Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Valentino
Amanda is still screaming when the guards bring me in.
My name. Over and over. Hoarse already.
She won't forgive me for coming here. I knew that before I fired at the gate. She'll hate me for trading myself, and I want her alive long enough to do it.
Enzo Basile stands beside a long wooden table. I look at his hands first, then his face. His hands are folded. His eyes are dry and red-rimmed, the eyes of a man who has already cried somewhere private and will not do it again in front of me.
I knew men like him growing up. My father came from the same world.
Men who could order a death before breakfast and still believe there were lines a man did not cross.
Trafficking. Women. Children. Powder money.
They called the new generation clever for finding profit anywhere. Men like Enzo called it rot.
He won't kill Amanda now that he has me.
Not yet.
Me, he can hurt. Me, he can keep. Aldo is dead, and Enzo did not bring me here because one bullet would satisfy him.
"Benvenuto," Enzo says.
Welcome.
He says it like manners still matter.
"Valentino, don't." Amanda's voice tears through the room. "Don't just stand there. Don't do this. Don't you dare do this."
I do not look at her yet. I need to answer Enzo first. I need him listening to me before grief gets louder than truth.
Enzo gestures, and one of the guards pulls out a chair. No one shoves me into it. I sit because I came here to be seen, not dragged.
"You came to my gate and threw down your gun," Enzo says. "I buried my boy. I have heard ten versions of why from ten men who were not in the room. The Renaud woman gave me three more before she stopped being useful."
His eyes stay on mine.
"You were there. Tell me why."
A simple question. The only one he cares about.
"You want the truth?"
"I want the reason."
"Your son drugged her."
Amanda goes silent behind me.
"He put something in her drink at the palazzo because she asked questions about a bruised girl at a photo shoot. He took her to a room with two other men. They photographed her while she couldn't move. Put their hands on her. Told her it was a reminder to stay quiet."
Enzo doesn't blink.
"The girls she asked about were coming through Agenzia Luce.
Forty brought in each season. Thirty sent home.
The rest sold. Eastern European girls. North African girls.
Papers held. Housing controlled. Aldo's operation.
Aldo's money. Hidden from you through shell companies because he knew exactly what you would do if you found out. "
For a while, Enzo says nothing.
The lamp hums overhead. Somewhere outside, a dog barks twice and stops.
"I learned about the agency three days ago," he says. "My nephew told me with a gun in his mouth."
His mouth twists around the next words.
"Selling women."
He looks down at his hands, then back at me.
"We don't do that. We have never done that. If Aldo had stood in front of me alive and admitted it, I would have dealt with him myself. In my house. In my way."
"I believe you."
"Good." His eyes harden. "Then believe this too. It changes nothing."
"I know."
"He was mine. Whatever he was, he was mine. You don't take a man's son, hand him the reason after, and call the debt paid."
His hands tighten once on the edge of the table.
"The reason is good," he says. "The debt stands.”
"I know," I say.
If someone had put Vittoria on a floor like that, Bruno wouldn't have cared why. Not at first. He would have wanted the man dead, then the house that made him, then every coward who stood close enough to let it happen.
Enzo is wrong about his son.
He isn't wrong about the debt.
He studies me for another moment, and his mouth tightens.
"You'll have a long time to regret it," he says. "I promise you that much."
"I don't regret it." I look him in the eye. "I'd open that door again tomorrow."
A muscle jumps under his eye.
He turns toward the door, then stops with one hand on the frame, his back to me.
"Five minutes," he says. "I'll leave you with her for five minutes. Say what you need to say. Then my men move you."
The guards step out after him. The door stays cracked. They can hear every word.
Still, for the first time since they brought me in, no one stands between us.
I turn around.
Amanda has stopped screaming. Rope cuts into her wrists. Her face is wet. Her eyes stay on me like she understands exactly what I traded and hates me for making her watch it.
"What did you do?" she asks.
Her voice almost holds.
Almost.
"Valentino. What did you trade?"
Five minutes.
Enough time to tell her the truth if I don't waste it trying to make this better.
I cross the room and go down on my knees in front of her chair.
Amanda
I'm crying before he says a word.
"Look at me," he says. His voice is rough, but steady. "Amanda. You need to understand something. I didn't have a choice."
"You..." I try again, but nothing comes.
He sees it. The words getting stuck. The panic sitting right behind them. His face changes, just enough to hurt, and then he leans up and kisses me.
His mouth tastes like cigarettes. I press into him until my teeth hit his, until the rope burns my wrists because my hands keep trying to reach him.
He pulls back only enough to speak, his breath warm against my face.
"I regret one thing," he says. "Only one. That we didn't have more time." His jaw tightens. "But what we had, bella, those were the best days of my life. All of it. I lived thirty-eight years, and the best part was a few days in safe houses with you."
