Between Loyalty and You

Chapter 11 (Luca's POV)

At eleven on Sunday morning, I was twenty minutes from leaving for Florence.

Her restaurant’s address lay beside my keys. I had checked the journey twice, though I knew the road.

Rosa stood in the study doorway.

“No tie?”

“Apparently, I frighten waiters.”

She looked at my open collar, then at the overnight bag beside the desk.

I had packed it without knowing whether I would need it. There were hotels in Florence. I had told myself I simply didn’t want to drive back late.

Rosa spared me the question.

“Give her my love.”

“I will.”

My phone rang before she reached the corridor.

Matteo.

“Are you alone?”

I straightened.

“Yes.”

“I’m at Malpensa. Someone searched my room last night.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Listen carefully. The man I went to see in Lugano never came to the meeting. This morning, his office told me he’d left the country.”

I looked toward the window.

“When did you leave the hotel?”

“Before dawn.”

“Who’s with you?”

“Carlo. Luca, whoever went into that room knew what I was looking for.”

Six weeks earlier, I would already have been reaching for my jacket.

Instead, I looked at the restaurant address.

“Come to the house,” I said. “I’ll have Marco meet you.”

“I need you there.”

I closed my eyes.

“I know.”

“And nothing to Elena until we understand what happened. She’s finally back at work.”

The request came easily to him.

He had been asking me to help protect her for years. From things that mattered. From things, she had every right to know.

“All right,” I said.

I wrote the message three times.

The first said Matteo needed me.

I deleted his name.

Elena would call him. He would minimize what had happened. She would hear the evasion and spend the afternoon frightened.

The second promised I would come that evening.

I couldn’t know that.

Finally, I sent:

Elena, something important has come up that needs my immediate attention. I’m truly sorry, but I won’t make it for our lunch date.

It looked inadequate the moment it appeared on the screen.

I called her seven minutes later.

No answer.

I told myself she was getting ready.

Matteo arrived just before noon.

He had shaved badly. A narrow cut marked his chin, and his coat hung open over yesterday’s shirt.

I met him in the entrance hall.

For one moment, seeing him safe was enough.

He gripped my shoulder.

“Sorry to ruin your Sunday.”

“It’s fine.”

The lie was so familiar that neither of us paused over it.

Marco followed us into the study carrying a laptop. Carlo remained outside.

“What was taken?” I asked.

“Nothing obvious.”

Matteo placed a folder on the desk.

“That’s what worries me.”

Inside were copies of invoices from the catering agency used for his birthday. Payments had passed through a company registered in Switzerland. Matteo had gone there to meet an accountant who claimed he could identify the person behind it.

Now the accountant was gone.

And someone had searched Matteo’s hotel room.

Marco opened photographs of an overturned suitcase and a drawer pulled from a bedside cabinet.

I looked at Matteo.

“You should have called from the hotel.”

“I wanted to get out first.”

“You should have taken more people.”

“And arrive looking like an invasion?”

“You were followed into a room.”

“I’m aware of that.”

His voice sharpened.

For a second, we were young again, arguing about a risk he had taken because he thought there would be time to explain afterward.

Then he rubbed his face.

“Elena was standing beside me when that man reached for his gun.”

“I remember.”

“She should never have been anywhere near this.”

I looked down at the folder.

There were things I could tell him about responsibility. About how regret did little unless it changed what came next.

I wasn’t in a position to deliver them.

At one, Rosa brought sandwiches.

Matteo ate standing beside the window while Marco made calls from the corridor.

My phone lay near the untouched plate on my desk.

I had already tried Elena again.

This time, she had declined the call.

Matteo glanced at the screen when it went dark.

“Who are you trying to reach?”

My hand closed around the phone.

This was an opening.

No one had arranged it for me. Elena hadn’t demanded it. There was no argument to hide behind.

I could say her name.

I could tell him I had been on my way to see her. That she had given me another chance, and I was spending it here with him.

“No one,” I said. “It can wait.”

Matteo nodded and returned to the folder.

I turned my phone face down.

He fell asleep in the armchair at three.

Exhaustion took him abruptly, one hand still resting on the papers in his lap.

I stood over him for a moment before lifting them away.

There was an old scar on his wrist, just visible beneath his cuff.

I had been twenty-seven when he got it.

A car had struck mine on a wet road outside Milan. Whether it had been deliberate was a question we settled later. At the time, I remembered only the crushed driver’s door and the smell of fuel.

Matteo had been following behind.

He broke what remained of the window to reach me.

For months afterward, glass worked its way out of the skin near his wrist.

He made a joke of it whenever a new piece surfaced.

I never did.

When Elena was younger, he used to leave her with his sister whenever we traveled. He called every night, regardless of where we were or who was waiting for him.

I had listened to him help with spelling homework from hotel corridors.

Now his daughter was twenty-six, living in Florence, declining my calls because I had kissed her and then failed her.

I laid a blanket over him.

The affection I felt for him didn’t make what I had done to her any easier to defend.

By late afternoon, Marco had arranged protection for Matteo’s house and confirmed that Carlo hadn’t noticed anyone following them from the airport.

The accountant remained unreachable.

There was nothing useful I could do until another call came.

I picked up my phone.

I know this is disappointing. Please let me explain.

I stared at the message after sending it.

Disappointing.

As though she had been expecting a delivery.

I called again.

Declined.

I wanted to hear her anger. At least then I could answer it.

The silence left me with the words I had actually given her.

Something important had come up.

Nothing about whether she was important, too.

Matteo woke around six and found me beside the window.

“Have you spoken to Elena today?”

I turned.

“No.”

“I called her yesterday. She sounded more like herself.”

“That’s good.”

“She needed to get back to her own life.”

He stretched carefully, then glanced around the study.

The overnight bag remained beside the desk.

“You were going somewhere.”

“I had plans.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

I almost laughed.

Because he had called frightened.

Because I had heard his voice and returned to a role I understood.

Because saying I had plans would have led to a question I was still afraid to answer.

“It can be rearranged,” I said.

He came to stand beside me.

“Bring her home for Christmas, if she’ll listen to you. She says she might only stay two nights.”

I looked at him.

“You’ve asked already?”

“I know my daughter. If I leave it until December, she’ll find a painting that urgently needs her.”

His smile was tired and affectionate.

“You’ll be there, of course.”

“Of course.”

He squeezed my shoulder.

For years, that invitation had required no thought.

Now I imagined Elena at the table, sitting within reach while I pretended I had never held her.

After Matteo left, I went upstairs and unpacked the overnight bag.

Two shirts. A change of clothes. A book I thought she might like.

I had remembered her saying she wanted to read it.

I placed it on the dresser.

Then I sat on the edge of the bed and opened our conversation.

I’m not avoiding you. I understand that it must feel that way.

I sent it.

Read it again.

Even now, I was explaining the difference between my intentions and her experience, hoping she would do the work of reconciling them.

I put the phone down.

A minute later, I picked it up again.

You don’t have to answer tonight. I should have told you more than I did.

The message remained unread.

Downstairs, Rosa cleared away the food I hadn’t eaten. Somewhere beyond the windows, a car passed through the gates.

I thought of Elena arriving home on Thursday, setting down her bag to answer my call.

I had asked for Sunday.

She had given it to me.

And when Matteo asked who I was trying to reach, I had called her no one.