Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Valentino
Her hand goes slack in mine.
I wait. One breath. Two. Her chest rises and falls, her mouth parting slightly. She doesn't stir when I shift my hand beneath hers. Asleep again. Good. She needs the rest.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out.
Vittoria.
Fuck.
I move carefully because I don't know what will wake her. I answer before the call drops.
"Vittoria."
"Tell me she's breathing."
"She's breathing. She's asleep. One bruise on her cheek. It seems she's mostly unharmed."
There's a pause on the line, and I brace for screaming. For the kind of rage that comes when someone you love gets hurt and you can't get your hands on the people responsible.
It doesn't come.
"Good," Vittoria says, and her voice is so calm it scares me more than rage would.
"Then listen to me, Valentino, because I'm only going to say this once.
If a single hair on her head is harmed. If one more thing happens to her that you could stop.
I will kill whoever touched her. I don't care who it is. "
A beat.
"Even if it's you."
I stand in the cold hall with my back against the wall, and I almost laugh. Not because it's funny. Because it's the most Sartori thing I've ever heard, and she said it without raising her voice. Without a single crack in it.
I've known Vittoria had steel in her for years. The rest of the family forgets because she's small, clever, and kind. They keep waiting for the part of her that breaks.
It's not coming. It never was. If they had looked harder. Saw her for what she is and not their delicate baby sister. They would've realized too.
"Nothing happens to her," I say. "You have my word. I'd put myself in the ground before I let anyone near her again."
"I know you would." Her voice is matter-of-fact. "That's the only reason I'm not on a plane right now. Do you have a plan?"
"I'm waiting on your brothers."
A sigh travels down the line, long and tired. For the first time, she sounds less like a Sartori and more like a woman worried about her friend.
"Of course you are."
"Vittoria—"
"No, listen." The calm slips just enough for me to hear what's underneath it.
"Amanda has been through more than you know.
More than she lets anyone see. She walks into a room and lights it up so nobody ever thinks to ask why.
They never ask about her. Her parents—" She cuts herself off.
"It's not my story to tell. But that woman in there has spent her whole life waiting for someone to choose her and stay. And you—"
She goes quiet for a second.
"You're too quick to decide who's worth protecting, Valentino. You make up your mind in five seconds, and then you stay until you think they don't need you anymore. I've watched you do it for years."
I look toward Amanda's door.
"This is different," I hiss without meaning to.
"Maybe it is." A silence. "She trusts you. More than you think. More than she'd ever admit out loud. So whatever you think you're doing in that farmhouse, don't be careless with it. You don't get to be kind to her and then decide it was just the job. Do you understand me?"
My free hand finds the rosary in my pocket, the movement so automatic, I don't realize when I'm doing it anymore. The beads are warm from being against my body, and my thumb moves over them the way her finger moved over my mouth before she fell asleep. I shove that thought down.
"I understand."
"No, you don't," Vittoria says, almost gentle now. "But you will. Just don't break this. You hear me? She doesn't have many people who stay. Be one who does, or be honest enough to walk away before she starts counting on you."
"Vittoria—"
"No. You don't get to make her feel safe and then disappear when you decide the danger is over. You don't get to become someone she counts on and call it duty because that makes it easier for you."
The widow in Catania comes to mind before I can stop it.
I wanted her safe, so I protected her until she didn't need me anymore. She thought it meant more than that.
I press the back of my head against the cold wall and stare at the water-stained ceiling.
"I hear you," I say.
"Good." Just like that, the steel comes back into her voice. "Tell my brothers I want to be on the next call. Not after. On it. And Valentino—"
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
The line goes dead.
I slide down the wall and end up sitting on the floor, staying there in the dark hall outside Amanda's door.
The rosary is still in my hand. I don't put it away. I rub my thumb over one bead, letting the repetition give me something to do. Letting it ground me as memories from long ago surface.
