Page 69 of Promised to the Don of Naples

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"Even when you flirt with his fiancée?"

"Especially when I flirt with his fiancée." He smiled, amused now. "Because someone has to provoke the monster, cognatina. Otherwise the monster falls asleep. And my brother asleep is a dead brother."

"I understand."

"Brava."

He stood up and set the glass on the bench. Then he kissed my hand without lingering—three seconds, two seconds. Different from the other times.

Soon after, he left, and I stayed in the garden with the scent of the roses and realized, slowly, that Raffaele had changed his game.

And that I had changed my game too.

That night I had dinner alone in the small room. Donna Beatrice appeared at nine-thirty.

"Signorina. The Don arrives tomorrow night."

"You said Friday."

"A message just now to Acquaviva, copied to me. He asked that you be in the music room at eleven o'clock tomorrow night."

"The music room?"

"Sì."

"Did you bring the key to the music room so I can lock it from the inside?"

She looked at me.

It took three seconds.

"Sì, signorina." She set the key on the table. Small, gold, old. "I brought it."

She left, and I picked up the key, put it in my trouser pocket, beside the Mondello key.

Now I had two keys in my pocket and two letters against my chest.

And a silent promise for tomorrow at eleven at night.

CHAPTER 21

"There are nights that begin in marriage and end in war. In this house, both things happen."

VALENTINA ROSSI

I spent the day watching the clock.

I bathed at four in the afternoon, and again at six. I tried on three different dresses before settling on my mother's moss-green—the same green as in the Capodanno photo from 1995. I put on my mother's emerald earrings, left my hair down, with light makeup.

I looked at myself in the mirror at seven-thirty. The Valentina in the mirror looked back.

For the first time in four weeks in that house, she and I were the same person.

At eight forty-two, I heard the first shot.

I was in the music room, sitting on the piano bench, playing Chopin softly to pass the time.

Two.

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