Chapter 7 Chapter Seven
The door to the bedroom flew open.
I didn't have time to hide the papers so I shoved them under the bed and threw the drawer back into its slot, sliding it halfway in just as Matteo stepped into the room.
He looked different. He had changed into a dark grey suit, but his eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled of cold rain and expensive gin. He looked at me, then at the drawer I was still kneeling next to.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice a low warning.
“I was looking for a hairbrush,” I lied, my voice steady despite the hammer in my chest. “The one Agata brought is too soft.”
He walked toward me, his movements fluid and dangerous. He reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. He didn't let go. He pulled me close, his other hand going to my waist, feeling the fabric of the gown.
“You’re a terrible liar, Lila,” he whispered. He kicked the drawer shut with his boot. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
He didn't check the safe. He didn't even look at the floor. He was focused entirely on me, his thumb tracing the bandage Agata had put on my wrist.
“You save my life, and then you go digging in my things,” he said. “You’re looking for a way out. Or a way in.”
“I’m looking for the truth,” I snapped, finding my courage in the anger bubbling up from the letters I’d just read. “You tell me my father is a thief. You tell me I’m a debt. But you have my mother’s locket in your safe. Why?”
Matteo went perfectly still. The air in the room seemed to freeze. He let go of my arm, but he didn't move away. He loomed over me, his shadow swallowing the light from the window.
“You opened it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m your wife, remember?” I threw his own words back at him. “What’s yours is mine. Isn't that what the priest said?”
Matteo laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was the sound of a man watching a beautiful disaster unfold. He reached out and grabbed the front of my gown, bunching the silk in his fist and pulling me so close our noses brushed.
“You think you want the truth?” he growled. “The truth is a fire, Lila. It doesn't care who it burns. Your mother didn't die for the Russos. She died because of your father. Enzo didn't just steal money. He sold secrets. He sold her location to the men who wanted my father dead.”
“You’re lying,” I breathed, but a seed of doubt planted itself in my gut. My father had always been a shadow, coming and going, leaving us with bags of cash and promises of safety.
“Am I?” Matteo’s grip tightened. “Why do you think he left you behind? He knew I’d come for you. He used you as a distraction so he could disappear with the rest of the take. He traded his daughter for a head start.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes.” Matteo’s voice softened, but it was more terrifying than when he was shouting. He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear. “We are the same, you and I. Abandoned by the people who were supposed to love us. But I don't run, Lila. I take what is owed.”
He let go of me suddenly, and I stumbled back against the bedpost.
“The dinner is served in ten minutes,” he said, straightening his jacket. “Dress yourself in something less... bridal. I’m tired of looking at a ghost.”
He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.
“And Lila? If you touch that safe again, I won't tie you with silk. I’ll use iron. And I won't leave the key where you can find it.”
He left, and the click of the lock felt like a nail in a coffin.
I sank to the floor, reaching under the bed to pull out the papers I had hidden. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold them. I looked at my mother’s handwriting again.
“Don't let the fire take her too.”
I didn't know who to believe. Matteo was a monster, a murderer, a man who had stolen my freedom. But my father... my father had vanished and left me in the hands of the most dangerous man in Sicily.
I looked at the locket. I put it around my neck, hiding it under the collar of the red gown.
I wasn't just a dancer anymore. I wasn't just a debt.
I was a woman with a map of a war zone.
I stood up and went to the wardrobe. I pulled out a black silk dress, simple and elegant. I stripped off the red gown... the color of the Russo empire and let it fall in a heap on the floor.
I stepped into the black dress. It felt like armor.
I walked to the mirror and wiped the smudge of marble dust from my forehead. My eyes looked different. The fear was still there, but beneath it was something colder. Something that looked like the sea during a storm.
Matteo wanted a wife? He wanted a debt?
Fine.
But a flame doesn't just sit in a hearth. If you don't watch it, it spreads. It climbs the walls. It eats the house until there is nothing left but ash and silence.
I took the satellite phone from the drawer and tucked it into the small of my back, secured by the tight fabric of the black dress.
I walked to the door and waited for the guard to open it.
When the door swung wide, I didn't wait for an order. I stepped out into the hallway, my head held high, my bare feet silent on the marble.
The guard looked surprised, but I didn't give him a glance. I walked toward the stairs, toward the dining room, toward the man who thought he owned me.
Downstairs, the villa was alive with the sound of men talking in low voices and the clinking of silverware. The smell of roasted lamb and garlic filled the air. It was a normal house, if you ignored the submachine guns leaned against the walls and the bloodstains on the front lawn.
Matteo was sitting at the head of a long mahogany table. He was drinking wine, his eyes fixed on a map spread out before him.
He looked up as I entered.
He didn't say anything at first. He just watched me walk toward him. The black dress caught the light of the chandeliers, making me look like a shadow moving through a dream.
“Better,” he said, sliding the map aside. “Sit.”
I sat at the opposite end of the table.
“We have things to discuss, husband,” I said, the word tasting like poison.
Matteo leaned back, a small, dark smile playing on his lips. “I’m listening.”
“I want Sofia moved,” I said. “I want her in a safe house. Not one of yours. Somewhere neutral. And I want to speak to her every day.”
Matteo’s smile disappeared. “You’re in no position to make demands.”
“I’m the only reason you aren't a corpse on your own rug,” I reminded him. “I saved you. That has to be worth something in your world of debts and honor.”
Matteo stared at me for a long time. The silence in the room was heavy, thick with the tension of two predators sizing each other up.
Finally, he nodded. “Fine. She will be moved to a convent in the hills. The sisters are... old friends. You can speak to her once a week. Monitored.”
“Every day.”
“Once a week, Lila. Don't push your luck. You’re still a prisoner, even if you’re wearing better clothes.”
He poured a glass of wine and slid it down the table toward me. It stopped perfectly in front of my hand.
“Drink,” he said. “We have a lot to do before the sun goes down again. The men who tried to kill us tonight? They didn't come for the money. They came for the throne.”
I picked up the glass. I looked at the red liquid, the color of the gown I’d just discarded.
“Then I hope you’re ready for a war,” I said.
Matteo raised his glass to mine.
“I was born in one,” he said.
I took a sip of the wine. It was bitter and strong.
As I looked at him across the table, I realized something. He wasn't just my captor. He was my only chance at finding my father. And my father was the only one who could tell me the truth about the fire.
I would play the wife. I would play the captive.
But as the satellite phone pressed against my spine, I knew one thing for certain.
Before this was over, I would be the one holding the matches.
I reached down and touched the locket under my dress.
“Tokyo next?” The phrase from the future echoed in my mind, a mystery I hadn't solved yet.
But for now, I had to survive Sicily.
“Tell me about the hit,” I said, leaning forward. “If I’m going to be your wife, I should know who wants me a widow.”
Matteo’s eyes sparked with something that might have been respect.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured.