Page 5 of Promised to the Don of Naples
I went back inside and closed the window. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the room that was supposed to be mine for the next three months. I looked at the dresses I hadn't chosen, the perfumes I hadn't chosen, the flowers I hadn't chosen.
Then my eyes went to his dead mother's piano, the one he'd asked to have put in the room. As if it were a kindness. As if I didn't know that a rich man who prepares the ground beforethe woman arrives is a rich man who's already decided what he's going to do with her.
I took Francesca's letter out of my pocket, held it in my hand, but didn't open it.
Then I went to the wall between two windows, where a large picture hung. A family portrait—a photograph in a silver frame, blown up, the size of a door. It must have been from the nineties.
Mother, father, and three sons. I recognized Raffaele, the child on the right. I recognized Luca for the first time, in the center—a young man, maybe eighteen, tall for his age, the scar through his eyebrow already there, a closed-off look even in the photograph.
And then I looked at the other son, the middle one, between the two brothers.
A boy of about twelve, with the open smile of someone who hadn't yet learned to distrust the world, one arm slung around teenage Luca's shoulders and the other around little Raffaele's. I knew that smile. I knew that smile for certain, because I'd grown up looking at it.
It was Matteo, my brother...
LUCA MORETTI
The meeting in Rome ended at eleven at night.
I crossed the main hall of the private bank with my phone buzzing in my pocket and three lawyers behind me wanting my signature on the deal. I signed without reading it. It had already been read by six people I paid handsomely to read for me. I left through the private elevator, alone, and when the doors closed I pulled out my phone.
A message from Raffaele. One line:
She's arrived. She's in mamma's room.
I squeezed the phone in my hand, looked at my own reflection in the elevator mirror.
Allora.
A photo attached. I hesitated two seconds before opening it.
It was her, getting out of the car, looking up at the front of the house. Caught from a distance—Raffaele was always discreet. Dark dress, chin up, the posture of a ballerina beaten through an entire childhood into never letting a shoulder drop. Her black hair loose down to her waist, whipping in the wind.
The face I knew from two old photos I'd kept and from a thousand descriptions her father had given me over the years, thinking I'd never need them.
Madonna.
Salvatore had lied. Not about the description—about the details. The height, the chin, the way she stood there, alone among four armed men, without shrinking back.
I closed the photo and stepped out of the elevator. Then I called the driver, without a word. I'd change the plan and drive back tonight.
I got in the car. Rome in my window, yellow lights, fountains still running. Three hours to Posillipo if I let the driver push it. Inside, I ran the calculation I ran with every new situation: what changes, what doesn't, where the risk is.
The bride had arrived, the terms of the deal with Salvatore were locked in. In three months she'd be my wife, on paper and at the lunch table—just enough to stop the war and seal the political pact. Both fathers settled, both consiglieri satisfied, the south of Italy at peace.
It was supposed to be simple.
But Salvatore had lied. Not about the daughter—about the son.
And as long as Valentina didn't know what her father had done—what her own father had done to her brother—she'd go on thinking it was me. She'd go on walking into my house carrying a hatred I hadn't earned. She'd go on being dangerous, because a woman who hated the wrong man for the wrong reason was a woman who made mistakes the right man paid for.
I lit a cigar inside the car.
I'm going to have to decide,I thought, watching Rome vanish in the rearview,what she gets to know, and when. Because if she finds out too soon, she kills her father before thewedding, and the pact dies with him. And if she finds out too late, she kills me in bed on some November night.
I drew on the cigar, blowing the smoke out the open window.
This woman wasn't dangerous in herself—and yet she was a bomb her father had armed and sent to me as a gift.
