I hesitate. I swipe to answer.
His voice is low and calm. “Lucia.”
“Hi,” I whisper, trying to breathe.
Long silence. I can picture him in a dark room with a whiskey, staring out a window at the city. “Is it the family?” he asks.
“It’s just, I can’t,” I say, the words breaking inside me like sea glass. “I can’t see you anymore. This has no future, and we both know it.”
He doesn’t argue, beg, or threaten. There’s only silence, the kind that makes you want to scream to fill it.
“Okay,” he says, at last. “If that’s what you want.”
The thing is, I don’t know if it is.
Before I can say anything else, I hang up. I sit there, watching the city pass by in yellow streams of taxi cabs and lost years. I think about how loneliness can be so loud that it drowns out everything else.
I walk home, counting every step, almost hoping to see him waiting at my door. Maybe he’ll send someone. Maybe I’ll be followed. Maybe he’ll forget me by tomorrow. After seven blocks, I decide I don’t want him to forget.
When I get home, there’s a white rose on my stoop. No note, no vase. Just the stem, cleanly cut, petals glowing in the streetlight. I pick it up and carry it inside, pressing my face to thesoft petals until the scent, like rain-washed linen with something darker underneath, fills my lungs and clouds my thoughts. I fall into bed fully dressed, my silk blouse wrinkling against the sheets. In the space between waking and sleep, I dream of his touch—the heat of his fingertips on my wrists, his platinum cufflinks shining as he pulls me closer, making me give in to him. "Alessio," I whisper into the darkness, his name the last sound on my lips before sleep takes me.
CHAPTER NINE
ALESSIO
The phone is still warm against my face, the black glass smudged with my fingerprints and cheek. Lucy's click of disconnection, that final tiny sound like a bone breaking, still buzzes in my ear. The feeling spreads through me, a poison working its way until the whole room tastes of copper and ash. The crystal tumbler in my hand catches the amber light, throwing broken shadows across the mahogany bar where I've been standing for the last hour, waiting for her to say something, anything, that wasn't goodbye.
I set the glass down gently, then sweep my palm across the bar and knock it off. Enzo, lurking near the window and pretending not to listen, jumps at the sound of breaking glass, but his eyes stay on my face. He starts to make a joke, something sharp about heartbreak and old fools, but stops himself before saying it.
I get up, walk to the window, and look out at the city. It glimmers like a jewelry case, each light a story I could have had with her. The wind is cold tonight. The glass pushes the chill onto my skin, sharp and sobering. I picture Lucy somewhere below, walking with her arms wrapped around herself, shiveringnot from the cold but from the deep Stuyvesant fear she inherited with the apartment and the family name.
It might almost be beautiful, if it weren’t so unbearable.
Enzo lingers on the other side of the bar. “You want a mop for that,” he says, jerking a thumb at the broken glass, “or should we just torch the building and collect the insurance?”
It's the wrong thing to say, but also perfect. My laughter is ugly, scraping along the inside of my teeth. “Tell me something, Enz. You think people like us ever get the luxury of walking away?”
He considers. “Luxury, no. But we fucking specialize in making people regret it if they try.”
I nod, watching headlights crawl like fireflies along the avenue below. My rage spins inside me like a turbine, strong enough to tear me apart if I don't control it. It's time to put that energy to use.
"Open the Rolodex," I say, my voice flat. I watch headlights crawl like fireflies along the avenue below. My rage spins inside me like a turbine, strong enough to tear me apart if I don't control it. It's time to put that energy to use. "And wring the motherfuckers dry."
Enzo’s lips thin, satisfaction and hunger in the same line. “Anyone in particular, or?—?”
“Every Stuyvesant. Every friend, every in-law, every coked-up nephew on the family payroll. I want their world shrunk to the size of a coffin. Start with the father—he’s the only part of the machine that still works.”
Enzo is already on his phone, fingers tapping like a Morse code death sentence.
“And the mother. She runs the foundation, right? Hit the endowments. If they so much as fund a bake sale, I want the tax fraud flagged.”
He gives me a slow nod, already planning his next move. Enzo lives for this. He can sense a weakness in a family tree the way a dog smells cancer.
“And Lucy?” he asks, after a beat.
That’s the catch. “Leave her alone. Nothing that looks like a threat, nothing in her personal account, nothing that makes her feel like prey. I want her untouched except for the knowledge that the rest of her family is falling apart.”
Enzo’s eyes flick up—a question, a challenge, but not quite a warning. “This is about the old man, then.”