Blood vow

Chapter 4

By Friday evening, Elena had stopped counting hours and started counting exits.

Front gate: two guards. Back garden: a wall, a camera, and Enzo, who had not taken his eyes off her since Wednesday. Kitchen door: Rosa, who watched everything and said nothing. She hadn't tried to leave. She just liked knowing where the doors were. It was the only kind of control she had left.

Tomorrow she would stand in a white dress and promise her life to a man who had calmly confirmed he would kill someone.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub in her enormous bathroom, still in her robe, staring at her own reflection. The woman in the mirror had dark circles and a stubborn mouth. Pale, but not broken.

Not yet, she told her.

A knock came at the bedroom door. Rosa's voice: "Miss Elena? Mr. Moretti's family has arrived for dinner."

Elena closed her eyes. "How many?"

"Eleven."

"Wonderful."

The dining room could have seated forty. Tonight it held eleven Morettis and one terrified baker.

The long table gleamed with silver and candlelight. Elena sat at Dante's right, in a black dress Rosa had laid out for her, and discovered what it felt like to be examined by a family that ate sharks for breakfast.

There was Dante's grandmother, Nonna Pia, ninety years old and sharp as glass, who looked Elena up and down and said, in Italian, "Too thin." There were uncles with gold rings and heavy laughs, and aunts whose smiles never reached their eyes. There was a cousin who stared at Elena's chest until Dante looked at him once, and the cousin suddenly found great interest in his soup.

"So, Elena," said one of the uncles, Salvatore, a bear of a man with a mustache. "Baker, yes? Dante tells us you make a good cannoli."

"I try."

"Dante tells us nothing. We had to find out from the newspaper." Salvatore smiled around his wine. "Strange, for a man to marry so quickly."

"Strange," Dante agreed pleasantly, "for a man to ask questions at a dinner table."

The table went quiet. Salvatore laughed, a little too late, and raised his glass.

Elena felt, rather than saw, the ripple of tension spread around the room. These people weren't just relatives. They were a hierarchy, and every conversation was a quiet test of who stood where.

Beneath the table, a warm hand closed around hers.

Her whole body went still. Dante didn't look at her. He kept talking to his uncle about a shipping contract, perfectly relaxed, while his thumb moved once across her knuckles. It was so slight she might have imagined it.

It's for show, she told herself. He needs them to believe it.

But she didn't pull her hand away.

After dinner, the family moved into the drawing room for coffee and brandy. Elena slipped out onto the terrace to breathe.

The night was cold and clear. Past the garden wall, the city glowed orange on the horizon, close enough to touch and impossibly far away. She wrapped her arms around herself.

"You left before dessert."

She didn't turn. "I can't eat while eleven people are deciding whether I'm a gold digger or a spy."

"Gold digger," Luca said, stepping out beside her with a glass in each hand. "Mostly. Though Aunt Carmela has a theory you're an undercover cop."

"That's ridiculous."

"I told her. Cops don't bake." He offered her a glass of red wine, easy and charming, leaning against the railing as if they were old friends. "Peace offering?"

She hesitated, then took it. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Most of them are just scared. Dante has never brought anyone home. Not once, in thirty-two years." He swirled his wine. "They're trying to work out what you are to him."

"A contract," Elena said.

Luca's smile widened. "Is that what he told you?"

Something prickled along the back of her neck. "Isn't that what it is?"

"Of course." He sipped. "I'm only saying, my cousin has never given a woman a key before."

She went cold. "How do you know about that?"

"Rosa talks to my housekeeper. Small world." Luca's voice was light, but his eyes had sharpened. "I'd be careful, Elena. Dante is not a man who shares his things. And he does not forgive betrayal. Not even from people he's begun to care about."

"Is that a warning?"

"A kindness." He touched her elbow, lightly. "Whatever you do, don't lie to him. He always finds out. And when he does..." He made a small, regretful gesture. "People get hurt."

She stared at him. Every word was gentle. Every word was a hook.

Why does he want me afraid?

"Luca."

The voice came from the doorway, quiet and flat. Dante stood there with his hands in his pockets, and every trace of warmth had drained from his face.

"Cousin." Luca's smile didn't falter. "Just welcoming the bride."

"Nonna's asking for you."

"Of course." Luca set down his glass and squeezed Elena's shoulder. "Sleep well, cugina. Big day."

He left. His footsteps faded into the house.

Dante stayed in the doorway. Elena watched him, waiting for the anger she could feel humming under his skin.

"What did he say to you?"

"Nothing."

"Elena."

"He said you don't forgive betrayal." She met his eyes. "Is that true?"

A pause. Then, steadily: "Yes."

"Even from me?"

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then back up, so fast she might have imagined it. "You'd have to try very hard to make me regret it."

It wasn't a threat. It sounded closer to a confession, and the quiet in his voice made her heart stumble.

"Go to bed," he said. "Tomorrow will be long."

"Dante." She hadn't meant to say his name. It came out soft. "Why did you give me the key?"

For a moment she thought he wouldn't answer. The wind lifted a lock of her hair, and he watched it settle against her cheek, his hand twitching at his side as though he wanted to brush it back.

"Because," he said at last, "I don't want you here because you're afraid."

He left before she could ask what he wanted instead.

She couldn't sleep.

Past midnight, Elena gave up and padded barefoot down the dark corridor to the kitchen for tea. She'd learned the route by now: left past the library, down the back stairs, through the pantry. Enzo, thank God, had finally fallen asleep in a chair near the main hall.

She was halfway across the library when she heard the voice.

"...yes, the girl's brother. He knows more than he should."

She froze.

The voice came from behind the half-closed library door, low and urgent. A man on the phone. She didn't recognize it, but she recognized the tone, the tight, careful way someone spoke when they were afraid of being overheard.

"No. Not yet. If Dante finds out, I'm finished. We'll take care of Marco after the wedding. Make it look like an accident."

Her blood turned to ice.

"...No, I told you. The girl doesn't suspect anything. Just keep the Rossis quiet until Saturday."

A pause. A click. Footsteps, moving toward the door.

Elena threw herself behind the heavy velvet curtain just as the door swung open. She pressed her back to the cold window, barely breathing, and through a thin gap in the fabric she saw a shape cross the moonlit room.

Tall. Broad shoulders. Gray at the temples.

Not Luca.

It was Salvatore, Dante's uncle, the man with the mustache and the big laugh. He paused near the desk, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and glanced once around the room. For a moment his eyes swept right across her curtain.

Then he left, closing the door softly behind him.

Elena slid down the window until she sat on the floor, shaking, her hand pressed hard against her mouth.

We'll take care of Marco after the wedding.

Her brother. The only family she had left. And someone in this house, someone smiling at dinner, passing the wine, calling her cugina, had just casually sentenced him to death.

She should tell Dante. Right now, tonight.

But Luca's voice echoed in her head: Whatever you do, don't lie to him. And behind it, a different fear, darker and more selfish. If she told him, he would act. People would die. And she still didn't know what Marco had been hiding, or why he'd been so afraid.

He knows more than he should.

Whatever her brother knew, it was valuable enough that men were willing to kill for it, and she was the only person in this house who had heard them say so.

Elena pulled her knees to her chest and stared at the dark door.

Tomorrow she would walk down an aisle and become a Moretti. She was beginning to think she'd made the worst bargain of her life.

And she had no idea yet which of them was the real enemy.