Chapter 11
EMILY
“Ingersoll said,” I began, pointing the laser at the quote projected on the screen behind me, “‘If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.’ What do you think he meant by that?”
I waited, hoping for a response that contained at least the faintest trace of thought.
It was a nine a.m. Monday class, though, so that was probably too ambitious.
Half the room looked hungover, the other half looked half dead, and most of them had the expression of people who would rather be almost anywhere else.
Honestly, same.
I was running on very little sleep and far too many thoughts. I spent most of the night constructing arguments for why Pietro had stopped things before they went further, then immediately dismantling them. All I really felt this morning was rejected and tired.
“Anyone?” I scanned the room and stopped on the student who was far too busy texting to even pretend he was listening. “Ben. Since you clearly have time for your phone, I’m going to assume you also have time for an answer.”
He looked up at the screen, squinting at the quote as if seeing it for the first time. “Yeah, well, when you have power, you have money and you’re on TV and stuff, so we know what people are like.”
I was too tired to hide my grimace, or to ignore the fact that I had probably just lost three IQ points listening to that sentence.
“I don’t think that’s quite what Robert Ingersoll meant,” I said carefully, “given that he died in 1899.”
Ben shrugged. “Could’ve been.”
I inhaled deeply and glanced at the clock on the wall.
Twenty minutes to go.
“Anyone else?”
“Power has the potential to corrupt anyone who holds it. That’s why it’s the true test of character.”
I looked up so fast at the sound of the voice I knew far too well that I nearly hurt my neck.
There he was.
Standing at the back by the door, coffee in one hand, looking offensively composed for someone who had wrecked my entire night.
And, as if that weren’t enough, the travel cup he was holding was yet another capybara design — this one pink.
It should have looked ridiculous in the hand of a man dressed entirely in shades of black and gray.
It didn’t.
Damn him. Damn the sleep deprivation. Damn my traitorous brain.
“Is that right?” I asked.
Pietro took another sip of coffee, entirely unbothered by the twenty pairs of eyes that had turned toward him.
“Yes,” he said. “Power reveals character because it removes inconvenience. When someone no longer needs permission, approval, or restraint to get what they want, you see what they were always inclined to do.”
The room had gone noticeably quieter.
Even Ben looked confused enough to stop texting.
I folded my arms. “That’s one interpretation.”
Pietro inclined his head slightly, as if granting me the point while not conceding anything.
“It’s more than that. Most people like to think corruption begins with power, but usually it only magnifies what was already there.
Cruel men become careless. Weak men become obedient to stronger ones.
Greedy men stop pretending their greed serves anyone but themselves. ”
A few students had actually started taking notes now.
Traitors.
I should have cut him off. But there was something almost unnerving in the ease with which he spoke—like someone describing a system he understood too well to romanticize.
He went on, apparently deciding he had not yet caused me enough trouble for one morning.
“The more interesting question is what people do when power gives them the option to be cruel without interference.”
Something cold moved down my spine.
“Because that,” he added, his voice even, “is where character stops being theory.”
The conversation had evolved. We were still here, in public, in a fluorescent classroom at nine-thirty on a Monday morning, yet it felt like he was handing me something else beneath the words. Not an answer exactly. More like clues.
“And what does that mean to you, Mr.…?”
His grin widened. “Benetti.”
He looked toward the front of the room, then had the audacity to take the empty seat directly across from me. “You tell me, Miss Hart. You’re the teacher, after all.”
I pressed my lips together, unimpressed by his nerve. After causing my insomnia and emotional collapse the night before, he now wanted to sit in my classroom and look smug.
Fine.
I set the laser pointer down on the desk and folded my arms. “I think power reveals character, yes, but I also think people treat morality as if it’s fixed and objective when most of the time it’s tangled up with culture, law, and who gets to decide what is acceptable in the first place.”
A few students sat up a little straighter.
Good. If I had to suffer through this conversation, so did they.
“Society approves of harmful things all the time,” I went on. “And condemns things that, in a different context, might be understandable or even necessary. So no, I don’t think approval tells us whether something is right. It tells us what a given group has decided it can live with.”
Pietro’s expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened.
