RUIN ME, MR. DE LUCA

Chapter Six —A Face on Every Screen

Luca arrived on the morning ferry with his arm in a sling and the expression of a man who had lost an argument with a staircase.

"You look terrible," Elias said, opening the door.

"I look better than I feel. That's the secret." Luca dropped into the nearest chair, wincing, and set a paper bag on the table. Inside were bread, cheese, a bottle of water, and, wrapped in a napkin, two sfogliatelle still warm from some bakery on the mainland. "Eat. Nobody thinks well on an empty stomach."

Elias hadn't known he was hungry until the smell hit. He ate standing up, in three bites, while Luca watched with unconcealed satisfaction.

"Marco used to say that," Luca said. "He fed me once, a long time ago, when I'd been awake two days and nobody else had remembered I was a person." He shrugged his good shoulder. "I'm telling you so you know he mattered to us, too."

The words went through Elias like warm water. "Thank you."

Adrian came down the stairs a moment later, shaved, in a clean shirt, the bandage just visible under his cuff. He looked from the pastries to Luca to Elias with the faintest softening of the mouth that was almost, but not quite, a smile. Then it was gone. "Report."

Luca's face tightened. "Naples is closed. Dante has taken the Ravenna villa on the hill and put men on every road out of the city. They're at the train stations and the ferry piers. They're checking hospitals and pharmacies." He glanced at Elias. "They know you were in that kitchen."

Elias sat down slowly. He pulled the brass key from his pocket, the key that had come through a tunnel, a boat chase, and a burning house, and set it on the table. "Then I need to know what this opens."

Luca picked it up with his good hand and turned it under the light. There were tiny letters on the bow, nearly worn smooth. B.P. 217. "Banca Partenopea," he said slowly. "A private bank, old, the kind with a few hundred clients and no sign on the door. The Ravennas have kept a vault there for a hundred years. This is a box key."

"What goes in a box?"

"Whatever a family doesn't want in its house." Luca set it down. "Records. Ledgers. Anything that couldn't be allowed to burn."

Elias looked at Adrian. Adrian was already looking at the key, and something in his face had gone very still.

"The proof," Adrian said.

"Proof of what?"

"Of who ordered it." He didn't say my father's name. He didn't need to. "If your father left that key to anyone, it's because the box holds what Dante never managed to find."

Luca cleared his throat. "I'll go check the boat," he said, and left, with the tact of a man who had spent years being invisible in rooms.

The silence settled. Elias turned the key over in his fingers.

"I heard the call," he said.

Adrian didn't move.

"Last night. I was awake. I heard him say seventy-two hours. I heard you say you'd think."

Adrian closed his eyes briefly. "I know."

"You know?"

"I heard you stop breathing. People don't breathe the same way asleep." He opened his eyes. "I thought you'd say something in the morning. I wanted you to have one night first."

"One night." Elias's voice cracked sideways into something sharper. "You told the man who killed my family that you'd think about handing me over."

"I told him I'd think so he'd keep my father alive for three days." Adrian came around the table and stopped an arm's length away. "Dante has people inside that prison. Vincenzo has seventy-two hours of safety because I said those words. That's all I bought. I won't pretend it was noble."

"What happens at hour seventy-three?"

Adrian said nothing.

"That's the answer, isn't it? You don't know."

"No." The word came out low. "I don't."

It should have enraged him. It did. But it was the second time Adrian had told him something true that no liar would have said, and Elias felt his anger lose its footing.

"He killed my parents," he said, quietly now. "He's your father. I understand that. I'd never ask you to feel nothing." He drew a breath. "But I'm not a package, Adrian. You don't get to decide whether I'm delivered. Not while I'm standing here."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Adrian's hand came up as if to touch his face. It stopped an inch short and hung there in the air between them, close enough that Elias could feel its warmth.

"I decided at the boathouse," Adrian said, very low. "When you threw yourself at me. I decided then. I just didn't know how to tell my father he was already lost."

Elias couldn't breathe. He didn't move. Neither did Adrian.

Then Adrian lowered his hand, slowly, and stepped back, and the room came back around them.

"The vault," Elias said, unsteadily. "If I'm the heir, I can open it. Tomorrow, before your seventy-two hours are up."

"It's the most watched place in the city."

"Then we think of a way in."

A long pause. "Yes," Adrian said at last. "We do."

• • •

Luca came back at noon, pale and fast, with his phone in his hand.

"You need to see this."

There was a small television on the kitchen shelf, an old one with rabbit ears. Luca switched it on. The picture rolled, steadied: a news anchor at a desk, a map of Naples, and in the corner of the screen, a photograph.

Elias knew it. His university ID, the one where he hadn't smiled.

"...police are asking for the public's help in locating Elias Moretti, twenty-four, a student, in connection with the murder of restaurateur Marco Moretti, found dead two nights ago in the kitchen of the family trattoria..."

The kitchen went silent except for the voice.

"...authorities say he was seen fleeing the scene and may be armed and dangerous. A reward is being offered..."

Elias hadn't realized he'd stepped backward until the edge of the table struck his hip.

"They think I killed him," he said.

"No," Adrian said grimly. "They've been told to think it." He didn't look away from the screen. "Dante owns half the police in this city. He wants you with nowhere left to run. He wants you to come to him, because it'll be the only door still open."

Elias looked at his own face on the screen. The hurried photograph, the hair he'd forgotten to cut. A reward. Every person in Naples was about to look at him and see a murderer.

Behind him he felt a warm presence: Adrian, half a step too close, not touching, a wall between him and the room.

"Tomorrow," Elias said. His voice was steady, and it surprised him. "We go to the vault."

"Elias"

"He's closed every door. Fine." He switched off the television, and the picture shrank to a white dot and vanished. "Then I'll walk through the one he didn't think of."