Page 6 of Valentino

"When are you coming home?" she asks, the way she always does, like the answer might change. "You've been gone too long. The grove needs you. I need you, an old woman, alone with the olives."

My throat tightens. I look at the door Renzo walked out of, at the bright dangerous street beyond it, at the city that just put a name to the rot underneath it.

"Soon, Mamma," I say.

It might even be the first lie I've told her in years.

CHAPTER THREE

Amanda

The Casa Aurelia studio smells like hairspray and I love it more than I love most people.

I've been on set since six this morning, and the energy is exactly the kind I feed on. Stylists dart between racks of clothing. A lighting tech curses at a softbox that won't behave. Somewhere behind me, the creative director is having what I can only describe as a small spiritual crisis over the color of a backdrop, and honestly? Mood. We've all been there.

"The amber, Marco," I call across the room, not looking up from my tablet. "Trust me. The brand wants warmth. The cool gray reads like a tax office."

Marco swivels. Stares at me for a beat. Then waves a hand at the assistant.

"The amber," he says, like it was his idea all along.

I bite back a smile. This is what I'm good at. Reading a room before it knows it needs reading. My parents wanted a lawyer or a son or a daughter who took up less space, and instead they got a girl who can walk into a million-euro shoot and make it run smoother just by paying attention. Their loss. Genuinely.

I do a slow sweep of the floor, mentally ticking boxes. Lighting, sorted. Backdrop, sorted. Wardrobe⁠—

That's when I see her.

The models are lined up near the wardrobe station, a row of impossibly long limbs and bored expressions, all of them scrolling phones or getting their faces dusted with powder. Agenzia Luce sent six girls this morning. Eastern European, mostly, the agency rep told me. The kind of beauty that photographs like a weapon.

Five of them look exactly how models look at seven a.m. Tired. Pretty. Detached.

The sixth one looks different.

She's young. Younger than the rest, I'd guess. Maybe eighteen, maybe not even. She's standing slightly apart from the others, her arms wrapped around her ribs like she's holding herself together. While the other girls slouch and yawn, she stands very still.

A makeup artist is working on her face, and I watch the brush move along her jaw, blending, blending, blending in one spot longer than makes sense. I drift closer, pretending to check the wardrobe steamer.

Under the foundation, along the soft hinge of her jaw, the skin is a faint, sick yellow-green. The color a bruise turns when it's already a few days old and starting to fade. The makeup artist is layering concealer over it with the efficiency of someone who's done this exact thing before. No reaction. No question. Just cover it and move on.

I look at the girl's eyes next. They flick up to the mirror, then away, then to the door, then back to her own hands.

"Hey," I say softly, crouching beside her chair so I'm not looming over her. "I'm Amanda. I'm running things on the brand side today. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, something to eat?"

She looks at me like I've spoken in a language she half understands. Up close her eyes are a pale, washed-out blue, and there's something in them that has nothing to do with being at a glamorous shoot in Milan.

"No," she says. Her accent is thick. "Thank you. No."

"You sure? We've got pastries that are honestly criminal." I keep my voice light, warm, the same tone I'd use to coax a spooked cat out from under a couch. "I won't tell anyone if you eat three."

The corner of her mouth moves.

"Okay," she says. Then, quieter, glancing toward the agency rep by the door. "Maybe water."

"Water it is."

I straighten and turn walking straight into the shoot coordinator, a brisk, severe woman named Greta who runs Agenzia Luce's on-set logistics.

"Is there a problem?" Greta asks.