Then the delivery truck lurches forward, Luca accelerates, and the butcher’s shop slips behind us as if the village has swallowed it whole.
My pulse doesn’t climb. That would be inconvenient. Instead, it narrows.
“Turn around,” I say.
“No,” Luca says.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Then be sick.”
I look at the back of his head. “That seems unkind.”
“It seems accurate.”
“Luca.”
“No.”
There are men who can be manipulated with vanity. Men who can be softened by politeness. Men who become stupid when women look fragile enough. Luca Romano is not one of them. Luca was made from discipline, old violence, and whatever God uses when He wants a door to understand duty.
He doesn’t glance back at the butcher’s. That tells me he saw Roberto, too.
Interesting. Very interesting.
I settle against the seat and let my hand rest briefly beneath my ribs. Not low enough to be tenderness. Not high enough to be denial. The twins are too small to answer. Still, they’ve become a kind of clock inside me. Every day, less time. Every day, fewer ways to pretend my body belongs entirely to me.
Luca drives us back to the estate without another word. He doesn’t ask what I saw. Men like Luca don’t waste questions on answers they already intend to report.
By the time we pass through the iron gates, Alessandro may already know. Or maybe he knew before I saw Roberto. That possibility sits beside me like another passenger.
I carry the paper bag inside. Teresa meets me in the entrance hall, eyes flicking once to my face, once to my hands, once to my stomach. Her gaze pauses there for less than a breath.
Too long.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice.
“Did you get lemons?” she asks.
“I was forced to,” I reply.
She takes the bag from me. “You should lie down.”
“I should do many things.”
“Yes,” she says. “You do very few of them.”
I almost smile. Then Marco crosses the upper landing above us, phone pressed to his ear, his voice low. He doesn’t look down.
That’s the wrong part. Marco always looks down. Not obviously. Not dramatically. But a man who runs Alessandro’s day-to-day operations doesn’t pass through a hall without cataloguing everyone inside it. Today, his gaze stays forward, as if looking at me would confirm something he prefers to remain unofficial.
The witness is back.
They know. Of course they know. The house absorbs information faster than rainwater through old stone.
I go to my room and close the door. Then I wait. Waiting isn’t inaction. People confuse the two because they are bad at both. I remove my gloves. Pin my veil to the chair back. Take out my notebook from the false seam beneath the drawer lining and write three words.
Roberto. Village. Butcher.
