. They came in over the south wall—the part I hadn't reinforced after you ran. They knew which part. Someone inside the house handed over the plans."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet. Acquaviva's looking into it."
"The three men…"
"Dead. I killed two."
"And the third?"
"He's in the cellar."
"With Matteo?"
"A different cellar," he said simply. "The house is big, bella."
"Whose men were they?"
"Your father's."
"Are you sure?"
"I recognized the tattoo on one of their arms. The Bonanno family, Palermo. Vassals of the Rossis for forty years. I've seen that tattoo three times in the last five years."
"Why would my father send men now? Before the wedding."
"Because he found out Matteo left Capri."
"How did he find out?"
"Donna Carmela."
"Cazzo."
"Sì."
"Did you kill her?"
"No. I had her taken out of Capri yesterday. But someone got to her before we got there. I don't know who. Acquaviva's looking into it."
I took a deep breath, trying to understand what was coming.
"So my father knows Matteo is here. And he sent three men."
"He did. And he'll send more."
"When?"
"Before the wedding."
"In four weeks?"
"Sooner."
I set the cup down. My hands were shaking a little.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to ask you for one thing, bella.
Wait two more weeks. Don't go to Mondello.
Don't go looking for the steel box. Don't try to prove anything on your own.
In two weeks, Acquaviva will find out who in this house handed over the layout of the south wall.
Then I'll know who your father's talking to inside these walls.
And then I go to Palermo with you, and we end this together. "
"End this… You mean kill my father?"
"It means whatever it has to."
"Luca. I can't sit still for two weeks."
"Bella."
"I can't." I looked at him. "I sleep in your bed, I eat your breakfast, I'm bella mia on your lips, I'm signora Moretti on Donna Beatrice's lips.
But inside, I'm still Salvatore Rossi's daughter, and until I know for myself what he did to my mother, to my brother, to me, I can't be a whole bella mia, Luca. I'll only ever be half."
"Capisco."
"Then let me go."
"Bella…"
"Let me go, Luca. Alone, two days from now. I leave in the morning, I come back at night. I get what I need in Mondello and I come back."
"I'm coming with you."
"No," I said firmly. "If you come, it's war. If I go alone, with a small bag and a family excuse, it's just a daughter visiting her dead mother's house. No one attacks me in Mondello. Not even my father, not there."
"You can't be sure of that."
"I am sure of it. Mondello was my mother's. He doesn't touch my mother's house."
Luca looked at me for a long time, and then he nodded.
"Two days. You're back before dark."
"Before dark."
"Bella. You take the dagger."
"I always take the dagger."
"Brava."
He leaned in and kissed my forehead slowly, like a man committing a person's position to memory, to remember it later.
"Bella mia. If you're not back before dark, I go to Palermo that same night with fifty men. And I burn your father's house to the ground with him inside it."
I looked at him, but I wasn't afraid.
"I know."
And for the first time, I was at peace with the man he was.