Chapter 7 - For 9 days, Niko did not contact me.
By the 10th, I understood that restraint could become its own form of torture.
I had expected him to appear.
That admission embarrassed me.
Every sound in the corridor made my body tense before my mind could remind it that I was angry.
Every black car beneath Stella’s window made me approach the curtain.
Every unknown number made my heart strike once against my ribs.
None of them was Niko.
He had said he would let me leave.
Apparently Niko Santoro treated promises made during the destruction of his marriage more seriously than promises made during its happiest moments.
I returned to university on the 3rd day.
Without Gennaro.
It felt strange walking from the bus stop alone.
For months, I had complained about being followed by an escort. Now every passing motorcycle caused me to look over my shoulder.
Freedom was not the same as safety.
I hated that Niko had been correct about that.
Stella accompanied me whenever she could.
On Thursday, she sat opposite me in the university cafeteria and watched me move the same tomato around my plate for several minutes.
“You need to eat.”
“I am eating.”
“You are relocating food.”
“I don’t feel hungry.”
“You haven’t felt hungry in a week.”
“I eat at night.”
“You eat crackers at 1 in the morning because I threaten you.”
“That counts.”
“It counts if you are a hostage.”
I looked at her.
She softened.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
The lie sat between us.
Stella stirred her coffee.
“You’re terrible at that.”
“At what?”
“Lying.”
“I married into the wrong family.”
“Apparently.”
I almost laughed.
It hurt too much.
I pushed the plate away.
“What would I even say?”
“That he’s an idiot.”
“He knows.”
“That you hate him.”
“He knows.”
“That you love him.”
I looked toward the window.
Students crossed the courtyard carrying books, coffees, and problems that belonged to normal lives.
“What if I don’t?”
Stella made a sympathetic face that annoyed me immediately.
“You removed the ring, Eveina. You didn’t throw it away.”
I hated that she knew where I had placed it.
In the top drawer beside my socks.
Not because I wanted to wear it.
Because putting it in a trash bin felt impossible.
“Love isn’t the question.”
“What is?”
“Trust.”
She nodded.
That was why Stella was dangerous to lie to.
She always found the actual wound.
I returned to the apartment late that afternoon.
A man was waiting across the street.
He was leaning against a gray sedan reading a newspaper.
Nothing about him was obviously threatening.
That made him more threatening.
I had spent enough months inside the Santoro house to recognize people who performed ordinary behavior too carefully.
He did not look at me.
He did not need to.
I continued walking.
At the entrance, I dropped my keys.
Not intentionally.
While bending to retrieve them, I used the reflection in the glass door.
The man had lowered the newspaper.
He was watching.
My hands became cold.
I entered and locked the door behind me.
Stella was working at the library until 8.
I climbed the stairs rapidly and removed the black telephone Gennaro had given me from my bag.
I stared at it.
One button.
I pressed it.
Gennaro answered before the 2nd ring.
“Signora.”
The word nearly made me cry.
“There’s a man outside Stella’s building.”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“What does he look like?”
I described him.
“Stay inside. Away from windows.”
“I don’t want Niko—”
“I didn’t ask what you want him to know.”
“Gennaro.”
“You called me because you’re afraid. Let me perform the one job I’m good at.”
The line disconnected.
I was still standing in the hallway when 2 black cars arrived less than 6 minutes later.
Men emerged.
The gray sedan moved immediately.
So did the man.
The Santoro cars followed.
My heart beat painfully.
Then a 3rd car stopped.
Niko stepped out.
I forgot how to breathe.
He looked thinner.
It had only been 10 days.
That should not have been enough time for someone’s face to change, but his had.
He wore a black coat over a white shirt without a tie. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes.
He looked up.
Our eyes met through the window.
I stepped backward.
A minute later, someone knocked.
Not hard.
3 quiet knocks.
I knew the rhythm.
I opened the door.
Niko stood on the landing alone.
He looked at me for several seconds without speaking.
Then his eyes moved over my face, shoulders, hands, the hallway behind me.
Checking.
Counting injuries that did not exist.
“You’re all right.”
“Yes.”
He exhaled.
The sound was small.
“May I come in?”
The fact that he asked almost hurt.
I moved aside.
He entered but remained near the door.
This was not the man who owned rooms by standing inside them.
He looked like a visitor.
I folded my arms.
“Who was he?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“You always know.”
“I will.”
“Was he Bellomo?”
“Possibly.”
“Lorenzo?”
“Lorenzo left Sicily.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
His jaw moved.
“It could be someone connected to my father.”
“Don Vittorio?”
“No.”
The certainty caught me.
“How can you know?”
“Because my father would send someone you would never notice.”
I stared at him.
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
For a second, we were ourselves again.
The thought was unbearable.
I looked away.
Niko placed something on the small table by the door.
My ring.
No.
Not my ring.
His.
The matte gold band he had begun wearing after our wedding.
He removed it from his finger and placed it on the wood.
“What are you doing?”
“I came to give you something.”
“I don’t want gifts.”
“It isn’t a gift.”
He removed a folder from inside his coat.
My stomach tightened.
“No more documents.”
“This one matters.”
“They all matter after someone hides them long enough.”
He accepted the blow without defending himself.
“I deserve that.”
“Yes.”
He placed the folder beside the ring.
“I repeated every test.”
I stared at it.
“I don’t care.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring this?”
