Romano's Obsession

Chapter Four: The Don's Rules

LUCIA

Day four.

I have counted every single one of them.

Four days in this beautiful suffocating prison and I am no closer to leaving than I was the night those men drove me away from my life without blinking. I have tried the east door. I have tried the west corridor. I found a telephone in the library yesterday and had it in my hand for exactly eleven seconds before a guard materialized from nowhere and removed it from my grip without a single word.

Eleven seconds.

I wanted to put my fist through the wall.

Instead, I walked back to my room and sat on the edge of that enormous white bed and stared at the ceiling until the urge passed.

I am running out of patience.

I am running out of ideas.

I am in the corridor outside the dining room when I hear his voice cutting through the half open door low, rapid Italian that doesn't pause for breath because it has never needed to. I catch fragments. A name. Numbers. Then a silence that carries more weight than all the words before it.

"Capisce?"

One word. Barely a murmur.

I hear the scramble of agreement from the other end of the line from three feet away.

I push the door open.

He is at the head of the long dining table, phone to his ear, three men arranged around him in the posture of people being very careful not to breathe incorrectly. Dark suit. Dark hair. That coiled contained stillness that makes every room he occupies feel immediately smaller.

He ends the call. Turns. His eyes find mine and they are cold this morning business cold, Don cold moving over me with swift assessment.

"You should knock," he says.

"The door was open."

"In this house, you knock regardless."

I walk further in anyway.

"I need to talk to you," I say.

"I am busy."

"You are always busy."

"Then you understand the pattern." He picks up a document and turns his attention to it with the effortless dismissiveness of a man who has never once needed to work to make someone feel invisible.

The heat climbs straight up my chest.

"I have missed four shifts," I say. "My professor is expecting coursework I cannot submit. I have a real life and you are standing between me and every single part of it like you have some God given right"

"I do."

The simplicity stops me cold.

He still hasn't looked up.

"In this city," he says, "in this world what I say is law. What I decide stands. You are here because I determined you needed to be here and you will leave when I determine otherwise." He looks up then, those dark eyes cutting straight across the room. "Those are the rules, Lucia. I would suggest learning them."

"Leave us."

Not to me. To the men. They file out silently and the door clicks shut and suddenly it is just the two of us and the air shifts into something I don't have a name for.

He comes around the table.

Every step measured and unhurried the movement of a man the world has always waited for and always will. He stops in front of me. Too close. I tilt my chin up and hold his gaze because I will not be the first to look away.

Up close he is even more overwhelming. The height of him. The breadth of his shoulders. The carved jaw set in that hard unreadable line. Those eyes so dark they pull everything into them.

"You want to go home," he says.

"Yes."

"To your one bedroom apartment with the broken tap."

Cold moves through me. "You had me investigated."

"I had you protected. There is a difference."

"That is not your decision"

"The men who were in that club saw your face," he says, cutting straight through my sentence. "Every one of Fabrizio's men who walked out of that building alive knows exactly what you look like. You think they won't find one girl alone in a one bedroom apartment if they want to?"

The words land somewhere I don't want them to.

I don't let him see it.

"So this is protection," I say. "Not captivity."

"Call it what helps you sleep."

"I will call it what it is."

Something moves in his jaw. "You are safe here."

"I was safe before you."

"You were lucky," he says quietly and finally. "There is a difference."

I stare at him. This impossible infuriating immovable man with his unreadable eyes and that absolute certainty that radiates off him like heat.

"I hate you," I say. Quietly. Meaning every syllable.

Something moves in his eyes.

There and gone. So fast I would have missed it if I hadn't been watching.

He steps back. Picks up the document.

"Breakfast is at eight," he says. "Rosa is particular about punctuality."

And that is it. Done. He is already reading, already somewhere else entirely while I am standing here with my hands clenched and my pulse doing things I cannot control.

He does not look up again.

I walk out.

---

MATTEO

She said she hates me.

I am at my desk at eight in the evening staring at Marco's report same paragraph, fourth time, retaining nothing and I am absolutely not thinking about the way she said it. Quiet. Certain. Like she was daring me to prove her wrong.

She also did not look away first.

Not once.

My phone buzzes. Rosa.

"The girl ate nothing today. Not breakfast. Not lunch. I left a tray outside her door an hour ago. She hasn't touched it."

I set the phone down.

Pick it up again.

"Send dinner to her room," I type back. "Proper food. Not a tray."

Rosa's response comes in under ten seconds.

"Of course. Should I tell her it's from you?"

I stare at that question longer than it deserves.

"No."

I put the phone face down and open the next report.

She hates me.

Good.

Easier for everyone.

I read the same paragraph five times and retain absolutely nothing and tell myself it doesn't matter at all.

---