There was a girl once. Before the widow. Before all of them. Before I learned to call protection a job.
Her name was Chiara, and she lived two doors down from my mother's house, close enough that I could throw a stone at her window. I did, most mornings, to wake her up so we'd walk to school together.
People in the village thought we were cousins because we were always together and never touching, the way kids are when they've known each other too long to think about it. She had a laugh too big for her body and a habit of finishing my sentences wrong on purpose, just to watch me get annoyed.
I had no sister. She was the closest thing.
We were sixteen.
That night is not a story I tell. Not in confession. Not to anyone. But I know my part in it. I froze. I stood there. I did nothing. A boy with everything in him screaming to move, and nothing moving.
I built a life on that. Every locked door I've guarded, every perimeter I've walked, every woman I've pulled out of danger, it all started with Chiara.
It never fixed anything, but I kept doing it anyway.
I should sleep. Luca's running the perimeter, and I trust Luca more than I trust most of my own thoughts. There's no reason for me to sit on a cold floor outside Amanda's door.
But I stay there anyway.
The other women were easy.
Not easy to save. Easy to understand.
Frightened. Needing. Looking at me like I was something solid they could lean on. That I understood. That's a job, and I'm good at it. When the fear left them, I left too. I told myself that once they were safe, my part was done and I could walk away without looking back.
Amanda isn't like that.
That's the problem.
She's hurt. Drugged. Bruised.
But broken isn't the word for her.
Under all of it, there's something that won't bend. There's steel in her that nobody in my world bothered to look for because they were too busy noticing the gorgeous loud mouth blonde and filing her under harmless or easy or stupid when she is none of those things.
Trying to make sense of her gets me nowhere. Every time she seems figured out, she proves me wrong.
My head tips back against the wall and my eyes shut.
Standing outside a door is easy. The perimeter, the head count, the body between the threat and the person it's coming for.
The rest of it is something else.
Something I was never taught.
Something I've spent forty years avoiding by calling it a job.
Amanda
My legs hold this time.
That's the first miracle of the day. I make it from the bed to the door without my knees folding under me like a baby deer.
The room still tilts a little at the edges, but I've walked drunk before.
This isn't so different, except nobody bought me the drinks and I didn't have any fun earning the spins.
I reach the door. Turn the knob. Pull.
And there's Valentino, sitting on the floor right outside like the world's most heavily armed welcome mat.
He's leaning against the wall, one knee up. When the door opens, his head comes up fast. Then he's on his feet before I've finished blinking, that big body unfolding from the floor with a grace that's frankly rude this early in the day.
How long has he been sitting there?
"I need to take a bath," I say.
My voice comes out rough. There's still that metallic taste at the back of my throat, the memory of someone else's mouth too close to mine. I want to be clean so badly it's a physical ache. A need sitting sharp beneath my ribs.
Valentino nods once.
"I'll bring you clothes."
He steps closer. Close enough that I have to tip my chin up to keep his face in view, and that's when I notice the shadows under his eyes.
He hasn't slept.
"Are you okay?" he asks quietly.
I try to answer, but my attention catches on his mouth, and the room shifts for a reason that has nothing to do with whatever drug is still working its way out of my system.
I cannot stop looking at his mouth.
There's a small split at the corner I hadn't noticed, probably from beating three men to death on my behalf. Romance is dead, but apparently my taste in it is alive and thriving in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
I drag my eyes up to his.
He's looking at my mouth too.
Oh.
He moves closer. Barely an inch, but I feel it. His gaze drops to my mouth again and stays there.
He's going to kiss me.
After everything, somehow he's still the one I want, and he's leaning in, and I'm not stopping him.
Someone clears their throat.
The sound cuts through the hallway.
Elio.
He's standing at the end of the hall, a mug in one hand, his face giving away absolutely nothing. He looks at me first, then at Valentino.
