Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Amanda
The hotel room is too quiet, and that's the problem.
I've tried everything. The TV plays some Italian game show in the background, all bright colors and a host who laughs too hard at his own jokes.
Room service brought me a plate of pasta I picked at and abandoned.
I scrolled my phone until my thumb cramped, watching other people's perfect dinners and perfect partners and perfect lives flicker past.
My laptop chimes.
The email is from Casa Aurelia's events team. The subject line has three exclamation points and a champagne emoji, which tells me everything about who wrote it before I open it.
Amanda!!! As a thank-you for the incredible work this week, Casa Aurelia would love for you to join us at a gala this Saturday evening. Cars, couture, the whole thing. Invitation is for two. Bring whoever makes the night more fun!
A palazzo party. The kind I've spent years on the wrong side of velvet ropes for. The kind I'd screenshot and sent to Vittoria with forty exclamation points eighteen months ago.
Bring whoever makes the night more fun.
I read that line three times. The cursor blinks at me, patient and merciless.
Whoever.
As if I have a whoever.
I set the laptop aside and pull my knees up to my chest, and for one breath, I let myself feel it.
The thing I never say out loud.
The thing that makes a Saturday gala feel less like an invitation and more like evidence.
I’m lonely.
I’m so lonely the room feels louder because of it.
Then I do the thing I absolutely should not do.
My phone is in my hand before I've decided anything. I find his name sitting there in my contacts because he put it there himself with those scarred, certain fingers and I stare at it.
This is a terrible idea. He's not a whoever. He's a grown, dangerous man who mocked my entire industry to my face and then walked out of a café like a closing door. He's not going to want to put on a tuxedo and drink prosecco with me while I work a room.
My thumb is already typing.
Hi. Random question. I have an invite to a gala this Saturday. Plus one. Casa Aurelia spoiling me. Any chance you want to come?
I read it back. Too needy underneath the casual. Too please don't make me sit in this room alone.
I send it anyway, because apparently I hate myself.
The little sent-receipt slides up. I put the phone face-down on the duvet like that'll make it less real.
I pick at the loose thread on my robe and I stand up, sit down, stand up again.
I tell myself he's asleep. He's a normal person with normal hours, unlike me, and he won't see it until morning, and by morning I'll have texted again to take it back, haha never mind, found someone, you're off the hook—
The phone buzzes.
I lunge for it like it's the last lifeboat. The screen lights my face up in the dark.
Where.
One word. No question mark. So completely him that I let out a laugh, sharp and surprised. He doesn't even ask why, or who I am, or whether I'm joking. Just where. Like he's already reaching for his keys.
My hands aren't quite steady when I type back.
Palazzo Grimaldi. Saturday, 8. I know it's not exactly your scene. Rich people in nice clothes pretending to like each other.
The three dots appear immediately.
I'll pick you up at 7:30.
I stare at it.
He said yes, and my stomach erupts with little bird wings and my heart takes off in my chest. My eyes sting, which is ridiculous. It's a party. It's nothing. It's a man being polite, probably, doing a favor for Vittoria's friend because that's the kind of obligation people like him take seriously.
I type Perfect and then delete it because it sounds too eager. I type Great, thank you and delete that because it sounds like a work email. In the end I send back the one true thing I can manage to keep light.
Wear something that isn't black. Live a little, Conti.
The reply comes back fast enough that I know he's still holding his phone, somewhere across this city, in whatever room a man like him sits alone in at midnight.
No.
That's all. and I'm grinning at my screen like an idiot.
I set the phone on the nightstand and lie back against the pillows, heart doing… God, it's doing so much, I can't identify it.
I shouldn't have done that, but I'm so fucking glad I did.
The phone buzzes again before I've even let go of it, and for one stupid, soaring second I think that he's changed his mind.
It isn't him.
Mom.
I know what it'll be before I read it, the way you know the ending of a movie you've seen a hundred times.
Hi sweetie. Just checking. Are you okay? Haven't heard from you.
I laugh because crying is not going to help right now.
Three days ago I told her I'd landed the campaign of my life. The thing I've bled for. The thing I built out of nothing but stubbornness and a good eye and two years of people telling me no. And she sent me a fucking thumbs-up emoji.
But this—a check-in, a "sweetie," a worried little question mark—this she can manage. Because this costs nothing. This is the maintenance text. The one you send so you can tell yourself you're a good mother.
I know exactly what it is. She read some article on a flight, probably. How to Stay Connected With Your Adult Children. And somewhere over the Atlantic she set a reminder, and the reminder went off, and here we are.
I roll onto my back and hold the phone above my face in the dark.
I’m fine, I type.
My thumb hovers.
Then I think about something I haven’t let myself think about in a long time.
I was maybe six when I asked them for a sister.
I remember being very serious about it. I had a whole speech. I’d made a list in my head of all the things a sister could do. She could share my room. She could play with me when the nanny was on the phone. She could be there when they weren’t.
I didn’t say that last part.
Even at six, I knew not to say that last part.
But I meant it.
I wanted a person who was mine. Somebody on my side of the glass.
My mother looked at me over the rim of her wineglass and said, “Why would we want another one when we already have you?”
And she meant it as a kindness.
