Chapter 3
“Are you offering food or interrogating me?”
“Both.”
I laughed unintentionally.
It was only a short exhalation, but when I looked up, he watched with new attention, as though recording a detail not yet large enough to be dangerous.
I looked away first.
He left the library.
I remained seated while the balcony glass trembled beneath the city wind.
I imagined Helena studying for an examination, unaware that a man in a black suit sat 3 rows behind her pretending to read a newspaper.
I remembered the account unpaid for 2 months and the telephone and wallet sealed inside a safe.
Against my will, I thought about the 1st crack in Dante’s expression when I provoked him, the 2nd when I arrived barefoot in pajamas, and a 3rd crack he did not know he possessed.
He had asked whether I had eaten in the same voice he used to issue death orders.
I closed the book more slowly.
It was not hope.
I had promised it would not be.
It was information, and information was the only currency I had always known how to save, placed figuratively at the bottom of an apron pocket beside quarters and tips.
Later that afternoon, Dante returned from the corridor leading toward the consigliere’s office with a folder beneath his arm.
It was the 2nd time that week I saw him use that route.
He did not notice me in the opening of the library.
He placed the folder on the sideboard without opening it and spoke quietly to Renzo.
The only word I understood was my surname.
Veil.
Renzo nodded.
Dante returned to the office and closed the door.
The folder remained inside my thoughts for the rest of the day.
I lacked the courage to ask about it and the space to forget it.
By the 4th night, I could cross from the guest room to the library with my eyes closed.
The woody scent of Dante’s white shirts had begun feeling familiar despite my resistance.
That night, I went to the kitchen for water.
I was barefoot and dressed in pajamas again.
I stopped inside the doorway without making a sound.
Cold marble pressed against my feet.
A clock sounded the hour from somewhere distant.
The small light above the counter was on.
Dante stood with his back toward me.
His white shirt was open to the middle of his chest. His right sleeve was rolled beyond the elbow.
A white cloth had been tied around his left arm, marked by a red stain the size of a closed fist.
He had not heard me.
He untied the cloth slowly with his right hand, working with the precision of someone accustomed to treating his own injuries.
Antiseptic mixed with the metallic smell I recognized before wanting to.
Standing in the doorway with a dry mouth, I understood that the 4th crack was not inside his expression.
It was inside mine.
I remained long enough to see the injury clearly.
It was deep, irregular, and positioned beneath the biceps where the skin was thin and bleeding returned insistently.
The kitchen light was low and yellow, the kind left burning in homes where people did not sleep.
Antiseptic cut through the clean air like a narrow blade.
Dante noticed me before I spoke.
He did not lift his face.
His hands merely stopped.
“Return to bed, Isidora.”
“If you bleed over the marble, someone will make me clean it.”
I approached the counter.
“I have no intention of cleaning it.”
“No one requested your assistance.”
“Exactly.”
I collected the gauze, antiseptic, and medical tape.
I did not wait for permission.
I sat on the tall stool opposite him, moved my hair away from the injury, and held out my hand.
He looked at me.
I maintained his gaze for longer than 3 seconds without using humor as protection.
He turned his arm and rested it against the marble.
His skin was warmer than I had expected.
I had not imagined touching him, but my body appeared to have imagined it independently and was presenting the results with humiliating efficiency.
I soaked the gauze and pressed it to the cut.
He did not move.
No muscle tightened.
His jaw remained relaxed.
The silence belonged to a man who had learned to swallow pain like water, without announcement or ceremony.
“You require stitches.”
“No.”
“You require stitches, Dante. This is not a scratch.”
He did not answer.
He watched my hand against his arm as though it were the 1st strange thing to enter the kitchen in years.
I maintained the pressure until the blood stopped appearing through the gauze.
Then I replaced it and wrapped the bandage firmly.
I had learned the method during nights in Queens when Helena fell from her bicycle and I could not afford an emergency room.
My hands did not shake.
As I secured the tape, Dante’s fingers moved over mine.
They remained for 1 second.
It was not a grip or a restraint.
It was a landing.
It lasted longer than necessary.
I did not look up.
He did not remove his hand.
Neither of us withdrew first.
In the quiet kitchen, the gesture was enormous.
Every part of my body seemed to move toward the place where his skin touched mine.
The refrigerator began humming behind us.
It was the only sound.
When he finally released me, he did it slowly, deliberately separating his hand from mine.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I gathered the supplies more noisily than required, discarded the used gauze, and returned to the guest room too quickly.
I closed the door and pressed my forehead against the wood.
3 times, I told myself what I had felt was pity.
Pity.
Only pity.
I knew I was lying.
I chose to believe it anyway.
The following morning, Helena called the office telephone.
Renzo handed the receiver to me with a raised eyebrow that contained more warning than words.
“Issa, there’s a party at school on Saturday. It’s at the home of someone in my research group. The entire department will be there. I already know you’re going to refuse.”
“I am going to refuse.”
“I knew it. Issa, I’m 19. I have never attended a college party. I live with my sister, and I study. That is the complete script of my life.”
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Dante stood in the office doorway.
His sleeve covered the new bandage, although the fabric was creased at the elbow.
It was the 1st imperfect thing I had seen him wear since entering the penthouse.
“I’ll call Saturday,” I told Helena. “We will discuss it. I love you.”
I ended the call.
Dante remained at the entrance with 1 shoulder against the frame.
He measured the silence left by Helena’s voice.
“If she attends the party, the protection follows her in separate vehicles. She will not notice.”
“I did not request your opinion.”
“I know. I am informing you.”
“Then inform me of this. Do you decide whether your sister is allowed to attend parties?”
“I do not have a sister.”
“How convenient.”
He entered and closed the door.
