What War Costs
1836 Words
She found the tension at dinner.
Not in what was said — Valentino said very little at dinner, which was not unusual. It was in the quality of his silence. The way his eyes moved to the window twice without meaning to. The way his hand rested on the table rather than relaxed into it.
She waited until Rosa had cleared the plates.
"Tell me," she said.
He looked at her.
"You've been somewhere else all evening," she said. "Tell me."
He was quiet for a moment. Long enough that she thought he was going to redirect — was going to give her the composed version, the managed version, the version where everything was handled and she didn't need to worry.
"One of my men is missing," he said.
She went still. "Since when?"
"Since this afternoon. He was supposed to check in at three." He looked at his hands. "It's been six hours."
"Ricci."
"Almost certainly."
She looked at him across the table. At the weight of it — not just the missing man, but what it meant. The message it was sending. The particular cruelty of taking someone to make a point.
"Who is he?" she asked.
Valentino glanced up. "Why?"
"Because he's a person. Not just a missing man." She held his gaze. "Who is he?"
Something shifted in his expression. "His name is Dante. He's been with me for seven years." A pause. "He has a daughter. She's four."
Elena felt that in her chest like something physical.
"What are you going to do?" she asked quietly.
"Find him." Flat. Certain. "Whatever it takes."
She looked at him for a long moment. At the jaw and the eyes and the particular stillness of a man who was holding something very large very carefully.
She reached across the table and put her hand over his.
He turned his hand and laced his fingers through hers without hesitation.
"He'll be alright," she said.
"You don't know that."
"No," she said. "But I'm saying it anyway."
He looked at their joined hands. Then up at her face. Something moved through his expression that she was starting to recognize — that particular unguarded thing that only happened when he had stopped trying to manage what she made him feel.
"You do that," he said quietly.
"Do what?"
"Say the thing that makes it bearable." He held her gaze. "You've been doing it since the warehouse."
She felt that everywhere.
"Valentino..."
His phone rang.
He was on his feet immediately — hand leaving hers, the warmth of him gone, the composed lethal version of him back in place before she had finished blinking. He answered on the second ring and listened and said four words she couldn't hear and ended the call.
He looked at her.
"They found him," he said.
"Is he..."
"Alive." Something moved in his face. "Barely."
She waited.
She had become surprisingly good at waiting — at sitting with uncertainty and not letting it pull her under. She sat in the library with a book she wasn't reading and listened to the house move around her. Cars. Voices. The particular controlled urgency of people who were very good at their jobs doing them.
Rosa brought tea at nine without being asked.
Elena looked up at her.
Rosa sat down — actually sat, in the chair across from her, which she had never done before. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at Elena with eyes that were older than everything else about her.
"How long have you worked for him?" Elena asked.
"Since he was seventeen," Rosa said. "Since his father died and he became what he became and needed someone to make sure he ate."
Elena looked at her. "You were there from the beginning."
"I was there before the beginning." Rosa was quiet for a moment. "I knew his mother. She asked me to look after him when she knew she was dying." A pause. "He was twelve. He didn't eat for three days after she went. I sat outside his door until he opened it."
Elena felt something move through her chest.
"He played piano," she said softly. "She taught him."
Rosa's eyes softened. "You know about the piano."
"I heard him. He didn't know I was there at first."
Rosa looked at her for a long moment. With an expression that was complicated and warm and deeply considered.
"In seventeen years," Rosa said carefully, "he has not brought anyone to this house. Not personally. Not like this." She paused. "He has had people here for business. For meetings. For things I don't ask about." Another pause. "He has never shown anyone the east wing."
Elena looked at her hands.
"He showed me," she said quietly.
"I know." Rosa stood. Smoothed her apron. "I'm telling you because I think you should understand what that means." She moved toward the door. Stopped. "He is not an easy man. He has never been an easy man. But he is..." She seemed to search for the word. "He is worth it. For someone with the patience to see all of him." She looked at Elena directly. "You seem to have that patience."
