Chapter 2
The bathroom stall at O’Hare smells like industrial cleaner and desperation. I trace Dante Rosetti’s signature on the marriage contract—bold strokes, confident loops. The same hands that created these letters killed my family. In three days, those hands will touch me as my husband.
Somewhere in this sprawling city, the silent devil waits for me.
Someone rattles the stall door. "Anyone in there?"
"Occupied!" The English word comes out sharp, one of the few I can say without my accent betraying me.
I fold the contract carefully, sliding it back into Papa's leather portfolio. The initials worn smooth under my thumb, R.M., Romeo Moretti, remind me why I'm here. Not for peace. For blood.
The airport corridor stretches endless before me, my oversized suitcase catching on every crack in the worn linoleum. Around me, Americans move with purpose I can't match, their voices blending into an incomprehensible wall of sound. The bathroom was sanctuary. Out here, I'm drowning.
"Excuse me, hon, you lost?" A woman with kind eyes and too-bright lipstick touches my elbow.
The English words swim in my exhausted brain. Lost. Yes, that one I know.
"I… I need to find…" What's the word? My textbook English crumbles under pressure. "The cars? For leaving?"
She smiles, points toward a sign. "Ground transportation, sweetie. Down that way, follow the signs."
Ground transportation. The words feel clumsy in my mouth as I repeat them, trying to match her accent. The portfolio burns against my side, Dante's signature seared into my memory. This is why I'm here. This piece of paper that will bind me to a monster.
The escalator carries me down while I clutch the portfolio tighter.
A businessman pushes past me, muttering something that sounds angry.
I catch only fragments: "…in the way… tourists…
" My cheeks burn, but my spine straightens automatically.
Posture, Ana, I hear Zio Roberto's voice from years of training.
A Moretti never shows weakness in public.
Even exhausted, even lost, even planning murder, I am still a Moretti.
The sliding doors open to August heat that steals my breath.
It's nothing like Roman summer. This is wet, heavy, pressing against my skin like a living thing.
The hotel air conditioning will smell like artificial lemon and cold, nothing like home.
Mama's basil plant on the windowsill, Papa's cigarettes, the ancient dust of Roman streets.
I join a line of people waiting for taxis, grateful that some things are universal.
"Where to, lady?" The taxi driver's words slur together in a way my English teacher never prepared me for.
I hold out the hotel card with shaking fingers, and he glances at it before pulling into traffic with a lurch that throws me against the door.
My body automatically catalogs the space.
Two doors, breakable partition, driver's weapon likely under his seat.
Old habits from years of training with Zio Roberto.
"First time in Chicago?" He watches me in the mirror while weaving between cars.
"Yes." I search for more words, find them slipping away. "I come for… wedding."
"Wedding! Hey, that's nice. Whose wedding? You got family here?"
Family. The word sits bitter on my tongue. In our world, marriage contracts are sealed in blood, not ink. "My wedding. I marry… soon. In three days."
His eyebrows rise in the mirror. "You don't sound too happy about it."
I don't know how to explain that I'm marrying my enemy.
That the man waiting for me in this city took everything from me when I was fourteen.
The English words tangle in my throat, and I stay silent, thinking of that signature, those bold strokes that signed away my future before I could even write my own name.
Outside the window, Chicago rushes past. All glass and steel reaching toward the sky.
So different from Rome's ancient stones and narrow streets.
The signs blur together. Street names I can't pronounce, advertisements that move too fast to read.
I feel lost in this maze of concrete and lights, every turn taking me deeper into unfamiliar territory. Deeper into his world.
The driver keeps talking, his accent turning every word into a puzzle. Something about baseball, maybe? Or construction? I catch familiar words. "Downtown," "traffic," "Italian." But the context escapes me. I nod when his voice rises, hope that's the right response.
"You okay back there?" He's looking at me again, concern creasing his face. "You look a little green."
Green? I know green is a color, but why would I look… oh. Sick. He thinks I'm going to be sick.
"I'm okay," I manage. "Just… tired. Long flight."
A black car changes lanes behind us, maintaining the same distance through three turns.
My hand drifts to my purse where Papa's knife rests against the lining.
Ten years of preparation, and I still jump at shadows.
The car follows through another turn. Just traffic, I tell myself.
Chicago is full of black cars. Not everyone is watching me.
But someone definitely is.
The hotel suite door clicks shut behind me, and finally, finally, I'm alone.
I sink onto the bed, letting my body collapse into the impossible softness.
The air conditioning hums too cold against my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms. Everything here is too much.
Too big, too cold, too foreign. The portfolio sits beside me, and I can't stop myself from pulling out the contract again.
There it is. His signature. In three days, mine will sit below it.
The doorman had helped with my bags, his hand reaching for the suitcase.
I'd stepped back automatically. In my world, you don't let strangers touch your belongings.
They might plant something. Or take something.
The desk clerk's eyes had lingered on my name when I signed in.
Moretti. Even here, thousands of miles from home, it means something.
My phone weighs heavy in my hand as I open the ASL app I've been using for the past year.
All too soon, I will meet him. The silent devil who haunts my nightmares.
