3 Days/ The Double Life

Episode 7: The Call

We didn't sleep after the tattoo.

We lay on the war-crime mattress, his shirt still off, my head on his chest, my fingers tracing the black roses around the sword. He told me things he had never told anyone.

He told me his first kill. He was 19, a week after I left. He vomited after.

He told me his father made him watch an execution when he was 12, so he would understand what Octavian meant.

He told me he kept our college apartment for six months after I left, paying rent, hoping I would come back for my hoodie.

I told him about my first contract. I was 17. My sister was sick.

We were two kids who became monsters to protect each other, and somehow found each other again in Florence, on a mattress that should be illegal.

At 6:14 AM, his phone rang.

Not his burner. His real phone. The one with the Octavian seal on the back. The one that never rang unless it was life or death.

He went still. I felt it. The heir came back in one second.

He sat up, grabbed it, looked at the screen. FATHER.

"Don't answer," I whispered, grabbing his arm.

He looked at me, torn. Then he answered. Because in Octavian, you don't ignore the Head.

"Father."

I couldn't hear the other side, but I heard his voice, low and cold, speaking in a language I didn't understand at first — Sicilian dialect, I think — and then in English

.

"No. I told you it's handled."

A pause. A sharp voice on the other end. Angry.

"I don't care what Valentino offers. I am not a bargaining chip."

Another pause. Louder this time. I could hear a faint yell.

Venerio's jaw clenched. The bruise from last time was still purple.

"She is not—" He stopped himself, looked at me, my hand on his tattooed back. "She is none of your concern. She is out. I paid her debt. The Syndicate is done."

The voice on the other end said something that made Venerio stand up, naked from the waist up, pacing our tiny kitchen in two steps.

"Don't you dare touch her. If you send anyone to Florence, I will—"

He didn't finish. The line went dead.

Silence. The tiny apartment felt too small for his rage.

"Ver?" My voice was small.

He didn't turn around. His back was to me, sword tattoo rising and falling with his heavy breathing. Black roses choking the blade.

"He knows you're here," he said, voice flat. "He tracked the car I used to come here. He knows about the apartment. He knows about... us."

My stomach dropped. "What does he want?"

"The Valentino alliance. They have a daughter. Sophia. He arranged a marriage. Tonight. Dinner in Sydney. If I don't show up, he will send his men to Florence to... clean up my distraction."

Distraction. That's what I was to Octavian. A distraction.

I stood up, pulling his coat around me, my hands shaking. Old instincts. Run. Pack. Disappear.

"So you have to go back."

He finally turned. His eyes were murderous, but not at me.

"I have to go back to tell him to his face that I will not marry Sophia Valentino. That I already have a wife."

Wife.

The word hung in the cold Florence air.

"I... I'm not—"

"You are," he said, crossing the distance, grabbing my shoulders. "You have been since college, since you left your cash on my table like you owned me. Since you wore my hoodie for two years. You are my wife, Nancy. You just don't know it yet."

He was possessive. Insane. Heir of Octavian insane.

"Venerio, you can't just—"

"I can. And I will. But I need you to stay here. Two days. Same as last time. No, not same. This time, don't wait by the window. Wait in bed. With the door locked. And the knife. Keep the knife this time."

He was already pulling his shirt back on, buttoning it with angry fingers. White shirt, black roses hidden underneath. Devil in a white shirt again.

"I will come back with a ring," he said, trying to smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "A real one. Not cash for rent."

"And if you don't come back?" I whispered. The fear I had buried for seven days came roaring back. "If your father—"

"Then you run. You take the passport. You take my coat. You go to the address I wrote in the tomato receipt. There's a man there. He will get you to anywhere. And you forget Venerio Octavian ever existed."

He wrote something quickly on the back of our grocery list — an address in Palermo — and pressed it into my palm. Then he kissed me, hard, desperate, like he was trying to memorize me again.

"Two days, Lauren. Don't do your Uhm thing. Say it. Say you'll wait."

I was crying. "I'll wait."

"Good girl."

He grabbed his black coat, my knife still in the pocket from last time, and left. No black car this time. He walked. Because black cars get tracked.

I stood at the window, watching him disappear down Via dei Bardi, white shirt in a sea of tourists, until I couldn't see him anymore.

The apartment was cold again. The basil was dead for real this time, I think.

And on the kitchen table, the grocery receipt with our list, and an address in Palermo I didn't want to ever use.

Two days. He said two days.

I sat on the floor where he had sat, his coat around me, his knife — no, wait, he took the knife — I had nothing. Just tomatoes.

And I waited.

I didn't know that at that exact moment, in Sydney, Sophia Valentino was trying on a white dress for a dinner she thought was her engagement dinner.

And I didn't know that Venerio's father had already sent a second car to Florence.

Not for Venerio.

For me.