SOLD TO THE MAFIA DEVIL IN SUIT

Chapter 14 — I Don't Need Saving

Rafael arrived on a Saturday and immediately looked at the villa the way a man assessed a potential prison.

She watched him from the steps — his eyes moving across the gates, the walls, the angles of the cameras he thought were hidden. He had her father's face and their mother's eyes and a jaw that had been clenched since he was seventeen years old and had never fully unclenched since.

She went down the steps and hugged him before he could start calculating exits.

He held on longer than usual. She let him.

"You look fine," he said, pulling back and examining her for damage.

"I am fine. The arm has almost healed."

"I saw the church photographs."

"There are photographs?"

"Several journalists were apparently also dodging bullets." He looked grim. "You look terrifying in them, for the record. Everyone else is running and you're behind a pillar looking like you're about to give a press conference."

She felt a small, entirely private pride about this. "Come inside."

In the kitchen — her honest-conversation place, she'd decided — he sat across from her and looked at her the way he'd been looking at her since they were children, like he could read the version of her that existed underneath the version she was showing.

"Are you actually fine?" he said.

"Complicated question."

"Valentina."

"I am not being harmed," she said. "I'm not imprisoned. I can go into Como, I can call you, I can see people. He is—" She chose her words carefully. "He is not what I expected. He's not trying to hurt me. He's trying to manage everything, which is different, and I'm managing that."

"He's Ferraro," Rafael said. "He's dangerous."

"He's also the man who covered me with his body during the church attack without appearing to think about it." She met his eyes. "So it's complicated."

Rafael reached into his jacket and placed an envelope on the table.

She looked at it. "Rafael—"

"Boat in Portovénere," he said. "Corsica in three hours. Madrid by morning. I've had it ready since Tuesday."

She looked at the envelope. She thought about the map she'd been building — of the villa, of Luca, of the thing that was slowly and unwillingly assembling itself in her chest.

"I'm not going to use it," she said.

"You might need—"

"I might," she said. "But not today." She pushed it back to him. "Keep it. I want to know it exists. But I'm choosing to stay."

Rafael stared at her. "He's gotten to you already."

"Nobody has gotten to me," she said sharply. "I've gotten to me. I made a decision and I'm seeing it through." She looked at her brother. "I need you to trust that I know what I'm doing."

"Do you?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. "Mostly," she said honestly.

He almost smiled. Almost.

Luca returned at seven. She heard the car and went to the entrance hall with Rafael slightly behind her left shoulder, positioned there without discussion, the way protective older brothers positioned themselves everywhere.

The door opened. Luca stepped in, still in his travel suit, and saw Rafael in the same second he saw Valentina.

The two men looked at each other across the entrance hall.

Valentina had never been in a room where silence had so much content.

"Luca," she said. "My brother Rafael."

"I know who he is," Luca said. He crossed the hall and extended his hand. "Rafael."

Rafael shook it. Held it one second longer than necessary. "Ferraro." He paused. "Thank you for getting her out of the church."

Something moved across Luca's face. "Of course."

"Good." Rafael released his hand. "She'll tell you herself if something is wrong — she never needed anyone to handle things for her. But I want you to know I'm nearby." He said it with the complete calm of a man who had decided that was the only thing that needed saying. "In case the need arises."

It was not a threat. It was the country directly next to a threat.

Luca looked at Rafael. Then at Valentina. "You could have told me he was coming," he said.

"You could have told me Elena was coming," she replied.

From somewhere in the corridor, Marco made a sound. He was attempting to convert it into a cough. It was not convincing.

Luca looked at him. Marco found the ceiling very interesting.

"Dinner," Luca said to Ginevra, who materialized without being called. "Four."

"Lovely," Valentina said, as if this had been the plan all along.

Rafael leaned close to her as they turned toward the dining room. "Did you just win something?" he murmured.

"I win most things," she murmured back.

"I genuinely cannot tell if I should be relieved or terrified," he said.

"Both," she said. "That's usually the right answer around here."