Chapter 4
He examined exits before furniture and only then switched on the living-room light.
For a man like him, the house was simple.
Whitewashed walls.
Exposed beams.
A sofa covered in rough fabric.
An unlit fireplace with stacked wood beside it.
A dark rug absorbed footsteps.
The rear porch opened toward woods disappearing into darkness.
Wind moved through the leaves with a dry sound that seemed more distant than it was.
“1 bedroom,” Dante said without looking at me. “Queen bed.”
“That is fine.”
The answer escaped before I measured the courage required to give it.
He turned by a fraction, registered the words, and returned his attention to a lock that did not require inspection.
His fingers moved the deadbolt backward and forward.
He needed his hands occupied with anything except me.
I showered in water that was almost cold because the hot water took too long and I had no patience.
The tiles were moss green and belonged to another decade. The showerhead released water as though reluctant to surrender it.
A shirt belonging to Dante had been folded on the dresser.
I put it on with the same pajama bottoms I had worn inside the penthouse.
The shirt fell to the middle of my thighs and smelled of mild soap and something that was only him.
When I entered the bedroom, Dante sat on the mattress with his back toward me, removing his watch.
His shirt lay across a chair.
A long scar passed below his right shoulder, a white map against tanned skin.
I looked away before he noticed me looking.
I lay on 1 side.
He lay on the other.
There was enough space between us for a 3rd body that never arrived.
“Good night,” I said, facing the window.
“Sleep.”
It was not an answer.
It was an instruction delivered in the low voice he used for everything.
I switched off the lamp before responding and pretended to sleep.
Actual sleep took nearly 1 hour.
I counted his breathing from across the bed.
His breathing counted mine.
Neither of us deceived the other.
I woke during the night facing him.
We were close.
I did not remember turning.
He was awake too, his eyes fixed on mine and his breathing slower.
The bandage on his arm was visible in the moonlight.
A narrow opening between the curtains divided his face into silver and shadow.
I swallowed and remained still.
Dante moved slowly.
His hand rose toward my face and stopped approximately 1 inch from my skin, asking permission without speech.
I felt the heat of his palm before contact.
I did not retreat.
I did not breathe correctly.
My eyes moved toward his mouth for only a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
Dante withdrew.
He sat, passed 1 hand over his face, and left the bed without speaking.
The porch door opened.
Cold air entered the bedroom carrying wet earth and something wild from the woods.
I remained beneath the covers, staring at the dark beams across the ceiling.
I counted knots in the wood to avoid counting my humiliation.
Shame climbed my neck before becoming anger.
I did not cry.
I had not cried over a man since I was 16.
Against the pillow smelling faintly of leather, I promised myself that I would not humiliate myself again.
If Dante wanted to retreat, he could withdraw to the farthest edge of his own shadow.
I would not follow.
I fell asleep angry.
It was possible.
A dry sound from the rear of the house woke me.
It was not a branch or an animal.
It was the sound of someone forcing an old lock with a narrow tool, a sound I had learned in Queens before I knew why anyone would need to recognize it.
I sat immediately and reached toward Dante.
His side of the bed was empty.
The sheet had gone cold.
I crossed the freezing floor and pressed my ear against the bedroom door.
Low voices moved through the corridor.
2, perhaps 3.
I recognized 1 before having time to consider it.
It belonged to the shooter who escaped the Victoria, the same man who shouted an Italian name while running through the kitchen exit.
I opened the door by the width of 1 finger.
A flashlight moved over the wall with short, trained sweeps.
Dante stood beside the living-room entrance holding a gun.
Renzo waited on the opposite side.
They were prepared, but they did not yet know who had entered.
They believed it might be another Bellini crew.
“Dante,” I whispered.
He turned only his face.
“It is the man from the restaurant. I recognize his voice.”
He processed the information within half a second.
He looked toward Renzo.
Renzo nodded and disappeared through the service corridor without sound.
“Behind me,” Dante said.
I obeyed without argument.
The 1st shot came before I completed the 2nd step.
The living-room window exploded, sending glass across the rug.
Dante answered with 2 short shots.
The reports filled the small house with a vibration that seemed to blind me from within.
Gunpowder rose immediately and mixed with the smell of old upholstery.
Dante forced me behind the staircase wall with 1 broad hand against my chest.
“Stay here.”
Then he left.
I stayed for approximately 5 seconds.
Footsteps entered from the kitchen.
They were not his.
They were heavier and made each hallway board sound differently.
I looked around.
A wrought-iron lamp stood on the telephone table.
Its base was as heavy as stone.
I lifted it with both hands.
The metal was cold and uneven enough to hurt my palms.
Pain kept people awake.
A man entered around the staircase carrying a shotgun.
He saw me half a second before I struck him.
Half a second was all I had.
I swung the lamp against the point behind his ear, exactly where the streets taught someone to strike before school ever did.
The impact was dull.
There was no drama.
It sounded more like a door closing than anything from a film.
He collapsed.
The shotgun moved across the wooden floor and stopped beside my feet.
I did not touch it.
My hands shook too violently to trust near a trigger.
I continued holding the lamp.
I stood barefoot inside Dante’s shirt, which reached my thighs, breathing in 3 broken parts.
“Isidora.”
Dante entered the corridor.
He saw the man on the floor and then me.
He said nothing else.
His gaze moved over my body, checking for wounds, blood, and missing pieces.
It was the practiced inventory of a man who had already lost people that way.
