Settled. Access confirmed.
I type for a minute or two. I give a route reference, coded, the way my father taught me. And a timing window. Twelve minutes. I'd heard Rafael say it to one of his men in the corridor outside the study.
My thumb hovers.
The thing about a first step is that it's still a step. My father would say I'm being sentimental. He'd probably be right. I press send, watch the message go, and then I sit there with the phone in both hands like it's done something to me personally.
I hope it is just minor information.
You're splitting hairs, Gia.
I power the phone off, press it back into the velvet lining, close the box, return it to the drawer. Stand up. My reflection in the dressing mirror looks exactly the same as it did ten minutes ago, which seems wrong. It feels like something should be different. Some visible mark of what I just did.
There isn't one. Of course, there isn't. I pull my hair back, change into something presentable, and go downstairs.
The kitchen smells like butter and coffee and something with rosemary, and for a single unguarded second it makes me homesick for the apartment in the Marais in a way I wasn't expecting. Sunday mornings, Laura still in pajamas, the boulangerie two streets over. I used to let her put too much jam on everything and pretend not to notice.
The chef, Marco, fifties, with the kind of forearms that come from thirty years of kneading dough, is at the range when I come in. He glances up, does a quick reassessment of the situation, and gives me a nod that is professionally neutral but not unfriendly.
"Mrs. Caruso. Breakfast?"
"Please." I slide onto one of the stools at the kitchen island, which is probably not where I'm supposed to eat — there's a whole dining room for that — but the dining room is enormous and silent and I can't face it alone this morning. "Whatever you're making is fine."
He tilts his head toward the pan. "Frittata. Prosciutto, herbs."
"Perfect."
I look around. The kitchen is warm and lived-in in a way the rest of the house isn't quite, copper pans hanging in a row, a corkboard near the door covered in handwritten notes. I'd half hoped the other women would be here, there are two other wives in the household's orbit who came to dinner earlier this week, warm in that careful mafia-wife way, watchful under the warmth. But the kitchen is just Marco and me.
"How long have you worked here?" I ask.
He doesn't look up from the pan. "Eleven years."
"You must know where everything is buried."
He pauses for exactly one beat. Then the corner of his mouth moves. "I know where the good olive oil is. That's enough."
I almost laugh. "Fair."
"You like coffee, Mrs. Caruso?"
"I would actually marry the coffee machine if I wasn't already spoken for."
He sets a cup in front of me without comment, but the almost-smile stays. I wrap both hands around it and let myself have thirty seconds of just this, the warmth of the cup, the smell of the kitchen, the ordinary comfort of a person making food nearby. Thirty seconds of not being anyone's wife or anyone's spy or anyone's daughter.
The door opens.
The air in the room changes, the way it always does, that specific shift in pressure that I am apparently now conditioned to notice like some kind of awful instinct.
Rafael.
He's in a grey shirt, sleeves already pushed up, collar open. He looks like he's been awake for hours, which he probably has. His eyes find me the second he comes through the door and they stay there for a moment.
Marco becomes very focused on the frittata.
Smart man.
I keep my hands around my cup. Rafael crosses to the coffee machine without breaking eye contact, which requires a detour around the island, which means he walks closer to me than he strictly needs to. The hem of his shirt passes within arm's reach. I can smell him, soap, something faintly woody, the clean warmth of a man who takes up more space than his body actually occupies.
