I shower because it’s a ritual that convinces my body I can be clean. I dress in travel silks that don’t dare wrinkle in front of cameras and then I pack the way I have always packed: efficiently, like a woman who might have to run and still look like she meant to arrive. I leave a text message he might not read.
I’m coming. I’m sorry. I’m not done learning the right language.
On the drive up the cliff, Amalfi shimmers with the kind of beauty that inspires poetry. I watch the sea curve away from me, relentless as time, and count the hours to Milan. To the dress. To the cameras. To the man who wrote we on a card and then left me to translate what it costs to keep that word.
I tuck the note into my clutch like it can hold my spine up and, for once, don’t check my phone.
He told me to meet him.
I will.
22
NAOMI
The jet levels out over a seam of blue that looks impossibly serene.
I fasten my seatbelt anyway, because discipline helps when courage wobbles. Somewhere behind me, Amalfi is already turning into a story; somewhere ahead, Milan awaits with its breath held, possibly hiding knives.
My old phone, traitorous and insistent, flickers to life the second we clear the patch of stubborn clouds. My heart lurches when I see a message from Pia, the events coordinator on Dillinger Island who knows where all the bodies and all the extra glasses are buried.
Heads-up. Harrison Kane has been calling trustees and a certain bored columnist in Boston. He’s using “temporary marriage” and “image rehab” in the same sentence. I shut down what I could. Thought you should know.
Dread tightens my tongue. I type back,Thank you. If anyone calls again, route to me.The three dots appear, vanish. Pia’s good at crisis; she’s better at timing. I take the hint.
Ninety minutes to Milan. That’s a war’s worth of time if you load the cannon fast enough.
I open my notes app—The Island: Stakeholders—and start dialing.
I call the trustee with a bird sanctuary named after his mother and remind him the lighthouse program funds a migration tracking partnership—his mother’s favorite thing—then promise naming rights for the hill path if he can rally two votes.
I call the preservation lawyer in California who has a fetish for milestones and offer a side letter with escrowed funds and a quarterly public audit.
I call the journalist friend in Copenhagen who owes me a favor the size of a small yacht after I quietly put her in the room where a prince cried in a linen suit last year; I give her a ‘hold’ line on the “vows at the lighthouse” program and tell her she can break it if anyone floats a “temporary farce” narrative.
I call a florist. “I need fifty candelabras and a hundred hurricane chimneys on the island by Friday,” I say, because beauty can drown a rumor if you pour it fast enough. “And an ocean of wildflowers. Make romance an act of God.”
I call Vecchio’s estate manager and spin a promise with a hook in it. “The exchange program dovetails with ESGpriorities—yes, I know, three phrases with simple meaning: do good, be seen doing good, keep doing it. We’ll fund the first cohort if the board votes firms.” He grunts in a way that sounds like a handshake.
When my voice starts to fray, I switch to gathering receipts. I download the courier log that shows pickup, transfer, and the signature—H. Kane—that signed for the necklace. I export every timestamped text from Harrison—the extortion in suede gloves—into a tidy PDF my lawyer can wave like a scalpel if necessary.
And because my grandfather taught me how to keep my own throat intact when everyone else is reaching for it, I save the call recordings I made with Harrison—legal in New York when one party consents; I consented with rage.
I don’t know if I’ll need any of it. I don’t know if Vasso will look at me and see a grenade or a shield. I know this much: if anyone tries to paint him as a man propping up a paper marriage for a vanity project, I will burn the canvas and the gallery and the grantmaker’s Rolodex to keep the lighthouse lit.
The flight attendant offers water. I shake my head, then remember I’m human and take two bottles. “Thirty minutes to Malpensa,” she murmurs. I nod like I didn’t just auction parts of my soul in exchange for mercy.
Before descent, I presscallon Grandpa Theodore. He answers on the second ring with the crackle of old radios in the background.
“Little star,” he says, and I immediately bite the inside of my cheek to keep from becoming twelve.
“Hi, Grandpa.” The plane dips; my heart follows. “Do you have a minute?”
“I have more minutes than the indulgent Lord knows what to do with. What’s wrong?”
I choke on a sob.
He exhales, slow and steady. “Tell me.”
