Page 4 of Promised to the Don of Naples
And coming down the steps to meet me, it wasn't him.
It was a younger man, maybe early thirties, with enough of a family resemblance that I knew who he was before he said a word. Taller than most, but shorter than his brother, I imagined. Black hair cut short, easy smile, light gray suit, Italian shoes, the air of a man who'd never walked into a room where he wasn't welcome. Charming in a way the Church would have condemned.
"Valentina Rossi," he said, stopping on the last step, right in front of me. "Welcome to Posillipo. I'm Raffaele Moretti, Luca's brother."
He held out his hand, but I didn't give him mine right away. I looked at his hand a second longer than was polite. He noticed, but he didn't pull it back.
"My hand doesn't bite," he said, with a crooked smile.
"I'll make a note of that," I said.
I gave him my hand. He kissed it—light, professional, a millimeter above the skin, the way men raised in good houses kissed the hands of women they didn't yet know were allies or enemies. I caught his scent, cedar and something like new leather.
Not him,I thought.This isn't the smell of the man who killed Matteo. This one's the brother—the charm, the bait, the man who greets the guests so the monster doesn't have to come down.
"My brother sends his apologies," Raffaele said, with the calm of a man who'd been apologizing for his brother for twenty years. "A meeting in Rome. He's back tomorrow."
"What a shame. I was so looking forward to meeting him today."
Raffaele laughed. A real laugh, just for a second, and he looked at me differently—like a man who'd realized the package that had arrived from Palermo maybe wasn't what he'd expected.
"Vieni. I'll show you the house."
The house was a living museum.
Travertine marble, Murano crystal chandeliers, seventeenth-century tapestries on the walls, a dining room that could seat thirty guests comfortably.
Raffaele talked as we walked—the family history, the furniture that had belonged to his grandmother, the winery down below, the music room upstairs. I listened without paying much attention, mostly because I was mapping exits, counting guards, memorizing routes.
Three soldiers on the ground floor, two on each floor above, one at each end of the garden—I saw them through an upstairs window as we passed. Cameras at the corners of the hallways. A sensor on a door Raffaele didn't open—"Luca's office, he prefers it closed."
We went up to the west wing. Raffaele stopped in front of a double oak door.
"This one's yours," he said. "It used to be my mother's room."
Then he opened it.
A huge room, a canopy bed, a balcony facing the bay, a bathroom the size of my living room back in Palermo. Fresh flowers in three vases, an upright Steinway in the corner, tuned. Clothes already arranged in the closet—new dresses I'd never seen before.
"My brother asked for everything to be ready. The dresses were chosen to your measurements. If any of them don't fit, the seamstress comes tomorrow."
"How thoughtful. Tell him I'm grateful."
Raffaele looked at me again, that same way.
"You're not what he expected."
"We'll see if he's what I expected," I countered, with a brief smile.
He laughed again, then bowed his head for a fraction of a second—an old gesture, a gesture of reluctant respect—and left the room.
When the door closed, I waited. I counted to thirty, then went to the door and tried the handle.
Locked from the outside.
I paced the room in circles for ten minutes before I made myself stop.
The balcony was open. I took a step to the edge and looked down: a forty-foot drop to the garden stones, and two soldiers standing in the rose bed where they could see me perfectly. They looked back at me—they even seemed polite. Then one of them tipped his head in greeting.
