Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Valentino
Bruno's name lights up the screen before we've cleared the Bergamo interchange. I have closed my eyes for a while.
Amanda's head is still in my lap, her breathing even, her fingers curled loosely around the fabric of my trousers like she's anchored herself there in sleep. Luca glances at the rearview but says nothing. Good man.
"Talk," I say.
I press the phone harder against my ear.
"When."
"Fifteen minutes after you left the safe house. FBI coordinated with local Bergamo police."
That detail crawls under my skin and stays there. Fifteen minutes.
"Why," I say, and the word comes out flatter than I intend.
"Working on it. What do they have, that's the question I need answered before I can—"
"Bruno." I keep my voice low. Amanda hasn't stirred. "What do they have against him."
A pause. Bruno's pauses are never empty. They're loaded magazines, each second another round chambered. "How long till you reach Trastevere?"
"Four hours."
"The lawyer I'm sending should have information within twenty minutes. Our contact inside Bergamo's questura was notified about the operation. They brought in a federal prosecutor from Rome, which tells you the scope."
"The scope of what."
"Trafficking, Valentino."
The word detonates somewhere behind my sternum.
I don't think about it. My fist hits the passenger headrest with every pound of force my shoulder can deliver, and the seat mount cracks with a sound like a dry branch snapping.
The headrest lurches forward at a sick angle, foam and plastic splintering against my knuckles.
Pain flares white across my hand and I don't care.
I hit it again. The mount gives completely, the headrest dangling by a strip of fabric.
Luca pulls the car onto the shoulder without a word. Gravel crunches under the tires. The engine idles.
Amanda is awake. I know before I look down. Her body has gone rigid in my lap.
"Valentino." Bruno's voice, steady as a metronome. "Listen to me."
"He was in our house," I say. The words scrape out of me like rust. "He was in the room with her. He was supposed to be watching her and instead he was—"
"We don't know that yet."
"We know enough. We know the FBI doesn't mobilise a federal prosecutor for a parking violation, Bruno."
I'd stopped Elio from getting closer to her because I was jealous. Because the thought of his hands on her made me violent. Not because I'd seen it. I'd been so focused on keeping him away from her body that I'd missed what he'd been doing with his access to everything else.
"My lawyer will have details in less than twenty minutes," Bruno says. "I need you calm when that call comes."
"I'm going to kill him."
"You're going to drive to Trastevere and wait for information."
"Bruno—"
"That's an order." A beat. Then, quieter: "From your Don. Not your cousin. Hear the difference."
The line goes dead.
Amanda sits up. Slowly. Her eyes are swollen from sleep, and she is the most dangerous thing in this car, which is saying something given there are two loaded weapons within arm's reach.
"What's going on?" she says.
Her voice is hoarse.
"When I have the full picture," I say, "you'll get it."
She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them, tucking herself into the corner of the backseat like the car just got colder. "Valentino. I heard you on the phone. I heard trafficking. I heard you say you were going to kill—"
"Elio's been arrested."
The words come out hard and fast. I'm watching her face when they hit.
Her lips part. Her eyes go wide. One hand flies to her mouth, and all the color drains from her cheeks.
"No," she whispers through her fingers.
"Police picked him up at the Bergamo safe house fifteen minutes after we left.The case has reached into the States, so the FBI is in it too. Liaising with the Italians, since they have no authority of their own here. Prosecutor from Rome. They've been building a case."
"A case for what?"
"What do you think, Amanda?"
She flinches at the way I say it.
"He wouldn't," she says. "Elio wouldn't do that. He was there to protect me. Vittoria sent him to—"
"Vittoria didn't know what he was."
"You don't know what he was either. You just said you don't have the full picture."
"I know they don't bring in a prosecutor from Rome for nothing."
"That's not—" She shakes her head hard, like she can make the words come apart if she refuses them fast enough. "You're wrong. You have to be wrong. He—"
Her voice cracks.
