Page 61 of Valentino

My eyes sting. I blink hard and turn toward the black window over the sink instead of looking at him.

"I don't know," I admit, which is the most honest answer I have right now. "Maybe."

He nods once, as if maybe is enough to work with.

He moves to the stove, opens a cupboard, and stares into it. There's a dented saucepan, a jar of something red, and a sleeve of pasta.

"Vittoria's waiting," he says, not turning around.

"For what?"

"For you to call her." He sets the saucepan on the burner. "If you want. While I make something. You have time."

I want her so badly it scares me.

My eyes burn. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste salt and copper, because if I start crying now, I won't get a single word out, and I have to talk to her. I have to hear her voice.

"Okay," I manage.

He pulls his phone from his pocket, unlocks it, and holds it out to me across the little kitchen, screen up, like an offering.

I take it. The phone is warm from his pocket, in a black case scuffed at every corner. I wrap both hands around it the way I wrapped them around the water glass.

"Thank you," I say, and my voice comes out small, frayed, and not at all like me.

I walk out of the yellow light and down the short hall, finding his contacts as I move so I won't have to do it once I'm sitting still.

His contact list is short. First names only, half of them probably fake. I scroll past Bruno and Luca and Dante and a Mamma that makes me stop for half a second, because of course this terrifying man has his mother saved as Mamma, of course he does, and I do not have the bandwidth to unpack what that does to me right now.

And there she is.

Vittoria.

My thumb hovers over her name.

Down the hall, a cupboard door bangs. Water runs. The ordinary, domestic sounds of a man who kills people deciding whether I can stomach pasta.

I press call and put the phone to my ear.

It rings once. Half a ring.

"Amanda?"

Her voice. Just my name, already breaking, and I hear her suck in a breath like she's been holding it for hours.

"Vee," I say, and it comes out wet and ruined.

I can't say anything else. I just hold the phone and shake.

"Okay," Vittoria says, and I can hear her pulling herself together. She blows out a breath. "Okay. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Talk to me."

"I don't know what to say."

"How are you?"

A laugh slips out of me, small and broken. "That's a big question, Vee."

"I've got all night."