POSSESSED BY CIRO

Chapter 11

~~Oriana~~

I barely slept.

I had been staring at the ceiling since about two in the morning, listening to the waters outside and having a very firm internal argument with myself about a man I had no business thinking about as much as I currently was.

It wasn’t even like anything had happened.

That was the most frustrating part.

Nothing had happened. We had sat on the same sofa. He had said a few words in that low quiet voice of his.

I had walked out before anything could develop into anything and yet here I was at two in the morning with my heart still behaving like it had somewhere urgent to be.

I turned onto my side and pulled the covers up.

Nothing before was worth it.

I pressed my eyes shut.

The man had kidn*pped me. Had held a gun to Cassie’s head through a phone screen. Had threatened to blow up the only home I had ever known just to get me to comply.

These were not small things. These were not things a person set aside because a man had a certain way of sitting in a room and looking at me like I was the only thing in it worth looking at.

I punched my pillow into a different shape.

I needed to be smarter than this.

I came downstairs the next morning looking exactly as tired as I felt and there was nothing I could do about that.

Ciro was at the table. Papers, coffee, the same composed version of himself he produced every single morning without fail. He looked up when I walked in and his eyes moved across my face in that brief assessing way before he looked back down.

I sat. Poured my tea. Looked out the window.

“You didn’t sleep,” he said.

“Good morning to you too,” I said.

He said nothing. Just reached for his coffee with that unbothered energy that I was starting to find both impressive and deeply annoying.

“Oriana slept fine,” I added.

“You have shadows under your eyes.”

“I am a person, not a painting. Shadows happen.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

Just barely.

I looked back at my tea and told myself it meant nothing that I had noticed.

Rosa showed up mid morning the way Rosa always showed up - like a door had been flung open somewhere and she had simply walked through it at full speed.

She dropped onto the sofa beside me, tucked her feet under her and looked at my face with the focused attention of a woman who made it her business to know things.

“You look rough,” she said.

“Thank you Rosa,” I said.

“What happened last night.”

“Nothing happened.”

Rosa raised an eyebrow.

“I and your brother sat in the same room and talked and then I went to bed,” I said. “That’s it.”

Rosa was quiet for a second.

“And that kept you up all night,” she said slowly.

“I slept fine.”

“You said that already.” Rosa stole the biscuit from beside my cup without even glancing at it. “You know what your problem is?”

“I'm sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’re fighting something that already has you,” Rosa said simply.

Not unkindly, just plainly, the way she said most things. “Ciro has been waiting for you specifically for a very long time Oriana. That kind of patience doesn't come from nowhere.”

I looked at her. “What does that mean?”

Rosa met my eyes. Something sitting behind them that she was clearly choosing not to release yet.

“Ask him,” she said. “When you’re ready.”

Then she stood up, smoothed her trousers and walked out like she hadn’t just dropped something heavy directly into my lap.

I sat there holding my tea.

Waiting for you specifically.

What did that mean.

The afternoon was quieter.

Rosa had taken me through a gallery on the second floor that I hadn’t found yet. Long room, tall windows, old paintings. The kind of space that felt like it belonged to a completely different time and had simply decided to stay.

I stopped in front of one near the end of the row.

A woman. Dark hair. Serious face.

Something in the jaw that pulled at my memory before I could place it.

“His mother,” Rosa said quietly beside me.

I looked more carefully.

There it was. The jaw. The eyes.

That particular quality that even the painter had somehow managed to catch – that sense of someone who was always thinking more than they were saying.

“She was beautiful,” I said.

“Yes.” Rosa’s voice had gone somewhere private. “She was also the reason he finds it hard to let people close. She and my father did a thorough job of that.”

I didn’t ask more.

But I stood in front of that painting for a long moment after Rosa moved on, looking at the woman’s face and feeling something I couldn’t fully name sitting quietly in my chest.

That evening I found myself outside his study.

I hadn’t planned it. I had been heading to the library at the end of the hall and the study door was open and the warm light from the lamp inside spilled out into the corridor and before I had fully decided anything her feet had slowed.

Ciro was at the desk. Jacket off, sleeves pushed to his elbows, head bent over a spread of papers. He had one hand pressed flat on the desk and the other holding a pen and there was something about him like that – just working, quiet, no performance of anything that caught me off guard.

He looked up.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to interrupt.”

“You’re not.” He sat back slightly.

“Come in.”

I stepped inside.

I went to the bookshelf on the far wall more for something to do with myself than because I needed a book, running my eyes along the spines.

“Third shelf from the bottom on the left,” Ciro said. “English titles.”

I paused.

Looked over my shoulder at him.

“How did Ciro know-”

“You were reading one last night,” he said simply. Already back to his papers.

I turned back to the shelf.

Third from the bottom on the left. I crouched down and looked and sure enough - a full row of English books, a proper selection too, not just a token few.

I pulled one out. Stood up.

And without really planning to, I crossed the room and sat on the armchair in the corner near the lamp instead of leaving.

Ciro didn’t comment on it.

I opened my book.

The room settled into a quiet that felt different from the silences we usually occupied together. Less loaded. Less like two people on opposite sides of something and more like – just two people. Him at his desk, me on the armchair, the lamp warm between us, the water outside going dark as the evening wore on.

Nica appeared at some point with tea for me and a fresh coffee for Ciro without either of us asking for anything.

I read.

Or tried to.

I was aware of him the whole time in that low level constant way that I had completely given up pretending wasn’t there. The occasional sound of him turning a page. The way he pressed two fingers to his jaw sometimes when he was reading something that needed more thought.

The one time he exhaled slowly through his nose and reached for his coffee and I felt it like a shift in temperature from across the room.

At some point I looked up and found him watching me.

Elbow on the desk. Pen set down.

Just watching me with that quiet look that did the thing it always did to the air between us.

I didn’t look away this time.

Neither did Ciro.

We stayed like that for a moment that was longer than it should have been and shorter than some part of what I wanted it to be and that thought alone was alarming enough to make me look back down at my page.

My ears were warm.

I read the same line four times.

And stayed in that chair for another full hour anyway.