Chapter 3
A crowned lion held an olive branch, discreetly etched into the frame.
It was the same crest used by DeLuca Holdings.
It was small, silver, and easy to miss.
I did not miss it.
The champagne turned bitter in my mouth.
“Mari,” I called, looking around.
She had disappeared between 2 gray-haired men near the next wall.
It was fine.
Perhaps the crest was a coincidence. Perhaps the DeLuca family owned 10 galleries, and none had anything to do with the man I was trying unsuccessfully to stop thinking about.
I needed the bathroom.
I did not actually need it. I needed a door that would close behind me.
I followed a discreet sign at the end of a side corridor, turned left, and opened the 1st door that appeared plausible.
It was not the bathroom.
It was a private office with dark wooden walls, an oak desk illuminated by a single lamp, and the enclosed smell of old leather and oil paint.
Matteo stood between the desk and 2 men I had never seen.
He wore a white shirt without a jacket, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
One man held him by the collar. The other stood close to his face, speaking in Italian in a low, dry tone.
I did not understand the sentence.
I understood what kind of sentence it was.
Matteo saw me first.
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second, and within that fraction I saw everything.
There was blood at the corner of his mouth, a new mark along his jaw, and a red stain beginning to spread across the left side of his white shirt.
The 2 men turned a quarter of a second later.
The silence that followed had texture.
“Get out,” Matteo told me.
His voice was not raised.
That was worse.
It was the voice he used during meetings.
“Now.”
My feet would not move.
The man holding his collar slowly released it.
Matteo adjusted his shirt with a brief gesture without taking his eyes from me.
Then he spoke 3 short sentences in Italian to the men.
I did not understand the words.
I understood their effect.
Both men left through a rear door without looking back.
When we were alone, Matteo released a short, controlled breath, as though reorganizing his body from within.
“You became lost,” he said.
It was not a question.
“I was looking for the bathroom. I swear that was what I was doing.”
He crossed the small room and stopped approximately 1 meter away.
For a moment, I thought he would touch me.
He did not.
He removed the champagne glass from my hand with almost courteous care, set it on the desk, and looked at me.
“You saw nothing.”
“Matteo—”
“You saw nothing,” he repeated more quietly. “Say it.”
“I saw nothing.”
I understood immediately that it was the most useless lie 2 people could share.
I had seen everything. He knew I had seen it. The sentence existed only to give shape to the lie we would have to carry from that moment onward.
He nodded once.
“Come with me.”
We left through a corridor different from the one I had entered.
Mari did not learn what had happened. Matteo later arranged for someone to tell her, in code, that I had felt ill and gone home.
A black armored Mercedes waited in the rear parking area with its engine running.
Matteo opened the back door for me and entered from the opposite side.
The driver did not greet us or look back.
We exited through an alley that did not lead toward Hubbard.
The city moved beyond the tinted windows like a silent film.
Matteo sat 3 hand spans away from me, his back straight and his left hand closed tightly over his knee. The blood at the hem of his shirt had darkened.
No one spoke for 7 blocks.
The air-conditioning hummed. The leather seats smelled expensive and sterile.
I could no longer endure the silence.
“Are you all right?”
He turned slowly and looked at me.
He did not answer.
That was when I understood everything I needed to understand.
The silence was not a refusal. It was the complete answer.
The man who could silence rooms merely by entering them had no way to answer without allowing the rest of his disguise to fall.
I looked forward again and placed my hands in my lap.
I felt that if I looked at him once more, I would cry, and I had no permission to cry inside that car.
“Who were those men?” I asked.
“People who work for me.”
He paused.
“Worked.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
“You need to—”
“Chloe.”
It was the 1st time he used my name.
Not Miss Bennett. Not you.
Chloe.
It emerged with his accent and with care, as though he had rehearsed it inside his head 1,000 times before allowing it into the world.
I became silent.
“I’m taking you home,” he said. “You’ll go inside, lock the door, and tell Mari you became ill. Tomorrow you will go to work as usual. You did not speak to me today, and you were never inside that office. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Look at me.”
I did.
There was something in his eyes I had never seen before.
It was not exhaustion or anger.
It was fear—controlled, organized, and professional, but unmistakably fear.
The fear had nothing to do with the blood on his own shirt.
“Is that clear?” he repeated.
“It’s clear.”
The Mercedes stopped on my street.
Matteo waited for me to leave without moving from his seat.
Before closing the door, I leaned inside.
“You still haven’t answered whether you’re all right.”
He looked at me for 1 full second.
“I’m not,” he said. “But you are. That’s what matters.”
The door closed.
The car departed.
I could not sleep.
Mari returned at 11:30, slightly drunk and telling an overly long story about a man who had tried to purchase a painting with cryptocurrency.
I laughed at the correct moments.
She believed the explanation she had been given, went to her room, and closed the door.
Two minutes later, I heard her breathing heavily through the wall.
I remained in the living room beneath the low light with my knees pulled against my chest.
I stared at the wall for an immeasurable period.
Outside, the street occasionally produced the sound of a cab or distant heels too far away to represent danger.
The buzzer sounded at nearly 3:00 in the morning.
I knew who it was before I stood.
Matteo waited on the landing without a jacket. The white shirt had been replaced by a dark gray one, and there was no visible blood.
A bruise had begun to form along his jaw.
His eyes lowered to me and remained there.
“I came to see,” he said, as though the sentence were a complete explanation.
“To see what?”
“Whether you were all right.”
“We saw each other a few hours ago.”
“I know.”
I opened the door wider.
He entered and surveyed the small living room once, absorbing everything with a single glance: the pillow on the floor, the low lamp, Mari’s closed bedroom door, and the cold cup of tea forgotten on the side table.
