Page 39 of The Devils in the Details

The blanket Leon had brought covered him from shoulders to ankles, wool heavy and warm, and the only parts of him visible were the top of his head, one hand, and the turquoise sparkles on his toes.

I shifted. My arm was fully asleep now, pins and needles radiating from shoulder to fingertips, but the discomfort was academic compared to the more pressing question of how to move a sleeping man without waking him.

The answer, as it turned out, was carefully.

I stood. One motion, controlled, the kind of controlled that came from years of moving heavy objects in the dark without making noise. Zephyr’s weight transferred from my lap to my arms without disruption, his body adjusting with the boneless compliance of deep sleep.

He made a sound. Not a word. A murmur, low and fuzzy, the noise of a brain registering movement without fully waking up. His hand found my shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric of my vest, and then he settled against my chest with the absolute trust of something that had decided the destination was irrelevant as long as the vehicle was me.

He weighed nothing. One hundred and fifteen pounds, most of it bone and attitude, and the lightness of him registered somewhere below my sternum with the uncomfortable precision of a fact I had been avoiding for seven days.

The hallway was dark. The palazzo hummed around us—old pipes settling, the distant click of a thermostat adjusting, the particular soundtrack of a building that had been standing for four centuries and had developed opinions about nighttime.

My boots were soft on the hardwood, each step measured, like the tempo of a man carrying something fragile through a dark house.

I did not consider the study with its built-in window seat where Zephyr had taken naps for the past week. The option presented itself—down the hall, third door, the room with the good light and the questionable wifi.

I considered it for approximately one second.

Then I dismissed it. I had already made a decision and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

My bedroom was on the second floor at the end of the corridor. Large, sparsely furnished. The bed was made. I had people for that. The sheets were clean. I had people for that too.

I set Zephyr down with the same care I’d used to lift him. One hand under his shoulders, one under his knees, the blanket still wrapped around him like a cocoon, and then he was on the mattress, his weight sinking into the duvet.

His body arranged itself into the configuration of someone who had found a horizontal surface and was now committed to it. He didn’t wake. His breathing stayed even, deep, the rhythm undisturbed by the transition from arms to mattress.

The blanket had come loose at one corner, exposing the strip of skin above his waistband where his T-shirt had ridden up, and I pulled the duvet over him with all of the attention of a man who was cataloguing details he had no business cataloguing.

I stood there. Longer than necessary. The amber light from the hallway caught the edge of the bed, threw it gold against the dark room, and Zephyr’s face was peaceful in a way I hadn’t seen before—unguarded and soft around the edges.

My hand found the back of his head. Once, briefly, fingers threading through blond hair that was softer than it had any right to be, and then I withdrew.

I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me with the quiet understanding that certain thresholds, once crossed, did not offer return tickets.

The butler was waiting at the end of the corridor. He had been waiting, I suspected, since approximately the moment Leon’s boots had faded down the hallway.

“A tailor,” I said. “Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock. Measurements for a suit. Conclave specifications.”

The butler nodded. Once. He had been taking orders from Romano men for longer than I had been alive and had developed the ability to absorb instructions without visibly processing them.

“Any preferences for the fabric, sir?”

“No.” I paused. Considered the room full of family heads, the way certain eyes would find Zephyr and dismiss him on sight because dismissal was easier than respect. “Something that makes them look twice. Nothing flashy. Nothing that says he’s trying. He’s not trying. He’s better than they are, and the suit should be the last thing they notice.”

The butler’s expression did not change. His eyes, however, did something complicated—a fractional widening, as if he had just heard something he hadn’t expected and was now filing it under a category he hadn’t known existed.

“It will be done, sir.”

He left. The corridor went quiet. I stood there for a moment, alone in the dark hallway with the weight of a decision I had made forty minutes ago and was now implementing with the cold efficiency of a man who did not believe in half measures.

The shower was hot. I stood under the water and let it run longer than necessary, the steam filling the bathroom, the heat working into muscles that had been holding tension since approximately the moment Zephyr’s text had arrived from the Piazza del Duomo.

When I got out, I dried off and then changed into a pair of black silk lounge pants. No shirt. The palazzo was warm, the night was quiet, and the layout of my bedroom had just undergone a significant revision that made clothing feel optional in ways I was not currently examining.

The bed was warm where Zephyr’s body had been. I slid in beside him, the mattress dipping under my weight, the duvet settling around us both.

Zephyr shifted. Immediately. Not awake—his breathing didn’t change, his eyes didn’t open—but his body turned toward the heat like a plant tracking sunlight.