What would she see if she looked at me?
Nothing worth saving.
The phone buzzes again. This time I glance at it.
Cicero
Rossi won’t resolve itself. Call me.
Gabriella is losing patience. So am I.
Tomorrow. My office. 9am.
I read the messages, feel nothing, and set the phone face-down.
Gabriella Rossi can lose patience until she chokes on it. I didn’t spend a decade building my own power base within the Syndicate just to hand it over to a woman my father chose to keep the Rossis compliant. Marriage alliances are his game. The old way. Bloodlines and breeding and women passed like currency between powerful men.
She is not my woman.
And I have plans of my own for the Marchetti empire.
In the window, Violet has finished her orange. She wipes her hands on her jeans as she always does, the woman has a dozen sweaters but apparently no napkins, and moves away from the sill.
The light stays on.
I check my watch. It’s nine fifty-two, which means she will shower now. After that she’ll change into the oversized T-shirt she sleeps in, the one with some American university logo on the front, then read for approximately thirty minutes until, finally, she’ll turn off the light between ten thirty and eleven.
I know her schedule better than she does. I know the contents of her apartment better than she does.
Twenty-three days of watching. Of waiting. Of cataloguing details like she’s a painting I’m planning to acquire. Provenance: South Boston, working class, Catholic guilt and stubborn pride.Condition: excellent, despite some emotional scarring. Medium: flesh and blood and a spine made of steel wrapped in soft packaging.
Estimated value: incalculable.
She walked past my car tonight. Close enough to touch if I’d rolled down the window. Close enough to hear the rhythm of her breath. She didn’t notice of course. She never notices.
But she will.
Tomorrow.
I’ve been patient. Learned everything I could about her. Mapped her routines, her vulnerabilities, her defenses. I know where she’s strong and where she’s weak. I know she’s lonely, it bleeds through every phone call with her mother, every solitary dinner, every night she falls asleep with a book on her chest because there’s no one there to take it from her hands.
She wants to be known. She’s just convinced herself she doesn’t.
I know her. Better than anyone alive.
The light in her window dims slightly as she’s moves to the bathroom for her daily scheduled shower.
I light another cigarette, inhale deeply, and acknowledge what I’ve been avoiding for weeks.
This isn’t reconnaissance. This isn’t due diligence. This is obsession, pure and simple, and I’ve never been the kind of man who lies to himself about his nature.
I want her.
Not just her body, thoughCristo, yes, her body too, the curve of her hips, the pale skin I’ve glimpsed when her sweater rides up, the mouth I’ve imagined wrapped around things far more interesting than blood orange segments.
All ofher. The whole complicated package. The sad American girl who talks to statues and tips street vendors and carries her loneliness like a armor.
I want to peel her open like she peeled that orange. Segment by segment. Layer by layer. Until there’s nothing left hidden.
