Seven Years Lost, A Lifetime of Vengeance

I picked up the insulated thermos and walked to the end of the long marble hallway, where the cold light of the chandeliers fell like frost.

A pot of orchids sat there on a wrought-iron stand, rare enough to cost a soldier's monthly tribute, the kind of bloom Salvatore liked to display because men understood that beauty kept under glass was a form of power.

I tilted my wrist. I poured every last drop of the herbal stomach-healing soup I'd spent three hours brewing into the soil, slow, deliberate, watching the steam rise and die against the cold glass of the window. Three hours bent over the stove. Three hours measuring out the bitter roots the old country physicians swore by, the ones that eased the ulcer he refused to admit he had. The earth drank it down and gave nothing back.

That was when Vittoria appeared at the mouth of the corridor, draped in the gown that had been slashed to ribbons, the crystal beading hanging from the seams like teeth knocked loose from a jaw. She moved the way women move in this world when they believe a powerful man has already chosen them, unhurried, certain, owed.

She watched me empty the thermos into the dirt, and a smug little smile curled at the corner of her painted mouth. Her fingers drifted up to the slender chain at her throat and toyed with it, a beat too soon, before she had even spoken.

"Adriana, Salvatore just told me the master suite catches the morning light better. He said it would be good for my recovery." A pause, the chain still turning between her fingers. "He wants me moved in tonight. So you might want to start gathering your things. To make room."

The master suite of the Gilberti estate. I had slept beneath that vaulted ceiling for five full years. Five years of waking to the sound of his breathing, of learning which floorboards creaked, of memorizing the route from the bed to the window where I'd stood a thousand nights watching the gates, waiting for headlights, for him.

Every corner of that room held the residue of the life Salvatore and I had built, or the life I had built while he watched and let me believe it was shared.

I looked at the triumph in Vittoria's face. I pressed my thumb, slow and unseen, against the faded scar on my forearm, the old ridge of skin I'd carried so long I'd forgotten where it came from. The pressure steadied me the way it always had. I swallowed everything I felt and let none of it touch my voice.

"Of course," I said. "I'll go pack now."

I walked into the master suite. The air still smelled faintly of his cigars, of leather and the cold mineral scent of the obsidian floors. I did not take the jewelry. Not the emeralds he'd fastened around my neck the night he wanted associates to see what belonged to him, not the Matriarch's pieces locked in the velvet drawers. I did not take a single one of the handbags he'd bought to dress me up for the sit-downs, the soft Italian leather that had cost more than most men in his employ would ever hold.

All I took was a black duffel. I folded a few plain changes of clothes inside, the kind that drew no eyes, and laid my identification documents flat at the bottom where my fingers could find them in the dark.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

A message from my eldest brother.

Adriana. The work of erasing every trace tied to the Conti name has begun. By tomorrow, the woman who lived in that house will not exist in any record the Gilbertis can reach.

I zipped the duffel shut. I closed my hand around the worn handle and walked out of the master suite without looking back at the bed where I had given five years of my life to a man who measured it in nothing.

I moved into the most remote guest room in the villa, the one tucked at the far end of the north wing where the soldiers never bothered to patrol. It was a room for storing what no one wanted. Broken furniture under sheets. The faint, sweetish smell of mildew clinging to the walls.

I set the duffel on the narrow single bed in the corner and touched nothing else. The room did not need to be mine. I only needed it to hold me for a little while longer.

Twelve hours. That was the only distance left between me and the gates.

By evening the snow came down in earnest, thick and soundless, swallowing the grounds and the high walls and the dark shapes of the men who watched them.

Salvatore closed out a meeting with his caporegimes at one of the family's front offices downtown and came back to the estate carrying the cold in the folds of his coat. He moved through the main hall the way he always did, like the room belonged to him before he entered it, and conversation among the associates by the door died the moment his shadow fell across the marble.

He swept his gaze across the hall. His brow drew down at once.

A housekeeper delivered the report in a voice that shook.

"Don Gilberti. Miss Conti moved to the storage room in the north wing this afternoon."

The temperature in the hall seemed to drop. One of the men near the wall shifted his weight and went very still.

Salvatore's expression turned to stone. He cut through the corridor in long strides, his footfalls hard on the obsidian, and kicked the storage room door open.

The heavy wood cracked against the wall with a sound like a gunshot. The single bare bulb overhead swayed on its cord.

I had been sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the snow erase the world beyond the glass. I turned and looked at him.

He crossed the room in two steps. His gaze raked the shabby space, the sheeted furniture, the water stain spreading on the ceiling, and landed on the deflated duffel resting at the head of the bed.

His hand pressed flat against his stomach, the gesture he wore as impatience because he would never call it pain.

"What kind of stunt is this?" His voice came sharp, accusing, the voice he used on men who had failed him. "Vittoria only said she wanted the master suite. Who told you to crawl into a hole like this? Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"

I stood. I met his eyes, level, without flinching, the snow throwing pale light across both our faces.

"All the other rooms are full of Miss Greco's luggage." My thumb found the scar again, pressed once, and let go. "This was the only one empty. It makes no difference to me where I sleep."