Page 23 of The Devils in the Details

The soles had barely any wear, which meant either he’d bought them yesterday or he had someone who polished them for him, and given what I knew about the Romano family, option two seemed more likely.

I’d clocked him three blocks from the palazzo. One block to register the shoes. One block to confirm he was matching my pace. One block to decide I was being followed by someone with terrible awareness, but excellent taste in footwear.

Then I’d stopped at the gelateria on Via dei Calzaiuoli because I wanted confirmation and I wanted pistachio, and those two objectives were not mutually exclusive no matter what Ari thought about my priorities.

The gelato had been excellent. The confirmation had been textbook—Theo had stopped across the street, pretended to check his phone, and then very deliberately not looked in my direction for approximately forty-five seconds while I licked pistachio off a tiny plastic spoon and mentally mapped my exit routes.

Two exits. The narrow alley behind the gelateria that opened to Via Roma. The western side of the piazza that fed into the pedestrian thoroughfare toward the Uffizi. Carabinieri patrol cycle: nine minutes, give or take, based on the two passes I’d timed while eating.

All collected, all filed, all while enjoying what was genuinely some of the best pistachio gelato I’d had in months.

Multitasking. It’s what I do.

I unwrapped a second caramel. The gold foil caught the late light, turned it warm. Theo had vanished into the crowd now, just a dark head among dozens of dark heads, and I found myself mildly disappointed. Six blocks of being followed by a Romano and the man hadn’t even had the courtesy to approach me.

Rude, honestly. If you’re going to stalk someone, commit to the bit.

The caramel was halfway to my mouth when the air changed.

I didn’t need to look up. I felt it—the shift in atmospheric pressure that happened whenever Aristoteles Romano entered a space, like the molecules themselves had gotten a memo and rearranged accordingly.

He crossed the piazza in eight strides. Not hurrying. Hurrying would have been beneath him. Leon and the two others fanned out behind him—not following,, but flanking, covering angles I hadn’t even thought to worry about.

Good men. Well-trained. The kind that made Theo’s surveillance look like amateur hour.

Ari stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to see his face, which put me at a tactical disadvantage that my body registered with considerably more interest than my survival instincts thought was appropriate.

His black eyes did a fast scan. Top of my head—blond hair, probably windblown, definitely not styled for a potential abduction scenario—down my face, my throat, my shoulders, the oversized T-shirt that had ridden up to expose a strip of stomach I was now acutely aware of, my bare feet on the marble step, and finally the caramel wrapper clutched between my fingers.

His jaw was tight. The scar on his cheekbone stood pale against skin that had gone a shade darker with whatever was happening behind those eyes. His hands were at his sides, perfectly still.

I did my own scan. Faster, internal, the kind I’d been doing since the moment I met him and had gotten distressingly good at.

Read one: He was furious. Not shouting furious. Not red-faced, veins-popping furious. The colder, more controlled variety—the kind that lived behind his sternum and made his voice go quieter rather than louder, which was considerably more concerning.

Read two, filed immediately under later, examine thoroughly, possibly with alcohol: He had come himself. Not Leon. Not one of the dock crew. Himself. Six-foot-three of controlled menace, personally deployed to a public square because someone had followed the caramel guy.

That meant something. I wasn’t ready to name what, but my pulse had opinions on the matter that it was expressing with the subtlety of a marching band.

I held up the second caramel. An offering. A peace gesture. A deeply unserious attempt to de-escalate a situation that probably couldn’t be de-escalated with candy, but I was working with the tools available.

He did not take it. His eyes stayed on mine, and the refusal was so complete it didn’t even require movement.

“You were supposed to stay somewhere visible,” he said. Very quietly. The kind of quiet that made the tourists nearest to us decide, with impressive collective intuition, that the south side of the piazza had better gelato options.

I pointed upward with the hand not holding the caramel. The dome of the Duomo rose above us, Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, four centuries of being the most visible structure in Florence short of being literally on fire.

“It’s the Duomo,” I said. “Historically speaking, one of the most visible buildings in the Western hemisphere. Possibly the universe. I’m not up on extraterrestrial architecture, but I feel confident in this assessment.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know.” I popped the caramel into my mouth. Held his gaze while I did it, which was either brave or stupid and the line between those had always been blurry for me. “I’m being difficult on purpose. It’s a coping mechanism. Highly effective, clinically unstudied.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. The statue of David had more expressive range, and David was made of marble and missing some key anatomical details.

“Also,” I said, because the silence was starting to feel like a contest and I hate losing, “Theo Romano has a tell when he’s lying. His left shoulder drops. About half an inch. Consistent, reproducible, useful information I collected while being followed for six blocks, which you’re welcome to have. Free of charge. Consider it a signing bonus.”

Ari stared at me. The kind of stare that suggested he was running several calculations simultaneously and none of them were arriving at an answer he liked.