“Yeah,” I agree. I look up with a weak smile. “What’s Sammy’s surname, Rosa?”
“Maitland.”
I always figured he wasn’t Italian, but that confirms it. “And Vito’s?”
“Santelli.”
“What about yours?”
“Borgia,” she says, and I laugh, until I see she’s not joking. “Oh.”
She leans over the counter toward me, pinning me with her eyes. “It’s good you’re here,” she says. “Good forhim. But if you hurt him, or anyone else under this roof…” She pauses for effect. “Remember that I make your food.”
She hasn’t even blinked. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I say at last.
“Wanting and doing are two different things,” she says, and goes back to the stove.
I don’t have time to turn that over in my mind, because heavy footsteps on the few steps down to the kitchen announce Damiano’s return. I swivel on the barstool to see him stop at the bottom, brows drawn together as he takes in the picture before him.
I know what he’s thinking about, because I’m thinking about it too: the first time I met Rosa, I snuck out of his room to the kitchen, ostensibly to find him some help for his wounded arm. He found me like this, drinking her coffee.
And I ended up chained in the basement again.
“I have news,” he says, and then turns and stalks off.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I tell Rosa as I slide off the stool. “And for the advice.”
Damiano is waiting in the great room. The second I walk in, he grabs me and shoves me against the wall, hands on my shoulders, fingers digging in, the full weight of him pressing me flat. My body floods with heat, hips canting forward before I can stop them, and the shame of that involuntary response is worse than the bruises his fingers are leaving.
“You stay the hell away from my people,” he hisses. “You hear me? You don’t use them like you’re using me.”
He shakes me. My head knocks slightly against the wall.
“Let go of me,” I say, “and tell me what you found out.”
His hands drop from me but he stays standing over me, glaring down. “Stuccio’s got reservations at Maison Lumière on Friday night.”
Maison Lumière? I know it well. “Good. Then that’s where we’ll catch up with him.”
He’s still staring down at me. “You really are a cold-blooded snake,” he says contemptuously. “So what happens when we find this cousin of yours? You gonna off him, make your bones that way?” He grins. “Course not. You’re gonna get me to do it. Can’t stain those lily-white hands.”
I push past him. “I’m going upstairs,” I say. “Why don’t you go take out some of that aggression on those useless Giulianos?”
“Stay away from Rosa and Sammy,” he says in a low voice. “I mean it. I don’t want you fucking with their heads.”
I don’t want them hurt any more than he does, and my being here is dangerous for them. I have few options, though. Strike meant well—I think—but I can hardly stay at his place. The front door would collapse under a hard knock.
At least here, inside Damiano Orsini’s fortress, I stand a chance. Nothing can get in.
And nothing can get out.
I spend the rest of the morning wandering the house, trying to think, and getting nowhere. I end up in the music room, where I wonder if I’m the first person ever to sit down on the velvet stool at the piano and touch the keys. It’s been a long time since I’ve played, but of course I was taught. I was raised to be exactly like all those other elite children who came from wealthy families.
New money. Old money. Blood money. It’s all the same thing. Somewhere along the line, someone did something bad to get it. So I never considered myself beneath any of them. And a few reminders now and then of their own ancestors’ bad deeds convinced them that I was their equal.
Rosa comes in with a sandwich at lunchtime, unasked. “Don’t tell me you’re not hungry,” she says. “Eat.”
She puts the plate down on the top of the piano, forcing me to pick it up with a wince, and leaves the room before I can send it back. I carry it with me to the dining room and sit there to eat.
