Another small lift of shoulders, as if we were discussing the weather.
“What did he try to take?”
His eyes don’t flicker. “He set his sights on a person important to the Contis. A woman who, by their rules, is untouchable.”
A woman important to the Contis. There could only be three possibilities.
One of Luca’s daughters, Caterina or Lucia. Or Elena, who just had his child. A much more valuable target.
“You’re saying he—” I can’t make myself finish it. I clear my throat. “That sounds like self-defense.”
He accepts that without argument. “It may have been, in the moment. The result remains the same. He left my house one afternoon and never came back to it.” A pause. “The Contis knew exactly whose boy he was. They did not call me.”
“You wanted a phone call?” The words fall out before I can stop them.
“I wanted a world in which he was not dead.” He says it the way he’s said everything else—as fact. Then he tips his head a fraction. “Failing that, I wanted the courtesy of truth delivered directly.”
“Courtesy,” I repeat, disbelieving.
What world do these people live in?
I swallow. The room feels smaller, like the walls have closed a fraction. “And so you brought me here.”
“You understand the stakes,” he says. “So they do.”
“You think they’ll come for me.”
“I know they will.” A flicker, not quite a smile. “The Contis possess a particular vanity about what belongs under their hand. They touch something and believe they have marked it forever. It is a very old problem.”
His eyes rest on me just long enough to make the point. “He will come.”
A beat of silence opens between us. I don’t fill it. He seems pleased by that.
“You could have called him,” I say, and hear my own voice steady some. “If what you wanted was a conversation.”
“What I want is not a conversation.” The warmth doesn’t leave his tone; it simply refracts. “What I want is a reckoning.”
“With Giovanni.”
“With all of them. Where one goes, they all go.” He smooths a thumb along the edge of the napkin, a precise gesture, thenleaves it alone. “You are the bridge I require. You are also, for the moment, an honored guest. Eat.”
The tray sits between us, untouched. The steam has thinned but not vanished. I hold his eyes and shake my head.
He considers me again, a long, clinical sweep. “You think abstaining is a form of resistance.” The slightest tilt of his head. “It is not. It is only discomfort.”
He lets that settle, then continues in the same patient cadence. “I am not interested in frightening you into compliance. Fear is a blunt tool. It breaks what it strikes. I prefer precision.” He gestures toward the window, toward the courtyard I kept count of in the dark. “You have seen that I am orderly. Orderly men offer terms.”
My throat is dry. “What terms?”
“You will eat, you will sleep, you will be moved when I decide to move you, and you will not be harmed so long as the men you are thinking about now do as men like them always do.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “If they come to take you, I will end them. If they choose not to, I will end you and deliver you to their door. Either outcome suits me.”
I stare at him. He says it like a weather report. No flourish. No threat-voice. That is the part that chills.
Finally, he stands. The motion is unhurried. He sets the napkin he didn’t use back on the tray with the care of a man replacing a book on a shelf. “Eat,” he says again. “You will be here a while.”
He takes two steps, then pauses with his hand on the knob. “You want to believe the best of him,” he adds without looking back. “That would be a mistake.”
The latch clicks. The door closes. The lock slides with that same clean mechanical sound.
