A knock at the door brings the doctor and behind him a man I haven't seen before, though I have the sense, from the way he positions himself in the room, that he is not staff in any conventional sense. He is around thirty, lean, and carries himself with dignity. His eyes move over me with an assessment that is thorough and not particularly warm.
"I'll take her while you're seen to," he says, and it is not quite a question. The man turns to me and gestures toward the door with brisk courtesy. "This way."
I walk beside him through the corridor, the chain at my ankle making a soft sound against the floor with every step, and I look at the house properly for the first time.
It is old. The thick stone walls and high ceilings and windows have been here longer than anyone currently living in it, but the interior is modern, with clean lines and dark materials, and the kind of lighting that is cold. It is a strange combination and it shouldn't work as well as it does.
"This is the Don's residence, Don Luca, the man who brought you here," the man beside me says, without looking at me. "Luca Di Meglio is the Don of the Las Vegas Italian family. That means this city, everything that moves through it or operates within it, answers to him."
Luca, that's his name. Funny how I never thought to ask. And he wasn't a con man or kidnapper. He was Mafioso. My father was doing business deals with a mafia man. I should be terrified of his identity.
"You're his right-hand man?" I ask.
He glances at me sideways. "His brother," he replies. "Renzo Lotti."
I look at him. "I get the feeling you don't like me."
"How did you guess?" Renzo answers, in a tone so dry it could sand wood.
"I don't want anything from him," I say. "I don't care who he is or what any of this is. I just want to get through this and go home."
Renzo makes a short sound that isn't quite a laugh.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He resumes walking.
"What?"
He stops and turns to look at me properly for the first time and his expression is caught between exasperation and reluctance. "You stabbed him," he says. "He's walking around with stitches in his chest and a fresh bandage and he carried you back to his room himself. "Helooks like he wants to say more but
he looks at me for one more second and then he looks away. "Never mind," he replies, and starts walking again.
I follow him.
"I won't hurt him," I say to his back. "Or anyone else. Whatever deal he has with my father, I won't interfere. He can use me however he needs to."
"I don't care what you and he have," Renzo replies, without turning. "As long as you know what you are in this house. A bargaining chip. Nothing more."
He signals to a maid at the end of the corridor and tells her to take me to the garden and then he turns and walks back the way we came without another word.
The garden is large and overgrown at the edges in a way that suggests someone planted it with intention a long time ago and the intention has since been redirected elsewhere. There are roses along the far wall, still going despite the lack of attention, and a stone bench near the center where I sit and tip my face up toward the sky.
I suddenly remember my crystal. I had probably left it at the hotel in the chaos of being taken and in the weeks since I had barely thought of it, which is strange because for the two years before this, it had barely left my person.
I look up at the pale sky above the garden wall.
I think about asking Luca if he could help me get the crystal back. When he is in a reasonable mood, which is not a mood I have yet successfully identified or predicted, but presumably it exists. He would probably say no. He seems like a man who defaults to no as a matter of principle.
But it was worth asking. I lower my eyes to the roses along the wall and I think about what comes after this.
When Luca has done whatever he needs to do with my father and the deal is resolved and I am returned to wherever returned looks like. My father will be furious. He will blame me for the exposure, for the inconvenience, for the disruption to thecampaign. Gerald will look at me and I will understand from it that my access to the correspondence is finished.
I will ask to go abroad. A program, maybe a placement, something with enough distance between myself and New York that the absence is geographically justifiable rather than just quietly sad.
He will agree because I will be out of his way and that is all he has ever wanted from me. I look up at the sky again and I say it quietly, to the garden and to no one, to the space where someone should be and isn't.
"I give up, Mom." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "He's never going to like me."