A sound leaves me. Small. Ugly. Mine.
My tears run into my mouth, salt and blood from the cut at my temple.
"I love you," I say. It comes out wrecked, but sure. "I love you, Valentino. I've loved you since I was fifteen, and I'm going to love you when I'm eighty."
His forehead drops to my knee for one second. When he lifts his head, his eyes are wet. "I love you too," he says. "Ti amo, Amanda. Capisci? I love you."
I nod because I can't do anything else. I hold on to the sentence. Every word. Every sound.
"What happens now?" My voice climbs before I can stop it. "Tell me."
"They let you go," he says. "When this is over, they'll put you outside the gates. Enzo has no quarrel with you. You were Aldo's victim, and that shames him."
"When this is over," I repeat.
His face tells me enough.
"No."
"Amanda."
"No." I pull against the rope. It tears at my wrists. "You mean after they kill you. You walked through that gate and handed yourself over, and now you want me to leave here alone and call Vittoria like that makes any of this fine?"
"It doesn't make it fine."
"Then don't say it like it does." My voice breaks, but I don't care. "You come out with me. Both of us. That's the plan."
One corner of his mouth lifts.
I hate him for it.
"You're stronger than you think."
"I don't want to be strong." The words come fast now.
No charm. No polish. Nothing left to hide behind.
"I'm tired of strong. I want ten days in Rome with you.
I want to get lost and complain about my feet and sit in some kitchen while you pretend you don't like when I ask too many questions.
" I lean as far forward as the rope lets me.
"You promised me ten days. You told me you don't break promises, so don't you dare become a liar. "
"I made you another promise," he says quietly. "I told you I'd try harder than I've ever tried at anything in my life."
"Then try."
His hand comes up to my face.
"I am," he says. "Until they stop me.”
The door opens, and Valentino doesn't fight.
The men come in behind him. He keeps his eyes on me.
"Goodbye, bella mia," he says.
The scream tears out of me before I can stop it.
"No. No, Valentino—"
Two men take him by the arms. He doesn't resist. Doesn't even tense. That is worse somehow. Worse than dragging him. Worse than hitting him. He lets them have him because he already decided they could.
Then hands are on me.
Two more men. One on each side. A blade saws through the rope at my wrists, and for one stupid second, I think they're letting me go to him.
They're not.
They're moving me.
"Don't touch me." My voice breaks on it. "Don't fucking touch me."
I grab for the chair, the rope, anything that keeps me in the same room. The man on my left hauls me up by the arm, hard enough that my feet leave the floor. I kick back and catch someone's shin. I swing blind and my palm glances off a cheekbone slick with sweat.
It doesn't matter.
I'm not strong enough for this, and they know it.
"VALENTINO!"
He's already at the other door. He turns his head, and his eyes find mine across the room.
His mouth moves.
I can't hear him over myself.
Bella.
Then he's gone.
They drag me the other way.
"He didn't do anything wrong," I tell them. My voice has dropped out of the scream into something worse. Thin. Pleading. "Your boss knows that. He told him the truth. Please."
The men say nothing.
One of them has the Virgin Mary tattooed on his neck, and for some reason that makes me hate him more.
I twist hard enough to get one arm free and grab the doorframe. The wood bites into my palm. A hand closes over mine and peels my fingers loose one by one.
Patient.
That almost breaks me more than the force. They're not angry. They're not afraid. I'm not a threat to them.
I'm a task.
A door opens on my right. They shove me through it.
I stumble and catch myself on my knees. The door shuts behind me, and the lock turns with a heavy clunk.
I spin and hit the wood with both fists.
"Let me see him. Hey. HEY."
Nothing.
Footsteps fade down the corridor.
"Amanda."
I freeze.
The voice comes from behind me. Low. Frayed.
I turn around.
A woman sits tied to a chair in the middle of the room, ankles bound to the legs, wrists pinned behind her. Lamplight cuts across one side of her face. Mascara runs in gray streaks. Her lip is split. Her hair has come loose on one side.
Even like this, I know her.
Francesca.
Francesca Renaud, who told me to stay in my lane. Francesca, who took my arm at the palazzo with her warm, professional hand and walked me down a corridor, talking about buyers like she wasn't delivering me to Aldo Basile.
She lifts her chin, and the movement hurts. I see it before she hides it.
"Amanda," she says again. The polish is gone from her voice. "Thank God. Listen to me. You have to listen to me."
I stand on the rug in one bare foot and stare at her.
The fear is still there. Valentino is somewhere in this house. Enzo has him. Men with guns are outside the door.
But looking at Francesca gives the fear somewhere else to go.
"Thank God?" I say.
My voice comes out steady.
"Interesting."