15. Luca
Luca
Giada’s bedroom door closes between us. The latch clicks into place.
I remain in the hall, close enough to reach her in four steps if she calls me. She asked to be alone. I gave her my promise before I gave her my body: access to either belongs to her. So I walk downstairs.
At breakfast, she sits across from me in a white blouse instead of the blue tardigrade shirt she wore to my bed. Her tea is absent. She calls the bacon acceptable. When I ask what she wants, she asks to finish eating.
Yesterday, her hand would have reached for mine. This morning, both remain around her fork and knife. Her answers have narrowed to the minimum.
The conclusion fits every fact available to me. She chose sex. She chose my bed for one night. Morning gave her time to reconsider both. Her body is sore, and now she wishes last night hadn’t happened.
Every instinct I possess demands that I sit beside her and force the truth into the open. The promise wins.
Before I leave, I tell her Antonio was captured last night and is secured in the basement. Her fingers close around her book. I tell her she will never be required to go near him or speak to him. He cannot reach her.
“All right.”
When I leave for Corsini headquarters, she holds the book instead of touching me goodbye.
Dante’s office contains three reports, cold coffee, and no patience for distraction. Mine ran out before I arrived. Coffee chills against my tongue when I take a drink and miss the line I meant to read.
“Antonio has given us nothing useful,” he says. “Dario questioned him again.”
I turn a page. The same paragraph has occupied me for several minutes. “Then Dario asked the wrong questions.”
Dante slides the folder toward me. “He asked the questions you approved.”
I place my cup beside the phone. “Approval isn’t infallibility.”
Dante leans into his chair. “You’ve read that page three times.”
I turn the page over. “Twice.”
His finger taps the margin. “A vital distinction.”
My phone lies beside the folder. No call or message. Giada asked for nothing before I left, and she has continued the policy in my absence. I close the folder. “Where are we on Giuseppe?”
“Two crews are checking properties tied to Lombardi businesses. Mattia has men on the known family members. There is no confirmed location.”
I tap the list of loyalist holdings. “He needs money, shelter, and men he trusts. The families withdrawing support reduce all three.”
“Which gives him reason to move soon.” Dante’s attention drops to my lapel. “You wore the pin again.”
“It matches the suit,” I say.
“It has eight legs,” he says.
“Giada says the design isn’t anatomically exact,” I say.
“Of course she did,” he says. I reach for the next report.
Dante puts his palm on the page. “Your kitchen prepares food according to texture, you turn your office screen toward her, and you wear an inaccurate silver animal on your lapel.”
I lift my coffee. “You keep an alarming amount of information about my home.”
“You abandoned me in the middle of a gala conversation when she needed you.”
“She was overwhelmed,” I say.
“You’ve checked your phone seven times since you arrived.”
I look down at the dark screen. “Six.”
His mouth curves. “Another vital distinction.”
“Do you have a point?” I ask.
“You already made it. You want her beside you while you work. At your table. In your bed. You wear her gift while threatening men who would laugh at it if they valued their teeth less.”
My fingers brush the tiny metal legs. Giada chose it for me. She spent my money on the things she wanted, and I was one of them.
Last night, she pulled me into her body and called me her husband. This morning, she removed every trace of herself from my bedroom. I may have been one of her mistakes.
Dante’s hand stays over the page. “Are you going to keep pretending?”
“About what?” I ask.
“Why you’re ready to fire every man in this building so you can go home.”
I want Giada talking beside me while I work.
I want her corrections, her blunt questions, and the facts she offers when the world presses too close.
I want her blue shirt among my white ones and her socks in my bed.
I want her at breakfast tomorrow, whether she calls the bacon good or merely acceptable.
I want every part of my life altered by her.
“I’m happy,” I say.
Dante says nothing.
Happiness doesn’t cover all of it. I don’t merely want to return to her. I want to give her every part of me she chooses to take.
Love. The answer isn’t new. My willingness to name it is.
“I love my wife,” I say.
Dante pulls his hand away. “There you are.”
“Don’t look pleased with yourself,” I say.
“I’m pleased with her. You were insufferable before,” he says.
I turn my coffee cup a quarter inch. “Before?”
He gives me Antonio’s interrogation summary. “Go home, Luca. Giuseppe will remain a problem for the next hour.”
I put the file in my case. “Call me if Antonio gives you a location.”
“Tell your wife before you analyze the correct order of the sentences,” he says.
I close my case. “I don’t analyze sentences.”
Dante points toward the door. “You’ll prepare an agenda for the conversation.”
I leave before he becomes more entertaining.
The drive home takes twenty-one minutes.
I use nine of them rejecting explanations that sound like negotiations.
Giada deserves plain truth. I love her. I wanted her before I had language for it.
I gave her privacy because she asked for it, not because I wanted any part of her farther from me. I’m going home to tell her plainly.
Mattia waits inside the front entrance when I arrive. Two men stand near the basement corridor. Their shoes scrape against the marble when I enter.
“Where’s Giada?” I ask.
He looks toward the stairs. “She asked to speak to Antonio.”
My case lands on the marble floor. “Where is she?”
“I reminded her that you said she never had to go near him or speak to him. She said you already told her. She chose to go.”
The basement door stands open.
“Is anyone in the room with her?”
Mattia’s answer comes half a second late.
“No. Two men are outside the door.”
I take the stairs two at a time.