Rowan tilts his head toward the self-defense shelf. “Do any of those interest you?” The question is easy, unhurried. Like he has nowhere else to be and the answer genuinely matters to him.
I look at the clean spines, the waiting pages. Something stirs in my chest—not quite excitement, more like recognition. Like the room already knows something about me that I'm still figuring out.
“Yeah,” I say. “All of them.”
Rowan looks at me for a moment. Then, “Can you fight?”
“No, sir.” A beat. “Not yet.”
Something shifts in his face. He goes still the way people go still when something catches their attention they weren't expecting—like a lens finding its focus. He looks at me properly for the first time since he walked in. Really looks.
“Not yet,” he repeats. Quiet. Almost to himself.
I'm still looking at the books when Rowan crosses to the desk. There's a box on it that I didn't notice before. He opens it without ceremony and steps back so I can see.
Inside, on a bed of dark fabric, is a curved knife. The handle is a deep midnight blue, the kind of blue that shifts when the light catches it, darker in shadow, almost black, almost the color of deep water. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I don't know how I know that immediately, but I do.
I don't touch it. Not yet.
“A knife?” My voice comes out younger than I want it to.
“Not just a knife. A karambit.”
I look at him.
“Every Capello son has a karambit,” he says like it's a fact that existed before either of us arrived in this room. “This one is yours.”
I look back at the box. At the blade lying there waiting in its dark bed, that specific blue catching the light from the green-glass lamp. Something moves through my chest to the space where a boy who lost everything is being handed something that has meaning.
Rowan lifts the box, offers it up in both palms, steady and careful. “Take it.”
I pick it up, and the weight of it settles into my palm. I turn it over and watch how the light plays along the edge, how it moves with my hand like it's been waiting for me.
“It's how we protect ourselves,” Rowan says, his voice low. “How we protect the family. The blade is your responsibility now. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods once, claps a hand briefly on my shoulder. The touch is brief and straightforward, the kind that doesn't ask anything from you.
“Good,” he says simply, then disappears out the door.
Valeria watches him go. Something moves across her face, quick and controlled, gone before I can read it. Then she looks back at me, and the warmth is all the way back, full and seamless, like it never left.
“I’m afraid Mr. Capello’s work requires him to be away from home a fair bit,” she says, brushing her palms across the bed comforter, like she saw a crease that needs erasing. “But when he’s home, he’s present. You’ll find he takes a deep interest in boys with potential.”
She tucks the covers around the comforter, straightens a pillow that doesn’t need it, and gives me a small smile. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” she says and waits just long enough for me to answer.
I nod. “Thank you, Mrs. Capello.”
“Not only a pretty face, but manners, too,” she says softly. “Such a good boy.”
Good boy.
Two words that would define the rest of my life.
6
RETH
