I find a seat near the back window and don't look out of it. I have four minutes of ride to sit with the sensation of the evening.
My uncle would say this is the exact shape that danger takes. That the most effective trap is the one you walk into wanting to. That understanding and manipulation are separated by motive, and motive is the one thing you can never verify from the inside of the situation.
My uncle is right about most things.
My hands are still.
They're always still. That's the training.
But I notice them, which is new.
I noticed his hands across the dinner table. Not as an assessment. Not as the part of the exercise where I catalogue a person's tells and weight distributions and probable reach. Just as hands, resting on linen, belonging to a man who once learned to clean old paintings in Florence before his father brought him home.
The bus stops on my street. I get off.
My apartment is dark when I unlock it. I don't turn on the overhead light. I stand in the kitchen for a moment with the city coming in through the window: the ordinary sounds of it, someone playing music two floors down, a dog, a conversation in the courtyard below.
The knife is where I always leave it. Inner thigh holster, empty now because I don't carry it on dates, which is a decision I made and am noting.
I didn't carry the knife tonight. To dinner with a man whose family runs most of the criminal enterprise in Naples.
I know what this means. It means I decided, before I got on the bus to Vomero, that I wasn't going to need it.
My body decided he wasn't a threat.
My body has excellent instincts and absolutely no authority over my choices.
But if I’m not careful, he may end up taking over that as well.
Chapter 8
The Gala
Niccolo
The dress is a problem.
Not the dress itself. The dress is correct. Valentino, midnight blue, floor-length with a slit that stops at the knee. Conservative enough for a charity gala. Beautiful enough that she'll feel it when she puts it on. I had it sent to her apartment this morning with a note that said only:Per stasera. N.(For tonight. N.)
The problem is that I've been standing in my penthouse for forty minutes imagining her in it.
I adjust my cufflinks. Black onyx in white gold, my father's, the only pair I kept because everything else he wore remindedme of him. These are small enough to forget where they came from. I wear a black suit, no tie, collar open. The decision not to wear a tie was deliberate. Ties are for men performing authority. I don't need to perform it. I carry it the way I carry the scar on my forearm. Without commentary.
The gala is at the Grand Hotel Vesuvio. A fundraiser for the restoration of the Certosa di San Martino, which I sponsor because I care about the monastery and because sponsoring the restoration of sacred architecture buys goodwill with people who matter. The Cardinal will be there. The mayor's chief of staff. Three members of Parliament. A handful of industrialists whose money is almost as complicated as mine.
I told Valentina it was a work event. That I needed someone on my arm for appearances. A fake girlfriend for the evening. She laughed when I said it. Actually laughed, loud enough that Giulia looked over from behind the bar.
"A fake girlfriend," she repeated.
"For one night."
"And you picked your waitress."
"I picked you."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "I don't have anything to wear to something like that."
"I'll take care of it."