Chapter 51 The Occupation
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: THE OCCUPATION
The invasion didn't happen with guns or explosions. It happened with coffee.
I walked into the kitchen the next morning, my head throbbing from a sleepless night. I expected to see Mrs. Rossi at the stove, humming to herself as she fried eggs.
I expected the smell of burnt toast and strong, bitter espresso, the smell of the home we had started to build.
Instead, the kitchen smelled like vanilla and antiseptic.
Mrs. Rossi was there, but she wasn't cooking. She was standing by the sink, aggressively scrubbing a pot that was already clean. Her lips were pressed into a thin, white line.
Two men in crisp white uniforms were moving around the center island. They were chopping fruit with terrifying speed. There was a chrome espresso machine on the counter that hadn't been there the day before.
"Good morning," I said, hesitating in the doorway.
Mrs. Rossi looked up. Her eyes were wide and anxious. "Oh, cara. I... I didn't know if you wanted breakfast."
"I made a frittata," one of the men said. He didn't look at me. He kept chopping. "Signorina De Luca prefers a protein-heavy breakfast for the staff."
The staff.
He thought I was the help.
"I'm not hungry," I said. I looked at Mrs. Rossi. "Where is Dante?"
"He is in the war room," Mrs. Rossi whispered, wiping her hands on her apron. She glanced at the new chefs as if they were enemy combatants. "He has been there since dawn. With her."
I felt a cold knot form in my stomach. "I see."
I turned and walked out. I couldn't breathe in there. The kitchen, which had been the heartbeat of the house, now felt like a sterile hotel restaurant.
I went outside. I needed fresh air. I needed to feel the dirt under my boots to remind myself that I was still real.
I walked toward the garden.
The sun was high and bright, but it offered no warmth. The wind coming off the mountains was biting.
I rounded the corner of the keep and stopped dead.
Lucrezia was there.
She was standing by the low stone wall where Mrs. Rossi and I had planted the rosemary and basil three weeks ago. She was wearing a white trench coat belted tightly at the waist and tall leather boots. She looked immaculate.
She was pointing at the dirt. A man with a clipboard, one of her men, was nodding.
"It is inefficient," Lucrezia was saying. Her voice carried on the wind. "This entire section is a blind spot. If we clear the vegetation, we can install a secondary sensor array."
"Clear the vegetation?" I asked. I walked toward them, my hands balling into fists. "It's a garden."
Lucrezia turned. She looked at me with that same mild, infuriating amusement she had worn in the library.
"Ah, Lilith," she said. "Good morning. I trust you slept well?"
"What are you doing?" I demanded. I stood between her and the herbs.
"Securing the perimeter," Lucrezia said. She gestured vaguely at the small green shoots poking through the soil.
"This wall is perfect for ammunition storage, but the humidity in the soil is bad for the crates. We need to pave it."
"There is plenty of room in the warehouse," I said.
"The warehouse is full," Lucrezia corrected. "My father's shipment arrives at noon. We need space."
She didn't wait for a rebuttal. She turned back to the man with the clipboard.
"Dig it up. Pour the concrete. I want the sensors active by sunset."
"No," I said.
Lucrezia paused. She looked at me like I was a toddler throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.
"This is not a debate," she said coolly. "This is a military operation. Go read a book, Lilith. Let the adults work."
She walked away. She didn't stomp. She didn't yell. She just gave an order and expected the world to bend around her.
I watched the man pull a shovel from his belt. He drove the blade into the earth, right through the roots of the rosemary I had watered yesterday.
I turned away. I felt sick.
I walked to the main keep. I needed to see Dante. I needed to tell him that she was erasing us, one herb garden at a time.
I marched up the stairs to the second floor, toward the double doors of the war room.
Two guards were standing outside. They weren't Dante's men. They were wearing black tactical gear with a silver viper insignia on the shoulder.
I tried to walk past them. One of them stepped in front of me. He held up a hand.
"Access is restricted," he said.
"I need to see Dante," I said. "I live here."
"The Boss is in a strategy meeting," the guard said. "Signorina De Luca gave strict orders. No interruptions."
I stared at the closed doors. I could hear muffled voices inside. I could hear Dante's deep baritone. I could hear Lucrezia's smooth, confident reply.
They were in there together. Planning the future. And I was out here in the hall with the guards.
