His skin burned through the fabric.
"A presto, bella," he said, without turning around.
He kept walking, and I stood there in the hallway for ten seconds before I could remember where I was going.
Bianca, Valentina.
Bianca was already in the music room when I arrived.
Not on the white sofa this time, but on the piano bench, her back to the door.
I stopped in the doorway.
She played well. Not Chopin—Debussy, Clair de Lune. Small hands, with her rings, running over the keys with the precision of someone who learned young.
I hadn't known she played; I'd imagined she was the type who learned to fake playing to impress men at dinner.
I stayed in the doorway, didn't interrupt her.
"Sit down, Valentina."
I walked to the white sofa and sat down.
She wore no makeup today, no dark-gray dress. Her green eyes had shadows under them that the face powder had hidden the night of the engagement, and that she'd left showing today on purpose.
"I thought all night," she said, in a lower voice than yesterday, more tired. "I accept. But there's one condition."
"What is it?"
"I tell you everything I know about your father, Valentina. Everything. And in exchange, Luca doesn't read a word of the letters, and you let me leave Posillipo alive."
"What do you mean, leave alive?"
"Bella," she said plainly, without theatrics. "You think Luca is going to leave me breathing after he finds out what I did?"
"What exactly did you do, Bianca?"
She rested both hands on the piano bench behind her, looking at the floor.
"I altered the envelope."
"I know."
"But it wasn't my idea. It was your father's idea."
I saw Vesuvius through the window—still sleeping, across the water, indifferent as ever.
"Go on."
"Your father came to me in January. A week after I ended things with Luca." Her voice grew steadier as she talked, like someone getting used to the confession. "He already knew it wasover. I don't know how, but he knew, within forty-eight hours. He invited me to lunch in Rome, at the Hotel Hassler."
"What else?"
"I'd known for years he was part of the underworld, Valentina. I knew what he was." She looked at me, resolute. "When he called me to Rome in January, I knew it wasn't to get back together. I knew it was to use me."
"Use you how?"
"He offered me two hundred thousand euros to do three things."
