Alarm panel on the wall. New. Recently updated. Camera tucked up high where a casual eye would miss it.
Staircase off to the left. Hall to the right. Open room up ahead.
I take it in without making a show of it.
She notices anyway.
Of course she does.
“You can save yourself some time,” she says, shutting the door behind me. “Antonio already went over the house.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“He redid the entire system himself.”
“I know.”
A fraction of a pause.
“Then you know he doesn’t miss much.”
I look at her. “I still verify my own environment.”
Her mouth tightens slightly. She hears the challenge in that, even though I didn’t mean it as one.
“Well,” she says, “that’s reassuring.”
There’s a sitting room just off the entry. Bright morning light. Good furniture. Clean and neat. A half-finished cup of black coffee on the side table. She was waiting here for me. Watching the feed, probably. The thought tracks with what Vito and Teresa told me last night.
Smart. Proud. Unhappy.
She gestures toward the room. “Do you want to sit, or do you prefer to loom?”
“I can do either.”
That almost gets something from her. Not amusement. But maybe a flicker of surprise that I didn’t come back harder.
She sits first, crossing one leg over the other with a kind of tight grace that says she is making a point of looking composed. I take the chair opposite, angled so I can see the front door, the windows, and both openings deeper into the house.
Her eyes catch that immediately.
Neither of us speaks for a second.
Up close, the resentment is clearer. She’s holding it tight, but it’s there. Not childish. Not dramatic. Cleaner than that. More like she’s been handed a humiliation but wrapped in practical language, so she's the one who would seem impractical if she refused.
I don't know much about her, but based on what I heard last night, she's anything but impractical.
Good.
That means Teresa was right.
The truth is the only thing with a chance here.
“So,” she says at last, folding her hands in her lap, “you had your meeting with my brother. Everybody got to discuss my life. And now you’re here.”
Sharp. Cutting.
I don’t answer the accusation. I answer what matters.