I looked directly at him now. “Which means morality isn’t only about what someone does when they have power. It’s also about what they tell themselves in order to live with what they’ve done.”
Silence settled over the room.
Ben, to my surprise, raised his hand halfway. “So you’re saying bad stuff can be justified?”
I turned to him. “I’m saying people justify bad stuff constantly. That doesn’t automatically make it moral. It makes it human.”
That got a few thoughtful looks.
And one very intent blue-eyed stare from the back of the room.
I glanced at the clock before the whole thing could drift any further into territory I wasn’t prepared to unpack before coffee.
“All right,” I said, picking up my notes. “That’s enough philosophy for one Monday morning. Don’t forget, your response paper on The Prince is due next week, and if any of you quote a motivational Instagram account instead of Machiavelli again, I will take it personally.”
A few groans rippled through the room as everyone started packing up.
“You’re dismissed.”
I watched the students file out, far too aware that Pietro stayed exactly where he was. A few of them threw us quick, calculating looks on their way past, and I could already feel the rumor mill beginning to grind.
Emily Hart fishing in the student pool.
Perfect.
“You’re about to inspire at least three terrible attempts at flirting for grades,” I said as I stacked my papers into a neat pile. “They’re all going to assume I’m dating in the student pool now.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Pietro said, still wearing that composed, unreadable expression of his. “Especially since you’re already in an exclusive relationship.”
I paused.
“Am I?”
I kept my eyes on my notes, straightening pages that did not need straightening rather than looking at him. If I met his gaze too quickly, I was fairly sure he would see far too much of the hurt I had not yet managed to shake.
“I would very much like you to be.”
Instead of answering, I looked up and let my attention catch on the cup in his hand. “Nice cup, by the way. It suits you.”
He glanced down at the pink capybara cup as if he had forgotten he was holding it.
“I’m glad you think so. It’s for you, obviously, but Olivero refused to collect it this time, so I had to get it myself.
I didn’t want to waste it, which means I was forced to drink whatever crime against coffee they put in it. ”
His nose scrunched in a way that should have looked ridiculous and only made him more attractive.
“This is an abomination,” he said. “When you meet my family, you’ll need to call it something else entirely.”
My traitorous heart gave a hard, foolish leap at how casually he said it. As if yesterday hadn’t happened. As if he hadn’t left me standing in my apartment doorway feeling rejected and confused and far too exposed.
I folded my arms loosely over my chest. “What do you want, Pietro?”
His gaze settled on me fully then, the playfulness easing out of it.
“Many things,” he said. “Most of them can’t happen until we talk.”
I held his eyes. “That’s very cryptic.”
“Do you have somewhere to be?” he asked as he stood.
The movement drew my attention to his cane, to the way his hand closed around the silver handle hard enough that the knuckles stood out white against his skin.
I couldn’t tell whether he was in pain or simply nervous.
Either way, it breached some of the walls I had tried to hold on to since last night.
“I’m free for a few hours.”
I saw his shoulders lower slightly.
So he was nervous.
“Could we go to my place?” he asked. Then, too quickly, “Or yours. It’s just that mine is right down the street, but if you’d rather?—”
“No,” I said, before he could retreat any further. “Yes. It’s fine. Your place is fine.”
The walk there was quiet, weighted, as though both of us knew something was coming and neither of us wanted to be the first to break the skin of it.
I didn’t miss Olivero following a few feet behind either.
My heart was beating so hard it almost hurt, because whatever Pietro was about to tell me, I sensed there would be no walking it back.
Whatever he revealed would change how I saw him, and whatever I did after would probably reveal just as much about me.
When we reached the building, Pietro turned slightly toward the man behind us and gave the smallest shake of his head.
Olivero stopped at once and that alone told me more than I wanted it to.
Pietro scanned the door with his fob and held it open for me. We stepped inside, then into the elevator, where the silence felt even more significant.
“He’s not your friend, is he?” I asked quietly.
“In many ways, he actually is,” Pietro said. “But never tell him that. He’d become unbearable.”
A weak smile tried to pull at my mouth, but it didn’t quite make it.
“But he’s not just that, is he?”
Pietro kept his eyes on the elevator doors. After a beat, his head dipped once toward me.
“No.”