His gaze flicks between us, sharp and unreadable, and something seems to settle behind his eyes. Without a word, he turns and walks away, disappearing down the hall with the same calm detachment he'd arrived with.
The whole exchange lasts only a few seconds, but it stretches long enough to break whatever had been building between us.
Valentino steps back. The air comes flooding into the space between us, and I can breathe again.
"The bathroom," I say. My voice is steadier now. I tug the hem of the shirt I'm swimming in. "Where is it?"
Something flickers across his face. Regret, maybe.
"This way," he says.
He turns down the hall, and I follow. He stops at a door, pushes it open, and reaches in to switch on the light.
A cramped little bathroom. Dingy white tile with darkened grout, an old claw-foot tub, and a window too small for anything but light.
There's a mirror over the sink, cracked clean down the middle.
I look away before I can see myself in it.
"Towels are under the sink," Valentino says behind me, careful. "I'll leave clothes outside the door. Take however long you need."
I step inside and turn to face him in the doorway, this huge man filling the frame, blood on his knuckles and an apology he won't say sitting in the set of his jaw.
"Valentino," I say.
He waits. I forget what I wanted to say.
"Thank you," I say instead.
He nods once and pulls the door shut between us.
I use the toilet, and relief hits so fast I have to sit there for a second afterward.
I turn the taps. The pipes groan. I sit on the cold edge of the tub while it fills and watch the steam start to fog the room. I tell myself this is fine. I tell myself I've handled worse.
Men who heard no and treated it like a challenge. Hands on my waist after I moved them. Bodies blocking exits. Smiles that stopped being friendly the second I tried to leave.
I got out.
I always get out.
I peel off the shirt and let it fall to the floor before climbing into the tub. The water's almost too hot, but I want it to hurt a little.
I find the soap, some plain white bar, and start with my arms. Then my shoulders. Then my neck. The side of it. The place his tongue—
I scrub harder.
It starts young, learning where to stand and how to smile and when to leave. You learn which doors not to walk through. Which men not to be alone with. How to say no without making him angry. How to laugh just enough. How to stay polite without giving anything away.
Most days, it sits so deep in you that you forget you're doing it.
Then a night like the palazzo happens, and you remember.
You were never imagining the danger. You were only surviving around it.
I scrub my collarbone until my skin burns.
I was polite.
I let Aldo kiss my hand because that's what you do. You smile. You're gracious. You don't make a scene.
And he took that as permission.
Be nice. Be sunshine. Be the fun one.
I did.
Look where it got me.
The washcloth goes over my mouth. My lips. Almost the inside, before I stop myself.
It won't come off.
I can make my skin burn.
I can’t make it feel like mine.
I want Vittoria. I want my best friend.
I want her sharp little face and her hands that never stop moving and the way she'd already be halfway to fixing it, asking questions before I could even explain. She'd hold me. She wouldn't ask me to be okay. She'd just be there, fierce and certain.
I bring my knees up to my chest. Water sloshes over the edge of the tub, and I press my face against them.
I want my mom.
I want her to know. I want to be able to call her and tell her something happened, that everything feels wrong, that I don't know what to do.
I want her to get on a plane.
And she won't.
Not because of the Basiles or the rules or the disappearing.
She'll never know. My father won't ask. My mother will keep texting like nothing happened, because to her, nothing did.
Because I won't tell her.
What would be the point?
That's when I break.
The sound that comes out of me doesn't even sound human. Then I'm bent over my knees, sobbing so hard my ribs hurt. My throat hurts. My face hurts.
I'm tired.
Worn down from constantly watching what I say and do. Exhausted by the fear that never really leaves. Sick of carrying this weight alone.
The water turns lukewarm.
Then cold.
I don't move.
I don't know how long it lasts. Long enough for my fingers to wrinkle. Long enough for the sobs to wear themselves down into small, miserable aftershocks.
By the time there’s nothing left in me, the bathroom feels too quiet, and I still don’t feel clean.