Page 147
The phone in my lap buzzes.
New phone. Dante handled it. Same apps, same contacts, same life waiting for me like I hadn't disappeared into a nightmare.
Three weeks away from the internet, and I returned to four hundred DMs, two brand inquiries, and a comment thread debating whether I'd gotten work done because my last post was apparently giving different energy.
My mother texted twice.
The first one asked if I'd seen the Loro Piana resort collection. The second was a forwarded article about Milan restaurant openings with, for your next trip!
"You're doing it again," Valentino says.
"Doing what?"
"Reading the phone with your jaw locked."
His eyes are open now, dark and steady on me. No escaping that look. Not in a safe house, not in a hospital, not thirty thousand feet over Illinois.
"Your mother?" he asks.
"She thinks I should try the new place in Brera. Apparently the chef trained under someone important." My voice comes out light. Automatic. "I disappear for three weeks and my mother's contribution is a tasting menu."
He doesn't answer right away.
He just watches me.
Not waiting for me to make it funny. Not rushing to smooth it over or tell me it isn't that bad. Just there.
That's still new enough to scare me.
"You laughed," he says, "when I said you should go home and talk to your family."
"Because it was funny."
"It wasn't a joke."
"That's what made it funny."
I set the phone face-down on the seat beside me.
"My family knows how to send money, recommendations, and links to articles. They're good at staying in touch with the version of me that looks fine from a distance. You want me to feel safe? You're the one who carried me out of a palazzo. You're the safety plan. My parents are..."
I stop.
The words I usually use are waiting there. Something sarcastic, something easy. But none of them fit.
The cabin hums around us. Recycled air. Leather. The faint smell of the espresso Valentino made an hour ago because apparently plane coffee is a personal insult.
"They're people I'm related to," I say.
It lands flat.
True.
Valentino shifts, slow and careful, and reaches across the aisle for my hand. I catch the wince before he buries it. He knows I catch it. Neither of us says anything.
His knuckles have healed into new scars over the old ones. I run my thumb across them.
"Ferraro says we're clean," I say, because the silence got too honest. "The FBI got their warlord, the prosecutor got her trafficking case, and we got to be victims. Which we were. Still weird. There should be a card."
