Chapter 34 34

Chapter 34 34
Chiara's Crossroads

It was a few days after Dante had been to the gallery. Dante's file he carried around with him. The unwieldy bundle of documents and proof. But he didn’t want to talk about it with Isabella. He wouldn’t tell her what he was thinking. Would not share his conclusions. He was distant. Cold. He spends long hours shut in his office reviewing evidence by himself. Going through page by page. Isabella saw him in passing. For breakfast, when they took seats at the opposite sides of the table and ate in hostile silence. The only sound was the scrape of silverware. Down hallways where he wouldn’t even say hello to her. Would see right through her, as if she was a ghost.

Heating up the night she had kissed his scars completely had frozen. The vulnerability they had shared. The instant he’d broken down in tears inside and she’d tried to reassure him. All of it was gone. Buried under ice. She understood why. She had defended his enemy. Reconsidered his 14 year pursuit of vengeance. Had him questioning everything he had received. But that knowledge did not make the distance hurt any less. It didn’t make the silence more bearable.

One evening Isabella ended up outside his office. She hadn’t intended to be there. Had promised herself she would give him space. But her feet had taken her down the hall. The door was slightly ajar. Just a crack. And she could hear Giovanni inside. Talking on the phone.

He called between the void. "I have examined Dante's evidence," Giovanni said. His voice was weary. Tired in a way she’d never heard before. "Some of it raises questions. Inconsistencies I cannot explain. But I can't, for fourteens years now, Moretti. Fourteen years hunting these men. Building cases against them. If I’m wrong about Dante being a liar and somebody’s been feeding me bullshit..."

A pause. Isabella drew a little nearer to the door. Straining to hear. Moretti’s voice was coming through the speaker then. Smooth and reassuring. The way a father speaks to his lost son. "You are not wrong, Giovanni. You know the truth. You have always known it. Dante is desperate. Grasping at straws. He knows you’re coming tight, and he’s grasping for anything to save his hide. Don't let yourself be influenced by the Vinci girl's skepticism. You know who sent the hit squad to kill your family.”

Isabella's hands clenched into fists. She wanted to burst in. To argue. To let Giovanni see what Moretti was doing. How he was manipulating. But she stood frozen in the hallway. Listening. "The Vinci girl," Giovanni said. There was something in his tone. Pain. Confusion. Something for which she couldn't put her finger on. "Isabella. She has caused me to doubt everything. Made me think all I am is revenge. If perhaps there is something beyond this. Beyond the hate."

"Beyond what?" Moretti asked. Isabella could hear the sharpness under the sweet voice. The warning.

"Beyond vengeance. Beyond hate. Other than that, I waste my life hunting people who deserve it or not. She just looks at me and sees—” Giovanni caught himself. “She doesn’t care what she sees.”

“It’s just very important,” Moretti said, hedging. Each word deliberate. “Because she is the daughter of Lorenzo Vinci, Giovanni. The son of the man who helped take your family down. Who did the driving of car while murdering your mother and father and brother. If you, had fucking caught feelings for her, if she was making you all skwushy and mumbly inside and questioning your answers to everything and shit like that.. that is a dangerous thing. That, of course, is what she wants.”

“She doesn’t want anything,” Giovanni continued. But he sounded uncertain. As if he was trying to persuade himself. "She is grieving her father. trying to figure out what the hell did he do. Attempting to square the man she knew with the monster he was. Trying to —”

“Trying to use you,” Moretti corrected. “by making you doubt people close to you. Cannot you see it? She kisses your scars. Makes you feel human again. And suddenly, you are doubting fourteen years of surety. That is not coincidence, Giovanni. That is strategy. That is manipulation."

Isabella's breath caught. He hadn’t mentioned the scars to Moretti. That intimate, vulnerable moment in his study. Had treated it as if they were simply sharing a piece of information that could be examined or dissected. Though it was more like a business transaction as opposed to something private and painful and real. It felt like a betrayal, in proportion even more intense than the fact of it. More than she’d wanted to admit.

"I've got to run," Giovanni announced abruptly. “I’ll decide on Dante in the short term. Consider the remainder of this evidence. But Moretti, thank you. That amid all this, for being the one constant. The only person that I can trust in this world at all. The only one who's never lied to me."

Isabella waited in the hall after hanging up. Her heart was aching. Giovanni trusted Moretti completely. Doubted her entirely. Considered her kissing a ploy as opposed to an actual feeling. Saw her tears as a tactic, not real grief.

She was still standing, trying to get her head around what she had just heard, when the office door opened. And there was Zia, and Giovanni stopped at that sight. Something flicked across his face for a second. Longing maybe. Or regret. Something soft. Then it hardened. His expression went cold.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked.

"Long enough," Isabella said quietly. “One long enough to hear you say you believe I’m playing with you.”

Giovanni's jaw tightened. "It was a mistake. That moment. I was; you were grieving, and we both let our defenses down. But certainly we shouldn’t have done that.”

"Both what?" Isabella interrupted. She stepped closer. "Both felt something real? Both let our guards down? Both managed, for a few minutes, to stop being enemy and victim of the other? We both behaved as if we were human, not just pawns in this game.”

"Yes," Giovanni said harshly. “And it was a mistake, because we’re enemies, Isabella. Your father killed my family. Helped murder them. That doesn’t go away just because you cried and I was weak enough to let you touch me. Soft enough to let you see my scars. Weak enough to let you forget for a moment what you are.”

“Is that really what you think?” Isabella asked. She sidled nearer in the face of his warning posture. Despite all the fury radiating from him. "That you were weak? That I was manipulating you? Or are you just frightened of what it signified? Afraid perhaps we are not only enemy and prisoner? Afraid that perhaps, despite it all, there is something real here?”

"Do not," Giovanni warned. His voice was low. Dangerous. "Do not psychoanalyze me. You don’t know how I feel, so don’t act like you do. There is no need to make this something it isn’t.”

"Then tell me," Isabella challenged. "Tell me what you see when you look at me. Let me know whether you see only Lorenzo Vinci’s daughter or you see me. Isabella. A person. Let me know if that thing between us is weakness only, or is it something more awful? Something real."

Giovanni stared at her. Isabella could read the war in his eyes. Something inside of her wanted to lean forward even as she fought herself to stay back. The want fighting the should. The human half of himself fighting with the half that had been born from revenge. “It doesn’t matter how I feel,” he eventually said. "You are Lorenzo Vinci's daughter. I am the man who killed him. We are impossible. There's no version of this where we ever work. End of story."

He moved past her. His shoulder brushed hers. And Isabella let him pass because what else could she do? Compel him to confess feelings that would only further complicate matters? Make him admit to something they were both scared of? But as she watched him stride off down the long corridor, she had an epiphany. They were both prisoners now. Giovanni the prisoner of his fourteen years' quest for vengeance. By his need to hate. Because he can’t get beyond the past. Isabella confined by her father’s crimes. By a guilt from which she could not fly. To a husband she never picked. And neither of them knew how to do free.