I said, “Copy. We’ll be ready.”
Then I stood there, for a long time, letting the cold soak through me, hoping it would dull the ache in my chest.
It didn’t.
Not even close.
At least we would have tomorrow.
Chapter 12
Angela
Itwasthefirsttime I’d been outside in four days. The world had rearranged itself while I was holed up in the apartment; now the city was bright and sharp, the sidewalks rimed with old salt, the lake nothing but ice and the wind that made you want to stuff yourself back inside your own skin. I was in a borrowed coat, black wool, not my size but close, with a thick scarf that felt good at my throat. It smelled faintly of aftershave and something herbal. Like him. My own boots, the same ones I’d worn through two winters of hiding, suddenly looked like trash next to his.
He’d shown up in the doorway of my room that morning with an armful of options, laid them on the bed like a runway show: pick one. There was no mention of the contract, no “Daddy says wear the red one,” just the logic of weather and the question—does this make you feel safe? In the end I chose the coat that was most like armor. It was heavy. I liked the weight.
The new gloves were a different story. Leather, soft, lined in something that felt like fur but probably wasn’t. They were too expensive for me, too obviously new. I slipped them on, flexed my fingers, and felt nothing at all. The old wool ones—the ones Wendell gave me—stayed in my pocket, balled together like a secret I wasn’t ready to give up.
Pietro was waiting in the lobby. He wore a slate overcoat, not as warm as mine, but he walked like he was impervious to weather. There was something in the way he scanned the street, the way he clocked every parked car and open window, that told you he was still working. But when he looked at me, the focus was different. Warmer. The lines around his mouth softened.
He said, “Ready, Baby Girl?”
I nodded, my heart suddenly in my mouth.
“Anywhere you want to go,” he said, “but I have an idea if you don’t mind.”
I shrugged, like it was nothing, but it was not nothing at all. My throat had gone tight. It was the first date I’d had in years.
We walked south along the lake. The edge of the city was all hard light and the blue-white chop of wind. The path was empty except for a few joggers, all of them hunched into themselves like they regretted every New Year’s resolution that brought them out here. The lake had frozen at the margins, a skin of dirty ice puckered with sand and plastic bottles, but beyond that it was just open water, dark and endless.
I said, “Where are we going?”
He smiled without showing teeth. “I thought you might like to see the glass house.”
“The what?”
He tilted his head, as if that explained everything. “The Conservatory. It’s not far. Full of palm trees. Somewhere that doesn’t feel like winter.”
I almost laughed, but I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me. “There are no palm trees in Chicago.”
“And that’s what I thought,” he said. “Until Serafina told me about them.”
We walked.He offered me his arm—he actually did, like a man in a black-and-white movie. For a second I froze, then I looped my arm through his. I felt awkward, a child at a wedding. The last person I’d touched in public had been a marshal in a Home Depot parking lot, escorting me to a safe car.
But with Pietro, the touch was nothing like that. He didn’t try to pull me closer. He didn’t guide my steps. It was just a line of warmth, the kind that made the rest of the air seem colder by comparison.
I said, “So you hvaen’t been here long?”
“Only six weeks,” he said. “Before that, Sicily. Before that, Napoli. But I’ve read the guidebooks. I’m a good study.”
“Reading guidebooks is actually cheating. You’re meant to just accidentally discover beautiful things. Everybody knows it.”
He looked down at me. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I grinned. “Maybe. I’ll keep evaluating.”
He grinned." “Evaluate away.”
