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Somewhere north, Matteo is toasting his own cleverness, certain he’s found the pressure point of the Sartorre operation—the routes, the money, the clean reputation.

The real pressure point sleeps upstairs, and I’ll burn the routes, the money, and the reputation to ash before I let him lay a hand on her.

13

VEDA

Day fifteen shows up. Nobody in this house mentions the calendar, least of all me.

The refill I ordered for Sarah runs through the twenty-eighth, three weeks past a departure that nobody scheduled. The fitter left two more dresses in garment bags, with occasions unspecified. Diana has begun teaching me the bread on a curriculum that clearly extends into November, when she swears the good flour becomes available.

I am trying to overlook the lie. I don’t want to look at it. Don’t want to think about it.

Instead, I live, and the living is the problem.

I started grabbing Lupo’s coffee order without either of us arranging it. Just thought he’d appreciate it. And he does. So I had the second one waiting on the study sideboard before I registered what my hands were doing with the machine. He looked at the cup, then at me, and gave an appreciative nod, and drank it.

It’s not just me.

My tea appears on the terrace at four.

The piano gets tuned by a short, serious man from Cremona, and nobody in this house plays piano but me.

Lupo’s hand finds the small of my back in the upstairs hall. In the pantry doorway. On the driveway. Places with no cameras, no Nonna, no Sarah, no audience of any kind. We aren’t putting on a show for anyone. Not anymore.

He’s begun giving me journal articles over breakfast, with sections underlined. News from a maintenance-phase trial in Rotterdam or a nutrition study he wants me to evaluate. He listens to my critiques with his chin resting on his fist, his espresso going cold while he listens, and asks follow-up questions that make doctors think.

I straightened his collar in the front hall before one of his meetings. My hands did it on their own authority. He let it happen and thanked me in a voice too formal for the occasion. We both boarded our separate days, pretending the hallway hadn’t happened. But where my fingers grazed his skin, I swear I can still feel him there.

And it’s getting worse.

During dinner, we’ve created a game where he word-lawyers pointless arguments, I object, and Sarah bangs her spoon like a gavel, ruling against him so often that it would trouble an impartial court. Nonna watches this entire scene from across the table, hands folded, silent, but smiling at everything.

This is the shape of my days now. Teasing, tuned pianos, hands at backs. A marriage growing in the walls of a lie, quietly, root by root, and I’ve stopped pulling the roots.

I may be the world’s worst kidnapping victim. I fear I like it here far more than I should. Not just Italy, although it’s as beautiful as all the films make it look, and the food should be illegal. I’m going to gain weight here, and I hardly care.

It’s the people that make it what this is. A fast seduction. A new addiction. Something warm I don’t want to pry myself from.

Boston calls on a Thursday, and it’s a splash of cold water.

“Pruitt.” I’m smiling when I answer. That’s the detail I’ll keep stepping on later—I answered smiling. “I know, I owe you, I⁠—”

“Veda.” One word, clipped and efficient. I know what she’s going to say by hearing my name alone. “I’ll say it before the announcement goes up. The committee met Monday. The headship went to Hollis. It was unanimous, and I’m sorry.”

Somewhere in the room there’s a chair, because I’m in it. I don’t remember sitting. “Oh.”

“The dinner mattered,” she says, filling my silence, professional about it. “You knew it did.”

“Pruitt—”

“You haven’t been here. There’s nothing I could do, short of dragging you home. The committee promotes what it can see. You built the strongest record I’ve watched in twenty years, and then you weren’t here, Veda.”

“Hollis is competent.” My voice is hollow to my own ears. A small fissure in my chest slowly splits open.

“Hollis is present, which is more than I can say for you.” A pause, and her voice shifts to the woman who hired me. The woman who helped me with central lines and bought me terrible coffee for a decade. “Whatever you’re doing over there—I hope to God it’s worth what it cost. Come see me when you’re stateside.”

I don’t know how to respond. “It⁠—”