Chapter 2 - I held his gaze until I understood that nothing would be removed from that drawer for me that night.
I left without slamming the door.
I refused to give him the satisfaction.
In the early hours of Saturday, sleep abandoned me again.
I went downstairs barefoot, more from habit than strategy.
The kitchen light was on.
Luciano stood at the counter without a jacket, the collar of his white shirt open.
A glass of water rested before him. His fingers lay against the edge of the sink.
He looked up when I entered and did not appear surprised.
“You too,” he said.
“Me too.”
I poured myself water and leaned against the opposite side of the counter.
The silence between us had changed during the preceding weeks.
It was still silence, but it no longer hurt.
“My brother slept less than I do,” Luciano said without looking at me. “He used to say sleeping was the same as opening a door for whoever wanted to enter.”
“Was he right?”
“He was exhausted.”
Luciano moved the glass 1 centimeter to the side, like someone reorganizing a thought.
“I did not reach him in time that night. I was 6 minutes late. I have counted those 6 minutes every night since.”
I did not answer.
Some things did not ask for a response.
They asked only for the weight of another body nearby.
I walked to the rear door and pushed it open.
Cold air entered through the opening.
The porch was dark, with the city lights blurred in the distance.
I sensed Luciano approaching before hearing him.
He stopped behind me.
He did not touch me.
He remained close enough for me to feel the warmth of his shirt against my back.
“You should return upstairs,” he said quietly.
“Why?”
“Because if I remain here another minute, I will forget why I gave you a separate room.”
I turned my face.
His eyes were darker than the garden.
He lowered his head by 1 centimeter.
I raised my chin by 1 centimeter.
Only 1 centimeter remained between us.
He stepped back.
It was the most violent movement I had ever seen him make.
“Go to sleep, Valyria.”
I climbed the stairs with shortened breath and the unmistakable sensation that I had lost something I did not yet possess.
On Sunday afternoon, he asked me to meet him in the greenhouse.
It was too warm for spring, but it was the only place on the property where no one listened through the ceiling.
“About last night,” I began.
“No.”
He interrupted without harshness.
“About what I did not say last night.”
I waited.
“The wedding night.”
He turned the ring twice with his thumb.
“I am not postponing it because I do not want you. I am postponing it because you owe me nothing. When it happens, it will be because you chose it, not because you signed a document.”
The greenhouse smelled of wet soil and a flower I could not identify.
“And if I choose it?” I asked.
I did not recognize my own voice.
He did not answer.
He kept the question, the way he kept everything that mattered, somewhere locked inside him.
I returned to my room that afternoon with a problem that felt both new and ancient.
The problem was not Luciano.
The problem was that I had begun to want him.
3 weeks after the wedding, I walked barefoot through the corridor.
I had not made the decision while lying in bed.
I made it when I extinguished the lamp and realized darkness on my side of the house was made of the same material as darkness on his.
I wore the simplest nightgown I owned.
I did not know why that mattered.
Perhaps because if I appeared at his door, I wanted to arrive without armor.
The door was slightly open.
I pushed it with my fingertips.
Luciano sat in the armchair beside the window. His shirt was open at the collar, and a book rested across his thigh.
The lamp illuminated half his face while leaving the other half in shadow.
He looked up and remained motionless for 1 second.
I thought my courage would fail.
“What do you want, Valyria?”
His voice was controlled and low.
The question was a door through which he was offering to let me leave.
I could have turned around.
There was still time.
“You.”
The word remained between us as though it required space of its own.
He closed the book with a calm that made me tremble more than haste would have.
He stood and crossed the distance between us like someone measuring every centimeter.
He stopped before me without touching.
“Are you certain?”
“You have delayed for weeks. I came here alone.”
“That is not certainty.”
“To me, courage is the same thing.”
He released a quiet laugh through his nose.
It was the 2nd time I had heard him laugh and the first time he allowed the sound to remain.
He raised 1 hand to my face.
His fingers settled behind my ear, and his thumb moved slowly toward my chin.
I closed my eyes for only 1 second.
When I opened them, he was still waiting, watching me as though checking that the door remained open.
“May I continue?”
The question disarmed me in a way I could not express then and perhaps never would.
No one had asked me for anything before.
My father did not ask.
The world in which I had been raised did not ask.
Men were asked for permission.
Women were informed.
I answered yes with my head before my mouth could form the word.
Luciano leaned closer slowly.
The kiss was brief and restrained, carrying the weight of everything we had postponed.
When he withdrew, he rested his forehead against mine and breathed.
At some point, the bedroom door closed.
I did not notice who closed it.
Morning entered through the opening in the curtains, brighter than I remembered any morning being in that house.
I awoke with his hand resting on my arm.
It did not grip me.
It simply remained there, as though he had fallen asleep afraid I might disappear during the night.
For a while, I looked at the ceiling and listened to him breathing.
I understood I would not return to the other room.
He awoke when I moved.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice altered by too little sleep.
“Good morning.”
There was no ceremony and no attempt to look away.
He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers.
Then he rose, pulled a shirt over his chest without fastening it, and walked toward the door.
“Coffee on the porch in 10 minutes.”
“Who decided?”
“I did.”
“Agreed.”
He left smiling.
It was the 2nd time in 24 hours that I had seen him smile.
The porch was cool.
He had ordered the 2 cups placed on the same side of the table, beside one another instead of at opposite ends.
He sat and pressed his knee against mine beneath the tablecloth.
He left it there.
We ate little and spoke less.
Between one bite and the next, his hand remained over mine.
It was strange to realize that the small gesture told me more than everything spoken since the church.
Sienna arrived before noon wearing sunglasses too large for the amount of sunlight outside.
“You have the expression of someone who slept,” she said at the entrance.
“I slept a little, Sienna.”
“Fine. We are going out. You need air that does not smell like a possessive man.”
Luciano appeared in the corridor in time to hear her.
“Return early,” he said to me.
“I will.”
Then he looked at Sienna.
“Take care of her.”
“I always take care of her,” Sienna replied lightly. “You are the one behind in that department, Messina.”
Matteo opened the car door.
He looked at Sienna without moving a muscle and then at me with the dry half smile that had become his signature.
“2 SUVs will follow.”
“Do not worry,” I said.
I was lying.
We passed through the gate.
Philadelphia carried the clear spring light that followed rain.
Sienna talked about someone she had seen at the salon. I laughed at things that were not especially amusing because laughter came easily that morning.
I noticed the problem at the curve beyond the roundabout.
“Sienna, look behind us.”
She turned.
“Where are Matteo’s vehicles?”
The avenue was empty behind us.
Too empty.
Our driver pressed the radio and spoke a brief sentence in Italian.
No answer came.
I saw his shoulder tighten.
“Hold on.”
He accelerated.
It did not help.
A black SUV entered from a side street and blocked us from the front.
Another pulled alongside before our driver could turn away.
The window beside me shattered before I understood the sound was breaking glass.
Sienna screamed my name.
A large hand seized my arm and pulled me through the opening.
My body struck the street.
The asphalt scraped my knee.
A black shoe belonging to a stranger stopped beside my head.
Sienna was forced back into the car, 1 hand pressed against her bleeding temple.
“Stand,” the man ordered.
I stood.
They pushed me into the 2nd SUV.
The door closed, and the vehicle accelerated.
Through the rear window, I watched the street recede.
I saw the car containing Sienna stopped at an angle.
May you like
I saw the spring sky remain blue as though nothing were happening.
With a cold clarity that did not belong to the moment, I thought that somewhere across the city, a man who had learned to ask before touching me was about to discover that someone had torn me out of his own garden.
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