I turned around and walked away before I did something stupid, like draw my gun.
I ended up on the eastern ramparts. It was the furthest point from the house, a narrow stone walkway overlooking the sheer drop into the canyon.
I leaned against the parapet, letting the wind whip my hair across my face.
"She moves fast, doesn't she?"
I jumped and spun around, my hand instinctively going to the small of my back where I kept the gun.
A man was sitting on a crate in the shadow of the watchtower.
I didn't know him.
He was older, maybe fifty, with iron-grey hair cropped close to his skull. His face was a map of violence. A jagged, pale scar ran from his ear all the way down to his jaw, pulling his lip into a permanent grimace.
He wore the standard fatigues of the fortress guard, but unlike the others, he appeared to have lived in them for decades.
He was cleaning a rifle with slow, methodical strokes. He didn't look up at me.
"Who are you?" I asked, keeping my distance.
"Enzo," he said. His voice was like grinding stones. He spat over the edge of the wall. "I usually work the gate. Today, I'm up here. Seems the new management prefers younger, prettier guards by the entrance."
He finally looked up. His eyes were dark and hard, buried deep under heavy brows.
"And you're the girl," he said. "The one who came with the debt."
"I'm Lilith," I said.
"Lilith," he repeated. He tested the name. "Well, Lilith, you look like you just went twelve rounds with the Viper."
"The Viper?"
"Lucrezia," Enzo said. He said the name like a curse. "That's what the old families call her. Or the Ice Queen. Depends on who you ask."
"She's paving the garden," I said. It sounded stupid as soon as I said it, but the anger was still fresh.
"Of course she is," Enzo said. He rubbed an oil rag over the barrel of his gun. "She's scrubbing the place. She wants to remove any trace that Dante had a life before she got here."
He looked at me with a strange intensity.
"You be careful around her, girl. The De Lucas... they don't fight like us. We shoot you in the chest. They poison your water. They smile while they bleed you dry."
"You sound like you know them," I said.
Enzo stopped cleaning. He looked out at the horizon, his expression grim.
"I know them," he said. "I was there in '98."
"What happened in '98?" I asked.
"Her father invited the Santoro family to a 'peace dinner,'" Enzo said. "Lucrezia was just a teenager then, maybe sixteen. She was serving the wine. She looked like an angel in a white dress."
He paused, his jaw tightening as the memory surfaced.
"They killed everyone before the dessert course," he said softly.
"Men, women. They slit their throats at the table. Lucrezia stepped over the bodies to pour her father more wine. She didn't even get a drop of blood on her shoes."
I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the wind.
"She told me Dante was the monster," I whispered.
"Dante is a soldier," Enzo said firmly. "He kills because it is war. He kills to protect. She kills because it is a sport."
He went back to his gun. The rhythmic snick-snick of the cleaning cloth was the only sound on the rampart.
"Don't let her push you out," he added quietly. "That's her game. She makes you feel small, so you leave on your own. She saves the bullet."
I looked back at the house. It looked imposing and cold against the grey sky.
"I'm not leaving," I said.
"Good," Enzo said. "Because if she wins, there won't be anything left of this place worth saving."
My pocket vibrated.
I frowned. No one called me. No one texted me. The only person who had this number was Dante, and he was in the war room.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the burner phone.
I stared at the screen.
It was a text from Selena.
My breath hitched.
I hadn't heard from Selena in over a month.
When I first arrived at the villa, we had texted almost every day. She was my lifeline to the outside world. I told her I was alive; she told me to be careful.
Then, about four weeks ago, right after I told her about the security breach, she went dark. I had sent her three messages asking if she was safe. She never replied. I called her twice, and it went straight to voicemail.
I had assumed she was scared. I had assumed she changed her number to distance herself from the mess I was in.
But now, suddenly, her name was glowing on my screen.
I opened the message. It was three words.
Is she there?
I stared at the text, the wind howling around me.
Is she there?
Not "I'm sorry I vanished." Not "Are you okay?"
Just a question. And a specific one.
How did she know?
How did a waitress who lived in a studio apartment in the city know that a woman had arrived at a secret fortress in the mountains?
I felt a prickle of unease on the back of my neck. This didn't feel like a friend finally checking in. It felt like a wire being tripped.
I typed back slowly.
Who?
The response came almost instantly.
The Viper. Is she there?
My blood ran cold.