Chapter 36 36

Chapter 36 36
The Revelation

It was three days since Moretti uttered those words to Chiara and she'd hardly slept a wink since. Her bags under the olive eyes were darkening by the day, and there wasn’t one morning she didn’t wake up staring at herself in it. Her food turned to ashes in her mouth. Her shaking hands made it difficult to hold her coffee cup. It all felt wrong, unbalanced, as if the world had shifted beneath her feet and she couldn’t find stable footing anymore.

She had an eye on them at dinner every night. Giovanni appeared at the head of the table, his mask strapped over his face as before. Isabella stared across the table at him with large glacier blue eyes, looking down at her food. They hardly spoke to each other at the meals, but Chiara beheld there something that caused her heart to turn sick with rage and something else she would not call jealousy.

And it was the way Giovanni looked at Isabella when he believed no one was watching him. His cold, calculating amber eyes softened the moment they fell upon her. The muscles of his strained shoulders would relax whenever Isabella walked into a room. Somehow he’d grown gentler, softer-spoken, more human than the weapon she had helped create over fourteen years.

All the Chiara had strived for, all she had shared with Giovanni was being lost because of Lorenzo Vinci's whore daughter. What was worst of all, to Chiara, is that she understood why. Isabella had a warmth that Chiara knew she had scorched from herself years before. She was mild where Chiara had become sharp and cutting. Isabella was light in the dark where Giovanni lived, whereas Chiara only knew how to be efficient, cold, useful.

Isabella made Giovanni feel human instead of a murder robot. Chiara could never measure up to that. She had never done so in the past. But now, as she watched him change, as she observed him start to move away from the rut that they had been marching through together since they were children, something desperate and ugly twisted in her chest.

One night, Chiara left her bedroom when the sleep that was eluding her led to darker and darker places in thought. Her feet led her through the silent corridors of the estate till she was outside Moretti's door. She lifted her hand to knock, then hesitated.
This was a line she could not now uncross having crossed.

But then she remembered Giovanni's gaze on Isabella. She imagined that fourteen years of loyalty counted for nothing. She imagined being thrown out like a tool that had served its purpose. Her knuckles beat against the wood before she could change her mind.
Moretti swung open the door before she even knocked, as though he had been waiting for her. Even at this untimely hour he was dressed in full and his dark brown eyes were that of a knowing and satisfied man.

“I knew you’d come,” he said as he stepped aside to allow her to enter.

Chiara slipped into his room, her heart fluttering. "I made no such deal.”

"But you are considering it." Moretti went over to the teak bar that fitted into the corner of the room and poured himself two drinks of whiskey. “Which is to say, you’re already halfway there.”

He handed her one of the glasses. Chiara picked it up and drank deeply, relishing the burn as it went down her throat. It was easier than confronting what she was doing here.

“Honestly, tell me something,” Chiara said, her voice steadier than she had been. "Was Dante De Santis behind the hit on Giovanni's family?

For a long moment, Moretti was silent. Then he chuckled, and it was a cold, deliberate sound miles away from his usual warmth. "No. Dante did not order it. He wasn’t even aware it was going on until it was over.”

Chiara's blood ran cold. She gripped the glass more tightly. "Then who did?"

"I did." Moretti put it matter-of-factly, as if he were talking about the weather. "I hired the crew. I ordered the hit. I killed Giovanni's family. And I have spent the last fourteen years pointing Giovanni at Dante like a weapon, directing his revenge to dismantle my enemies while I profit from the collateral damage.”

The admission took Chiara's breath away. The glass of whiskey almost slipped from her fingers. "You—Giovanni has been—"

“Has been my instrument,” Moretti completed for her. He sipped his whiskey serenely. “My tool that is very effective, very dedicated. And you have been helpin' me to use him, Chiara. Every time you encouraged his lust for revenge every time you hunted down the crew members, every move you made to push him toward Dante— You have been following my designs!"

“I didn’t know,” Chiara murmured. Surges of terror swept over her. "I thought Dante was guilty. I thought that’s what we were doing, avenging Giovanni’s family.”

"Does it matter?" Moretti asked. He put his glass down and looked at her with the mask of those falsely kind eyes. “Seeing the truth makes no difference. Dante's organization is destroyed. The crew members are dead. Giovanni has been all I’ve wanted him to be. And now—"

“Now he’s turning into something else,” and Chiara finished with her voice hollow. "Something you cannot control. Because of Isabella."

"Exactly." Moretti tilted forward, his eyes sharp. Isabella is leading him to doubt all of his assumptions. Making him human again. And human men are unreliable, emotional, feeble. I cannot have that. Neither can you."
Chiara tried to respond, but her words didn’t form in her throat.

“So here is my proposal,” Moretti said. "Help me eliminate Isabella. Help me remove Dante permanently. And then when Giovanni finally finds out that I had lied to him for fourteen years, you would be the one to kick him while he was down. To end his pain. To take his organization and make it your own.”

Chiara rose abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. Her hand went for the gun on her hip, drawing it out and leveling it at Moretti’s head. Her heart was racing, but her arm was steady.

“I should kill you right now,” she said. "Tell Giovanni everything. Him figure out what the hell he wants to do with you.”

Moretti did not flinch. He didn’t even seem worried. He sat there, cool as a cucumber, acting like he had a gun held to his head every day.

"You could," he agreed. "But you will not."

"Why?" Chiara demanded. Her finger sat on the trigger. "Why will I not?"

"Because you've already made up your mind. You simply haven't realized it yet."

“I would never cheat on Giovanni,” Chiara said, but then she sounded unsure.

"You already have." Moretti spoke softly but his words were bullets. The second you started hating him for loving Isabella. The moment you began to think of your own future and not his revenge. The second you walked into my room instead of Giovanni’s with your suspicions.”

He rose casually, oblivious to the gun at his heart. “You won’t shoot me because you know I’m right. You know Giovanni is picking her over you. You know fourteen years of service don’t mean a thing to him. And you know that if you don't take yourself over to him now, you will spend the rest of your life looking at his back as he makes a future with Lorenzo Vinci's daughter and tosses you aside like a broken chisel.”

The gun shook in Chiara’s hand. "I hate you."

"I know," Moretti said softly. “But you are working with me anyway. Because it’s easier to hate than give in to fear. Afraid of being irrelevant. Afraid you’ll lose the only purpose you’ve ever had. Scared to watch the man you love be with someone else.”

“I don’t love him,” Chiara said, but the lie rang false even to her own ears.

Moretti smiled, that warm, fatherly smile which now seemed like the most grotesque thing in the world to Chiara. "You have three days to think about it. Three days out from the day Giovanni decides Dante’s fate. Three days before everything changes. Choose wisely, Chiara. Which is to say: once you have read that, there is no undoing it.”

He passed her, and the strung gun again pointed at him and out of his room. The door of the cabin was shut gently and she was outside alone with Chiara. Her weapon was still up, pointed at nothing but the space that Moretti had occupied.

She remained there for a long time, her arm starting to hurt from being held up straight with the weapon. And lastly she put it down, but did not find the strength to put it away. Could not make herself move.

Because Moretti was right. She knew it with a sickening sense of horror. She had already decided. She simply hadn’t confessed to it yet.