Antonio Salvatore was in the study.
Not the formal receiving room, not the dining room, not any of the spaces that were arranged for the management of impressions. The study, which told me something about the register he had chosen for this meeting, which was not performance but function, not the version of himself he presented to the world but the version that made decisions.
He was standing when we came in.
Not at the desk. At the window, his back to the room, looking out at the grounds with the particular stillness of a man who has been standing in one place for some time and has not been still inside it. He was in a dark suit with the jacket on, which was the armour, I understood, the same way Matteo's composed face was armour, the external structure that maintained the shape of thi