He remained standing.
I stood too. Offering the couch to a man like Matteo at that hour felt somehow incorrect.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I thought that if I saw you with my own eyes, I might be able to—”
“Sit.”
He did not.
He leaned against the back of the couch with his hands inside his trouser pockets and his shoulders lower than I had ever seen them.
The 1st layer of him fell there, inside my tiny living room while Mari snored through the wall.
“Will those men come looking for you?”
“No.”
He paused.
“Those men will not come looking for anyone again.”
I swallowed.
I was supposed to be afraid.
I was not.
I felt sorry for him.
It was a defect in my character. I recognized it in that moment and felt it anyway.
“You don’t sleep very much.”
“I sleep enough.”
“Lie.”
He almost smiled.
The movement at the corner of his mouth lasted half a second and vanished so quickly that I doubted seeing it.
“Lie,” he agreed.
We remained quiet.
It was not absolute silence. Mari snored, the old refrigerator hummed, and the city breathed beyond the windows.
I did not yet know that Matteo hated absolute silence.
I would discover that later.
That morning, the kind of silence we shared was enough.
“I need to leave,” he said after a while. “You need sleep.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
I did not ask what he was thanking me for.
He did not explain.
He left with the same care with which he had entered.
I remained looking at the section of wall against which he had leaned for 10 minutes, thinking somehow that his presence would leave a mark.
On Monday morning, I entered DeLuca Holdings with my hair arranged, my suit pressed, and my mind operating on 3 separate frequencies.
I sat at my desk, started the computer, and breathed.
Before I opened the 1st spreadsheet, I noticed the perfume.
It was sweet, expensive, and painfully sophisticated.
I slowly lifted my face.
Vanessa DeLuca stood beside my desk.
I had never seen her so close.
She was Matteo’s cousin and the director of strategic relations. She was also the only woman on the executive floor whose name everyone spoke carefully.
She appeared taller at close range. Her dark hair was pinned low, pearl earrings rested against her neck, and she wore the smile of someone who understood exactly how her smile worked.
“Chloe, darling,” she said in a sweet voice that hurt the teeth. “Come to my office in a minute. I need to ask you one silly little thing.”
For the 1st time since setting foot on that floor—with an open microphone, a canceled firing, and several of the strangest early mornings of my life behind me—I felt a chill move across the back of my neck.
Vanessa’s office smelled of the same heavy jasmine she wore on her wrist.
The blinds were half open. Her white desk held no documents, only a gold pen precisely aligned along one edge, as if every object in the room waited for permission to exist.
“Sit down, darling. This won’t take long.”
I sat.
She asked the silly questions she had promised: questions about a closing spreadsheet, an expense report I had never seen, and the method I used to cross-reference port entries.
She smiled through each one, watched my eyes during every answer, and wrote nothing down.
On the 9th question, she tilted her head.
“Bennett. Are you really from Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“Large family?”
“Small.”
“How pleasant to have a local girl on the floor. We tend to trust our own more easily, don’t we?”
The meeting lasted 11 minutes.
I left with the clear feeling that I had been weighed, measured, and filed away.
Nothing she had asked related to what she actually wanted to know.
My surname remained in the air like a question she had not finished asking.
I did not tell Matteo.
I considered it nonsense, paranoia, and evidence that my life might finally become calmer.
That was precisely when life decided otherwise.
On Wednesday night, Matteo had Oliveto, a small Italian restaurant in the Loop, closed for us.
According to him, it was not an assertion of power but a practical arrangement. He preferred that we speak without noise.
I pretended that explanation was normal.
A single table had been set in the middle of the dining room. Its white cloth was pressed into firm creases. The glasses were tall and light.
A vinyl record played quietly from one corner.
I recognized the singer from the roughness of his voice.
“Chet Baker,” I said.
“You like him?”
“I recognize him. That isn’t the same thing.”
“Correct.”
Matteo leaned back.
“I collect records. Mostly old jazz. There’s a room in my house that contains only shelves. Nothing digital.”
“Nothing?”
“I dislike the cleanliness of digital sound. Music should crackle slightly.”
I laughed.
He looked at me and restrained half a smile.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re less mysterious when you discuss music.”
“Good. I hate absolute silence. I need noise around me—a record, a conversation, anything.”
“I sing in the kitchen to fill silence,” I admitted before thinking. “Very badly.”
He tilted his head slightly.
That was his version of asking for an explanation.
“I sing out of tune in a way that’s probably offensive.”
“What song?”
“Don’t ask.”
“What song?”
“Matteo.”
“Chloe.”
I looked at the low yellow ceiling and named an early-2000s pop song whose lyrics I should not have admitted knowing.
Matteo closed his eyes for 2 full seconds.
When he opened them, he was genuinely smiling for the 1st time that evening.
The smile was small and contained, but it belonged to him.
“I still want to hear it.”
“You’re insane.”
“I had already begun to suspect that.”
The food arrived.
I could not later remember what I ordered.
I remembered that Matteo made me laugh 3 times between the appetizer and the main course.
At some point between the 2nd and 3rd, I realized I had leaned over the table with my elbows against it and that he had adopted the same position.
The white tablecloth between us appeared to have contracted in a way that violated physical law.
It was the best evening I had experienced in 3 years.
That was precisely why it did not last.
We left Oliveto through the rear door because Matteo’s car was waiting in the alley.
I walked ahead with him 2 steps behind, his hand resting lightly at my waist to guide me.
The night was cold and smelled of damp asphalt.
Only 1 streetlamp was illuminated at the far end of the alley.
Everything happened within 3 seconds.
May you like
A silver van stopped in the center of the lane.
Its side door opened.
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