She thought she was being sweet. We already have you. As if I were enough. As if I were the prize they’d been hoping for, instead of the thing they got and never quite knew what to do with.
They didn’t have another.
They didn’t even really have the first one. Not the way you’re supposed to.
And I’ve spent a long time wondering why they bothered at all. Two people who loved airports more than bedtimes. Two people who could go a week without thinking my name. People that careful with their freedom don’t have a baby by accident.
I figured it out eventually.
It took years, and it isn’t a pretty answer, but it’s the only one that fits.
They needed somewhere to put it.
The money, I mean.
The houses and the accounts and the things with my father’s name on them. You can work that hard for that long, build a fortune like a fortress, and then one cold morning, you remember dead people don’t get to spend any of it.
It just sits there.
It goes to a charity, or a cousin, or the government, unless you make someone of your own to hand it to.
So they made someone.
A vault with a heartbeat.
A place to land the inheritance so it wouldn’t feel like waste.
That’s me.
That’s the job.
The thought is so bleak it almost makes me laugh again, and this time it comes out wet around the edges.
I hate it.
I type back: I'm great, actually. Campaign's going amazing. Got invited to a gala this weekend.
I add, because I can't help it, because some part of me is still six years old with a list. At a palazzo. It's a big deal.
I send it.
I watch the screen. I count. The TV host laughs at something. Outside, a scooter buzzes down the wet street and fades.
The little delivered tag sits under my message. No dots. No reply.
I wait until the screen dims and goes black, and my own tired face stares back at me from the screen.
Then I open Instagram.
I close my eyes and try to hold my tears.
Valentino
"I'm in Milan," Luca says.
"Good." I sit up, swing my legs off the bed, and the hotel room comes into focus around me. "Where are you?"
"South side. Got a place near the rail yards. I can move tonight if you need it."
"Tomorrow. We meet, I'll walk you through what I have. It isn't much."
There's a pause that means he's already cataloguing the gaps, already thinking three moves ahead.
"There's an event Saturday," I tell him. "Casa Aurelia. The fashion crowd, the money behind it. Some of the names you'll want will be there. In person."
"You’re going in?"
"I have an invitation." I pause long enough for him to understand what that means. "You work the outside. Plates, faces, who comes and who leaves. I’ll work the inside."
"Alone?"
I don’t answer right away, and Luca, being Luca, doesn’t fill the silence. That’s the thing about him. He waits, and the waiting is its own question.
"No. I’ll have someone else," I say finally. "It’s handled. We’ll talk tomorrow."
"Okay."
Then the line goes dead, because Luca doesn’t say goodbye either.
I lower the phone and stand there a moment, watching the street.
Then I pull up Bruno’s number and call.
"Amanda White is in Milan," I say. "Running point on the Casa Aurelia launch. And Elio Mancini is here with her."
"I know," Bruno says, mildly, like I’ve told him it’s raining.
My fingers tighten around the phone..
"You know."
"Vittoria sent Elio. We're aware of the situation."
"And you didn't think to tell me." It comes out flat, the way my voice goes when I'm working hard to keep it level.
"I'm here, Bruno. I'm in the middle of the exact thing she's standing on top of, and nobody mentioned that my cousin's best friend is decorating the same rooms I'm trying to look inside. "
"We thought the same thing you're thinking now." He doesn't sound rattled. He never does. "That it wasn't a coincidence. So we put eyes on her. Elio reports nothing's happened. No contact, no trouble. So there's no reason to make it a priority right now."
I turn from the window. The room feels smaller.
"No reason to make it a priority," I repeat. "You sent Elio."
"He's reliable."
"He's good at driving Vittoria to parties.
" My jaw aches from how hard I'm holding it.
"He's good at standing outside a door and looking solid.
That's escort work, Bruno. That's a man you trust to walk a teenager into a school dance and bring her home.
It is not the man you put on a woman who is swimming this close to sharks and doesn't even know the water's full of them. "
"I had men in this city already." I'm pacing now, slow, the carpet soft under my bare feet.
"Quiet ones," I say. "Men trained to watch without being seen. If you wanted her protected, fine. Send Elio. But don’t put him ten feet behind her in the same city where you’ve asked me to look into missing girls and then fail to mention she’s here. "
Bruno says nothing.
I keep walking, each step harder than the last.
"You knew Casa Aurelia put her inside this, and you didn’t tell me. You knew Elio was on her, and you didn’t tell me. You put protection on her, which means you thought there was something to protect her from."
His voice lowers. "Why does this make you so angry, Valentino?"
The question stops me mid-step.
For half a second, there is nothing in my chest but heat.
Then the café comes back to me. Amanda sitting there with her scarf slipping loose, her mouth sharp, her eyes too quick. The way she went still for one second before the smile came back, like even she knew something was wrong and had already decided to talk herself out of it.
"I’m not angry," I say. "I’m wondering why I had to find out by accident."
The silence that follows has teeth.
"Careful," Bruno says quietly. "I’m still the Don, cousin."
"I remember."
"Then speak like it."
The line goes dead.
I stand in the middle of the room with the dark phone in my hand and Milan spread cold and wet beyond the glass.
"Cazzo," I mutter.
Because I have just warned Bruno about secrets while keeping one of my own.
I care that she’s here.