Page 70 of Promised to the Don of Naples
Three.
And then—very close, in the south garden—a whole burst.
I stood up; my hands stopped playing on their own. Before I could think what to do, the double door of the salon opened and Donna Beatrice came running in—for the first time in thirty-two years in that house, her bun had come loose.
"Signorina!"
"Donna Beatrice…"
"Come with me, now."
She pulled me by the wrist and we crossed the salon. The shots kept coming—farther off now, in bursts, from two different points on the perimeter. I could hear men shouting in Neapolitan, hear the neighbor's dog barking like it had never barked before.
"Donna Beatrice, Matteo…"
"Acquaviva is with him. Move."
We ran across the east corridor. We went up the service stairs. She pushed me into a room I'd never seen—a small room between two bedrooms, windowless, with stone walls thicker than the rest of the house.
"Here, signorina." She locked the door from the inside with a key she took from her apron pocket. "A foot of stone. A bullet won't get through. Don't come out until I come for you."
"Luca…"
"He's on his way."
"Donna Beatrice. Are you armed?"
She opened the side of her apron and showed the grip of an old Beretta tucked at her waist.
"Thirty-two years, signorina. I don't serve coffee with my right hand for nothing."
She left and locked it from the outside.
I was left alone in the stone room with my heart in my throat and the sound of the shots coming like waves.
Twenty minutes.
That was how long it lasted.
Twenty minutes sitting with my back to the wall, hands in my lap, the dagger in my boot because I'd put on boots underthe dress out of habit—every time I went down stairs in that house, I put on boots.
A Moretti woman's habit, Raffaele had said.
The shots tapered off. First the bursts stopped, then the single shots, then there was only the noise of men running, a voice giving orders, car engines coming and going.
And then silence.
Five minutes of silence.
And then footsteps. They weren't Donna Beatrice's; they were heavy and coming toward me, unhurried, like someone who lives in the house.
The key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Luca stopped in the doorway.
White shirt torn at the left shoulder. Blood on the right sleeve. Blood on one side of his jaw—not his; I saw in his eyes that it wasn't his. His hair mussed from the trip or the fight, I didn't know which.
The black eyes.
Alive.