And that is what does it.
Not the arrest. Not the case. Not even the word trafficking.
That sound.
Amanda grieving for Elio Mancini like he has earned anything from her.
The rage is already there. Her voice cracking over his name gives it somewhere to go.
I move before I think.
My hand closes around her throat. Not hard. Just enough to pull her closer.
Her breath hits my mouth. Her eyes go wide.
"Are you in love with him?" I ask.
My voice is quiet.
That makes it worse.
Amanda is crying.
Amanda heard his name and defended him. She heard trafficking and refused to believe it. Now she's crying.
The rest follows.
My hand opens.
Her throat slips free. She drags in a breath that sounds like it hurts and reaches for me, but I pull away before she can touch me.
"Don't."
"Valentino, I'm not—"
"From now on, you don't touch me."
She just stares at me.
Amanda
"Trafficking?"
The word is out before I can stop it. I sit forward, the seatbelt biting into my shoulder.
"You never said trafficking. You said Elio was arrested. You said charges. You didn't say—"
He stares through the windshield, one hand wrapped around the broken headrest.
"What exactly did you think the charges were, Amanda?"
"I thought—" I shake my head. "I don't know what I thought. You punched the seat, told me Elio was arrested, and started talking about killing people. Forgive me for not immediately filling in human trafficking."
The pieces start fitting together anyway.
Agenzia Luce.
The girls.
Aldo Basile.
Elio had been in Milan. At the events. In those circles.
Around all of it.
My stomach drops.
"Do you believe it?" I ask quietly. "Do you believe Elio had something to do with Aldo? With what happened to—"
The rest won't come out.
Valentino turns his head. His eyes are dark in the low light.
"What I believe," he says, each word clipped short, "is that a man I trusted has just been arrested in connection with the same operation that put you on that floor."
"That doesn't mean he knew. That doesn't mean he—"
"Doesn't it?"
"No."
The certainty surprises me because it's real.
Not because I'm defending Elio.
Because it doesn't make sense.
"Valentino, think about it. If Elio is working with Aldo, why does he need a palazzo full of people to get me alone? He has weeks. He drives me to shoots. He's there every day. If he wanted something from me, he had a hundred chances."
"Stop."
"He never pushes me toward anyone. He never tells me to trust people I shouldn't. He never—"
"I said stop."
"Why? Because I'm making sense?"
Valentino lets go of the broken headrest.
The silence that follows is worse than him yelling.
"Since your lover is, by some unfortunate mistake, sitting in a cell right now, I suggest you shut the fuck up and stop talking to me."
Your lover.
I stare at him.
For a second, I honestly don't know what he's talking about.
Then it clicks.
Elio.
That's what this is.
Of all the conclusions he could have reached, that's the one he chose.
"Luca," Valentino says. His voice is calm now. "Pull over.”
Luca eases the car onto the shoulder.
Valentino opens the rear door.
Cold air rushes in. Diesel. Wet pavement. The distant growl of a truck somewhere behind us.
He doesn't look at me.
Doesn't hesitate.
He gets out, shuts the door with a quiet click, and walks around to the passenger side.
The front door opens.
Closes.
A second later he's in the seat beside Luca, adjusting the broken headrest like nothing happened.
Luca pulls back onto the road.
And suddenly I'm alone in the backseat.
I stare at the back of Valentino's head.
Five minutes ago, his hand was in mine.
Now he won't even look at me.
I defended Elio because none of this makes sense. Not because I want him. Not because I'm secretly carrying a torch. Elio is someone I used to sleep with. That's all.
Under any other circumstances, I might even find this a little flattering.
Valentino Conti. The human equivalent of a locked door, just moved to the front seat because he convinced himself I'm in love with somebody else.
That's the sort of thing I would screenshot and send to Vittoria with seventeen exclamation points.
Right now, though, it doesn't feel flattering.
It feels like punishment.