At least with him, I won't stumble over English words.
My signs are perfect. I've made sure of that.
Every night for a year, I've practiced until my hands could form the words in my sleep.
I know exactly how we'll communicate. Through signs, the language I've learned specifically for him. So he can't ever speak behind my back.
Hello. My name is Ana. I'm here to fulfill the contract.
My fingers move through the signs automatically. Formal, cold, giving nothing away. Not: I'm here to kill you. Not: You murdered my family. Just the facts, signed with precision my father would have admired.
I type his name into my phone before I can stop myself.
Dante Rosetti. The images are all blurred, distant, like trying to photograph smoke.
Chicago's ghost, they call him in one article.
The silent enforcer. Even Google can't capture him properly.
But there's one photo, grainy and taken from far away.
Even in shadow, he's beautiful in that dangerous way that makes smart women stupid.
"I am pleased to meet you," I say aloud in English, hating how thick my accent sounds.
The words are textbook perfect and completely wrong. Americans don't speak like this. They say things like "Hey" and "What's up" and a dozen other phrases that mean nothing close to what they actually say.
In the mirror, I look young. Lost. Nothing like the woman I need to be in three days.
Someone who can face a monster without flinching.
I pull my hair back, try to look older, more sophisticated.
More like someone who belongs in his world.
Someone who grew up knowing that men like him exist, beautiful and terrible in equal measure.
Someone whose future wasn't sold with a signature before she could walk.
My reflection mocks me. I look exactly like what I am: a twenty-three-year-old woman from Rome who's never taken a life, never done anything brave except board a plane to marry her enemy.
Room service arrives while I'm unpacking, the waiter wheeling in a cart with covered dishes.
"Your dinner, Miss," he says slowly, recognizing my confusion. He's young, maybe my age, with a kind smile that reminds me of home.
I nod, then pull out a sheet of hotel stationary.
My fingers work automatically, folding and creasing until a paper crane takes shape.
Papa used to teach me this at our kitchen table in Rome, long before I knew about contracts and signatures and the price of being a Moretti.
"Precision, cara," he'd say, guiding my small fingers through the folds.
"In origami and in life, precision matters. "
"That's beautiful," the waiter says, watching my hands. "Origami, right?"
"Yes." I risk more words. "I make many. One thousand cranes for… for a wish." My sentences will come faster and easier after a good night's sleep.
"What will you wish for?" His eyes are too knowing, like he sees through my exhaustion to something darker underneath.
The question catches me off guard. Do I look like someone planning murder?
"To be brave," I say finally, the truth slipping out before I can stop it. Brave enough to face the man whose signature changed my life. Brave enough to do what needs to be done.
His smile turns sad, like he knows brave girls don't last long in Chicago. "You look pretty brave to me. Coming to a new country, speaking a different language. That takes guts."
If only he knew what I really need bravery for.
After he leaves, I fold two more cranes.
Hotel napkins become birds, each one a memory.
This one for Papa, who taught me patience.
Who should have walked me down an aisle someday, not died in a warehouse because of Rosetti bullets.
This one for the girl I was before I saw that signature, before I understood that my life was never my own.
The tears come then, just three, sliding down my cheeks before I scrub them away.
My father is gone. Uncle Roberto is gone.
Everyone who should be here for my wedding is gone, and the man responsible is waiting for me across this cold city, his signature binding us together in ways he doesn't even know yet.
Nine hundred ninety-eight cranes now. Two more until my wish. Two more until I have to be brave enough to face the meeting in three days.
My eyes won't stay open anymore. The floor calls to me, softer than it should be with hotel carpet thick as clouds.
I arrange myself among the paper cranes, their white wings surrounding me like the ghosts of everyone I've lost. The contract lies beside me, Dante's signature visible in the lamplight.
Papa's photo rests against my chest, the edges soft from handling. In it, he's laughing at something off-camera, forever frozen in happiness. Before that night. Before the blood. Before everything changed. Before a signature destroyed our world.
"I'm here, Papa," I whisper to his image. "In the city of devils, just like you warned me about."
Something crinkles under my shoulder. A piece of hotel stationary I don't remember dropping. I pull it out, squinting at the elegant handwriting:
Welcome to Chicago, Miss Moretti.
No signature. The handwriting is elegant, feminine.
Not him then. But someone who knows I'm here.
Someone watching. The note doesn't frighten me as much as it should, but exhaustion wins.
Let them watch. Let them see a woman surrounded by paper birds, clutching her dead father's photo, with her enemy's signature burned into her memory.
In three days I'll be strong. In three days I'll be dangerous.
Tomorrow I prepare. I'll walk this foreign city, memorize the route to the meeting place, practice my English and my dagger work until both are weapons. The meeting in three days looms like a storm on the horizon.
Tonight, I'm just Ana.
Sleep takes me before I can count them again, and I dream of paper birds carrying me home to Rome, where my father waits with open arms and forgiveness for what I'm about to do.
In the dream, there are no signatures, no contracts, no promises written in ink that bind like chains.
Just Papa's laughter and the warm Roman sun, and a world where my future belongs to me alone.