Renzo was no longer present.
It was the 1st time in 4 days that Dante and I had been alone behind a closed door without the excuse of a wounded arm in a late-night kitchen.
“You want Helena to attend?” he asked.
“I want her to decide. There is a difference.”
“The difference has a cost.”
“To whom? For you, it costs sending 2 additional men. For me, it costs sleep. For her, it costs nothing because she does not know.”
I stood.
“The entire bill belongs to me, Dante. Therefore, the decision must also belong to me.”
He positioned himself before the large window with Manhattan arranged behind him like an expensive background.
Something changed in the weight of his shoulders and the way his hand touched the desk.
Morning light revealed a faint shadow beneath his eyes, something probably concealed from everyone except me.
That did not mean he was kind.
It meant I had moved too near for him to find another hiding place.
“Protecting someone does not give you the right to choose for that person,” I said more quietly. “You mistake control for care. They are not the same.”
He did not move.
“You never learned the difference because no one required you to.”
I expected a cold response.
I expected him to remind me who he was, where I stood, and what I owed.
He said nothing.
He looked at me for a long second, removed his hand from the desk, and left.
He closed the door carefully.
The care in the movement was the 5th crack.
I sat in the chair he had occupied and realized my hands were shaking.
The leather back still held his warmth.
I hated that I noticed.
The entire penthouse possessed a different silence that afternoon.
It was not the expensive emptiness from before.
It was considered silence.
Renzo passed along the corridor wearing his ordinary expression, although I imagined new curiosity inside it, the kind belonging to a man who recognized when a crack had become a fracture.
I pretended to read the same book for the 5th time.
He pretended to believe me.
Everyone pretended.
The only honest object inside the penthouse was the white bandage beneath Dante’s sleeve.
Before dinner, Renzo entered the office carrying a telephone and closed the door.
Through the frosted glass, I watched Dante read something, tighten his jaw, and put the device away.
They came out together.
Dante walked directly to the dining room and placed the telephone facedown beside his plate.
He sat without eating.
“A message came from the shooter who escaped,” he said.
I lowered my fork.
“What did it say?”
He turned the telephone although the screen had gone dark.
He recited the words from memory.
“The waitress saw too much.”
The sentence remained between the plates as though black wine had been spilled across the white cloth.
I waited.
I knew there was more.
“You cannot stay here. He knows you are in the penthouse.”
Dante’s voice remained measured.
“We leave tonight. There is a secure house approximately 3 hours north. The rooms are prepared. The crew is small. 2 capos.”
He looked at me.
“You decide what you bring. I decide everything else.”
“How generous, allowing me to choose.”
“Isidora.”
“I’ll go. Not because you ordered it. Because Helena is safer if I am far from her.”
He held my gaze.
“Understood.”
It was the only time in 4 days that he thanked me without using the words.
We left the garage shortly after midnight.
Renzo drove.
Dante and I sat in the back behind a dark partition.
Manhattan was as empty as it ever became.
For a time, I watched dark shop windows and counted the headlights moving in the opposite direction so I would not think.
The mannequins stood motionless like people who had forgotten how to breathe.
I realized that was how I had moved through the world until Tuesday.
Still on the outside.
Too alive within.
After the city disappeared, the highway swallowed nearly every sound except the engine, the tires against asphalt, and Dante’s breathing beside me.
His breathing was slower than mine.
“How many?” I asked after approximately 20 minutes.
He understood without asking me to clarify.
“How many people have you killed?”
He looked through his window before returning his gaze to me.
“I do not know the exact number. More than 17 and fewer than 40.”
He paused.
“I do not count. People who count are proud. I am not.”
I absorbed the answer slowly.
I did not cry or tremble.
At some point between the kitchen and the carefully closed office door, I had decided not to fear answers to questions I chose to ask.
“Do you regret it?”
“Some. The first ones and the most recent.”
He turned toward me.
“The most recent were people who attempted to take what little I had left.”
I held his eyes.
“I prefer this.”
“What?”
“Ugly truth rather than beautiful silence.”
He did not respond immediately.
The road moved across the dark reflection separating us from the front of the vehicle.
Occasional streetlights illuminated his profile and the white bandage beneath his sleeve.
The leather upholstery smelled faintly of him, clean and cold, something beyond cologne.
Eventually, he spoke almost to himself.
“I will try not to give you more beautiful silence. I cannot promise.”
“Do not promise.”
We remained quiet.
At some point, I rested my temple against the window and closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Dante’s hand rested on the seat between us with the palm turned upward.
It did not call or request.
It was simply there.
I did not place my hand inside it.
I did not move away.
I left my hand approximately 1 inch from his.
The small distance was denser than anything that had happened inside the kitchen.
I measured it as though it possessed its own temperature and as though something unnamed was being decided inside it.
Renzo slowed.
Lights appeared between dark trees.
The gate opened with the sound of old metal dividing the silence.
1 part remained on the highway with Dante’s palm open and mine almost touching it.
The 2nd began when the vehicle stopped and I understood that inside the isolated house, without Manhattan, polished marble, restaurant menus, or Renzo waiting along the corridor, there would be nothing left for Dante and me to hide behind.
The secure house smelled of old wood and rain that had not yet fallen.
I followed Dante across the stone porch while gravel cracked beneath the inexpensive shoes I had insisted on wearing, although he offered to replace them before we left Manhattan.
I wanted my own shoes.
They were part of what remained of me after 4 days spent inside his life.
I held onto them like the final nail in a wall covered with someone else’s shelves.
May you like
Renzo unlocked the door, completed a brief inspection, and disappeared around the side of the house, moving as he always did, a shadow carrying weight without displaying it.
Dante entered 1st.
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