Page 40 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Bella…"
"Signora Varga." I smiled, without warmth. "I'm offering you a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"You tell me everything you know about my father since 2015. Who he saw, what he said, who he drank with. Everything." I walked to the door and stopped in the doorway. "And in exchange, Luca never reads a word of those letters."
She sat frozen on the white sofa, her hands still gripping the dress, not answering.
"Think about it. I'll come back here tomorrow at eleven."
I left.
I crossed the east hallway, feeling my heart beat slowly for the first time in three weeks.
LUCA MORETTI
I saw it all from my office window.
Not the conversation—I couldn't hear it, but I saw Valentina go into the music room at five past eleven.
I watched through the courtyard's glass roof, and took in her bearing as she walked in—shoulders back, chin level, the book under her arm like a polite weapon.
I noted when she sat down on the piano bench, and I saw when Bianca, sitting on the sofa, faked a smile and uncrossed her legs.
Then, when Valentina stood and walked to the door, she stopped in the doorway a moment longer than necessary to say something that made Bianca lower the Vogue and go still on the white sofa like a statue.
I put out the cigar.
"Cazzo."
Valentina had come back from Palermo knowing something I didn't yet know. And she'd chosen to start using it.
Not on me. On Bianca.
I rested my hands on the windowsill.
Inside: Pericolosa.
But, for the first time, no weight to the word. No menace. Like someone recognizing, at last, a partner.
I smiled briefly, very slowly.
"Brava, bella mia," I said to the window.
CHAPTER 13
"There are fires you light without a match—and those are exactly the ones no one puts out."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I came down the west-wing stairs slowly.
I'd changed clothes beforehand—a light navy-blue linen dress, sleeveless, calf-length, with low leather sandals.
I left my hair down for the first time in three weeks. I didn't put on makeup or strong perfume—just a touch of jasmine on my wrist.
I looked at myself in the bedroom mirror before going down and almost recognized myself.