“Because there is something wrong.”
“I’m aware.”
“Not what you think.”
I looked at him.
Niko took a breath.
“The first tests showed low fertility. The most recent one showed none.”
My anger paused.
“What?”
“No viable sperm.”
The clinical sentence sounded wrong inside Stella’s narrow hallway.
He continued.
“The physician said the decline was too fast.”
My skin became cold.
“How fast?”
“From reduced levels to effectively zero in several months.”
“Can that happen?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“But not usually like this without a cause.”
The room seemed smaller.
“What cause?”
“They’re testing for several.”
“Niko.”
His eyes met mine.
“One possibility is repeated exposure to something.”
I remained silent.
“To what?”
“A medication. A chemical. Something added over time.”
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“You think someone poisoned you into infertility?”
“I think someone may have tried.”
“Why?”
“The succession.”
There it was.
The word that lived beneath every Santoro conversation.
“The crown,” I said.
“Yes.”
“If you can’t have children, you can’t inherit.”
“According to my father, no.”
“Who does?”
“My cousin Marco.”
I had met Marco Santoro twice.
He was Don Vittorio’s sister’s son, several years older than Niko, with pale eyes and manners so polished they seemed rehearsed by servants.
He had kissed my hand at our wedding and told me that producing beautiful children was my “most sacred responsibility.”
I had disliked him immediately.
“Marco knows about the clause.”
“Everyone close to the family knows about the heir requirement.”
“Does he know about your medical results?”
“He shouldn’t.”
“But Tommaso knew.”
“Yes.”
“And the doctor.”
“Yes.”
“And whoever handled your food, medication, drinks—”
“Yes.”
I stopped.
A memory entered.
The reception.
Don Vittorio leaning toward Niko.
Niko’s reply.
Too low. It can wait.
“What did your father say to you that night?”
Niko’s face tightened.
“You remember.”
“I remember everything now.”
He looked at the floor.
“He asked whether I had repeated the test.”
“And you said?”
“The number was too low to be useful. I told him the conversation could wait.”
“So Don Vittorio knew?”
“Not before the wedding.”
“Since when?”
“After the 1st month.”
My throat burned.
“Another person you told before me.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
He did not approach.
That mattered.
It should not have mattered.
“What happened when you told him?”
“He called me defective.”
My eyes opened.
Niko’s expression had not changed.
That made it worse.
“He said the Santoro line had survived prisons, wars, executions, betrayal, and government investigations. It would not end because his son’s body failed.”
I felt something painful beneath my anger.
I hated it.
“What did you say?”
“That if he spoke about me that way again, he could test whether the bloodline survived without its head.”
Despite everything, a shocked laugh escaped me.
Niko almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the distance returned.
“Why didn’t you tell me this when I found the letter?”
“Because I didn’t know about the 3rd result yet. I received it 2 days after you left.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m telling you before I understand it.”
The sentence struck directly into the wound.
No more waiting.
No more protecting through ignorance.
It was what I had demanded.
He had learned.
Too late perhaps.
But he had learned.
I looked toward the folder.
“Open it.”
He did.
Inside were laboratory results, physician notes, dates.
I could not interpret half the terminology.
One sentence was underlined.
Rate of deterioration warrants investigation of environmental or pharmacological causes.
“What does Tommaso think?”
“I haven’t told him.”
I looked up sharply.
“Why not?”
“Because Tommaso arranged the original physician.”
The air shifted.
“You suspect Tommaso?”
“I suspect everyone until I can eliminate them.”
“Even him?”
“Especially people I trust.”
Something in his voice told me the sentence was about more than Tommaso.
It was about me.
About what he had done.
Trust had become a wound for him too.
Niko closed the folder.
“I didn’t come to ask you to return.”
I swallowed.
“Good.”
“I came because whoever followed you may believe you know something.”
“I know almost nothing.”
“People have died for less.”
“You said you would protect me.”
His face changed.
“I will.”
“Even if I don’t come home?”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
“Even if I never come home?”
A longer silence.
Then:
“Yes.”
My chest hurt.
He walked toward the door.
His ring remained on the table.
“You forgot that.”
“No.”
I looked at it.
“What does it mean?”
“It means I won’t wear a symbol of a marriage you no longer trust.”
He opened the door.
“But I’m not removing the marriage.”
“Niko—”
He stopped.
“I’ll give you every legal freedom the contract allows. If you want an annulment, Tommaso will prepare it.”
The word annulment cut differently than expected.
“I thought you suspected Tommaso.”
“I said he would prepare it. I didn’t say I’d let him stand behind me while he did.”
He left.
I closed the door.
The ring remained on Stella’s table beside the medical folder.
Mine was upstairs.
His was downstairs.
2 circles of gold in separate rooms.
For an absurd moment, I imagined them calling to each other through the floorboards.
I hated myself for thinking it.
My telephone rang.
Not the black one.
My ordinary phone.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a man’s voice said:
“Signora Santoro?”
I became still.
“Yes?”
“You should ask your husband why his mother never had another child after Niko.”
The line disconnected.
I stared at the screen.
Niko’s mother.
The ambush.
The widow payments.
His father saying she had died because of her surname.
I slowly turned toward the folder.
May you like
Perhaps Niko’s fertility was not the beginning of the secret.
Perhaps someone had been trying to control the Santoro bloodline for decades.