Renzo appeared behind him holding the runaway shooter by the collar.
Another man knelt beside them with both hands behind his neck.
“Tomaso,” Dante said.
The name emerged like a judgment.
I had previously heard Renzo use it casually in the penthouse.
Tomaso was a soldier from the east, a man who had belonged to Dante’s people for years.
Now he knelt on the secure-house floor with his head lowered.
Dante’s jaw tightened in a way I had never seen.
For 1 second, the man beneath the Don was exposed.
Betrayal from inside was the worst kind.
He moved toward Tomaso and raised the gun.
“Not here,” I said.
The voice escaped before thought.
It sounded lower and calmer than mine.
Dante stopped without turning.
“Not in front of me,” I corrected. “Not because I cannot endure it.”
The room remained silent.
“Because you do not want to remember this later.”
The pause lasted too long.
The runaway shooter breathed heavily.
Tomaso continued looking at the floor.
Rain began striking the broken windowsill in thick, scattered drops.
Renzo did not look toward Dante while awaiting the decision.
He looked at me.
I recorded that detail.
Dante lowered his weapon and spoke briefly to Renzo in Italian.
Renzo took Tomaso and the shooter through the rear entrance.
Their footsteps disappeared into the night.
The house remained with wind passing through broken glass and an unconscious man at my feet.
Dante approached slowly.
He removed the lamp from my hands as though it were fragile and placed it down.
I had not noticed the blood across my face.
It belonged to the man I had struck.
Dante raised his thumb and wiped 1 mark gently from my cheek.
His skin was dry and calloused.
The touch was more careful than anything I had experienced inside that house.
He entered the kitchen and returned with a damp cloth.
He placed me on the staircase and cleaned my face without speaking.
Cold wood pressed through the thin shirt into my legs.
He did not tell me that everything was fine or praise my courage.
He simply cleaned the blood.
His movements were firm and careful.
His face remained only centimeters from mine.
His breathing was still heavy from the violence.
He smelled of leather, sweat, gunpowder, and the soap from the shirt he had worn earlier, an unlikely survivor of the night.
I closed my eyes and allowed him to continue.
It was the 1st time I had allowed anything.
When he finished, he folded the cloth and placed it beside us.
His hands rested heavily against my knees without gripping.
His head lowered.
His hair fell forward, and I resisted the desire to move it away.
“You recognized the voice,” he said quietly. “You saved my life again.”
“That was the 2nd time. Try not to require a 3rd.”
He laughed.
There was almost no sound.
Only 1 movement of his shoulder against my knee.
It was still laughter.
Exhausted, with his hands against my knees and gunpowder caught inside my throat, I smiled without intending to.
Outside, the rain finally fell fully.
It struck the old roof as though attempting to conceal what had happened, clean the gravel, erase tracks, and restore the house to its former silence.
I did not move his hand.
He did not remove it.
For the 1st time since the Victoria, something inside my chest stopped preparing to run.
The drive toward Manhattan felt shorter.
Perhaps it was because the silence inside the armored car had changed.
We were no longer 2 people measuring each other.
We were 2 people who had survived a night together and still carried gunpowder in our hair.
Gray afternoon descended over the road.
Dante drove with both hands on the wheel.
The capos followed at a deliberate distance in another vehicle.
Renzo had already disappeared with Tomaso to an address I did not want to know.
“You have not asked where we are going,” Dante said after a long interval.
“I assumed the penthouse.”
“We are not going there.”
I looked toward him.
His profile was the same one I had seen reflected behind the Victoria’s bar.
Hard jaw.
Scar through the eyebrow.
The calm that frightened people because it did not resemble ordinary calm.
It resembled very old control.
Now I knew where to look beneath it.
I knew the corner of his mouth moved when he intended to say something unrehearsed.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll understand when we arrive.”
We crossed the bridge.
Manhattan appeared beneath a gray-blue sky lower than usual.
I did not ask for more.
I had learned that some of Dante’s answers arrived as gestures before they became language.
The car turned onto a street I knew by memory.
I recognized the pavement before the building.
I recognized the door handle before reading the sign.
The Victoria was closed for renovations.
Boards covered the windows. Construction tape crossed the entrance. New glass still carried factory stickers.
It remained the place where everything had begun.
Dante parked, exited, and came around to open my door before I reached the handle.
It was a small act belonging to a man raised in another era.
I had stopped pretending it did not affect me.
“Why here?”
“Because it is the only place that makes sense.”
He removed a key from inside his jacket.
It was not Aldo’s key or the manager’s copy.
It was clearly a key Dante had possessed from the beginning.
That should have disturbed me more than it did.
At that moment, it only made me curious.
The door opened with a dry sound.
Fresh varnish, new wood, and protective fabric scented the interior.
Most of the chairs had been removed.
The walls were newly painted.
The chandeliers I had cleaned from an unstable ladder now hung brighter than I had ever made them.
I crossed slowly toward the center of the dining room as though entering an empty chapel.
There were no customers, attackers, apron, or tray.
It was the 1st time I entered the Victoria as anything other than a waitress.
“The windows are new,” I said.
“I replaced them before closing the restaurant for the remaining work.”
I approached the table beside the window.
It stood in the same place, as though the city had changed around it while the table insisted upon remaining.
I crouched and passed my fingers along the baseboard.
The bullet marks had been filled and painted, but someone who knew where to feel could still find their outlines.
May you like
A chill moved up my back.
“You could have replaced the baseboard.”
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