I stand in the food court alone and I think about that air vent and Vittorio's hand in her hair and something in me goes very cold and very quiet.
The club is loud and dark and full of people I don't want to be around.
Rafael insisted. Said I needed to get out of the house, needed to stop thinking for a few hours, needed to remember what it felt like to exist as something other than Isabella's guard.
What he meant was he was worried I was going to do something catastrophically stupid if left alone with my thoughts for another night.
He wasn't wrong.
Isabella was in the sitting room when we left — Matteo and Alessia on one couch, Dante and Bianca on the other, all of them around her. Safe. I told myself that was enough.
So here I am at some private club that Matteo uses for meetings that aren't officially meetings, surrounded by music that's too loud and liquor that's too expensive and men who are pretending this is pleasure when it's all just business wearing a different mask.
There are women everywhere. Dancers on platforms, servers in scant clothing, a whole section of private rooms where the entertainment gets significantly more private.
Rafael appears beside me with a drink. "Relax. You look like you're planning a murder."
"I might be."
"Of who? Vittorio? Because that would solve some problems and create significantly more." He hands me the drink. "Drink. Stop thinking. Try to have fun."
"I don't want to be here."
"I know. But you need to be here. Because if you go back to that house tonight, you're going to do something you'll regret." He pauses. "Or something Matteo will make you regret."
A woman approaches, tall and beautiful and completely uninterested in anything except the money that exchanges hands in places like this.
She smiles at me. "Can I get you anything?"
"No."
Rafael kicks my ankle under the table. "He's fine. Thank you."
She leaves and he looks at me with exasperation.
"You're going to have to pretend to be human for at least a few hours."
"I'm not interested in…" I gesture vaguely at the room, "… any of this."
"I know what you're interested in. Everyone knows what you're interested in. That's the problem." He leans forward. "You need to clear your head. You need to stop thinking about her for five minutes. You need to remember that there are other women in the world."
"I don't fucking want other women."
"I know. But you can't have the one you do want, so you need to figure out how to deal with that."
Another woman approaches the table, this one sent purposely because she's more persistent, more professional, settling into the booth beside me with practiced ease.
"You look tense," she says, her hand landing on my thigh. "I could help with that."
I look at her hand, then at her face, and all I can see is the wrong face, wrong hair, wrong everything.
"I'm fine," I snap.
"Are you sure? Because we have private rooms upstairs and I'm very good at helping men relax."
Her hand slides higher and I catch her wrist.
"I said I'm fine."