She left.
Elena sat alone in the library with her tea going cold and felt the full weight of seventeen years settling around a single conversation.
Valentino came back at midnight.
She heard him on the stairs — his particular tread, which she had learned to recognize — and she was already at the library door when he reached the top.
He stopped when he saw her.
He looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. The kind of exhaustion that came from carrying things that didn't get lighter no matter how long you carried them.
"Dante?" she asked.
"Stable." His voice was rough. "He'll recover."
She exhaled. "His daughter..."
"Doesn't know yet. We'll tell her tomorrow. Carefully." He leaned against the wall. Closed his eyes briefly. "Ricci wanted us to find him. He wanted us to see what he was capable of."
"Intimidation."
"Yes." He opened his eyes. "It won't work. But the point isn't whether it works. The point is that he's escalating. He's done being careful."
She looked at him across the hallway. At the weight of it on him — the missing man found, the war moving faster, the cost of all of it accumulating.
"Come," she said.
She held out her hand.
He looked at it for a moment. Then he crossed the hallway and took it.
She led him to the library. To the window seat — their window seat now, she thought, with a certainty that surprised her. She sat and he sat beside her and she pulled his arm around her and leaned into him and felt him exhale for the first time since he had walked in.
"Rosa told me about your mother," she said quietly.
He still went.
"She told me you didn't eat for three days." Elena kept her voice soft. "That Rosa sat outside your door."
A long silence.
"She shouldn't have..."
"I'm glad she did." She tilted her head up to look at him. "I want to know all of it. Not just the parts you decide to show me. All of it."
He looked down at her. Something raw in his eyes.
"It's not all worth knowing," he said.
"Let me decide."
He was quiet for a long moment. The city was dark below them and the house was settling into its nighttime quiet and she could feel his heartbeat under her cheek — steady, present, real.
"I was angry for a long time after she died," he said finally. "At my father. At the life he had chosen and then handed to us like an inheritance we hadn't asked for." A pause. "Matteo handled it better than I did. He painted. I just—" He stopped.
"Became what you became," she said gently.
"Yes." The word was very quiet. "I told myself it was for the family. For protection. For Matteo." He looked at the window. "It was also because I didn't know how to be anything else."
"And now?" she asked.
He looked down at her.
"Now," he said, "I'm starting to think there might be something else worth being."
She felt that move through her completely.
She reached up and touched his face — carefully, the uncut side — and he turned into her hand like something seeking warmth, unconscious and completely unguarded.
"There is," she said. "I promise you there is."
He closed his eyes.
She stayed exactly where she was.
She woke at two to find him still awake.
She could tell by his breathing — too even, too deliberate, the breathing of someone managing wakefulness rather than sleeping through it.
"Hey," she said quietly.
"Go back to sleep."
"You're not sleeping."
"I'm fine."
"Valentino." She sat up and looked at him in the dark. "What is it?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"If something happens to me," he said. "In the next few weeks. Before this is finished."
"Nothing is going to..."
"Elena." His voice was serious. Careful. "Let me say this."
She went quiet.
"There is money set aside. Nico knows where. Enough for you to go anywhere. Start over. Finish your degree." He looked at her steadily. "I need you to know that. Whatever happens."
She stared at him.
"You planned for that," she said. "You actually planned for..."
"I plan for everything."
"That's not..." She stopped. Took a breath. "You are not going to die, Valentino."
"You don't know..."
"I know." She moved closer. Put both hands on his face. "I know because you are the most prepared, most strategic, most infuriatingly controlled man I have ever met and you have been three steps ahead of Ricci since before I got here." She held his gaze. "You are not going to die. But even if the worst happened — I don't want your money. I don't want an escape plan." She looked at him directly. "I want you. That's all."
The silence stretched.
His hands came up and covered hers at his face.
"You're going to be the end of me," he said quietly.
"Or the beginning," she said.
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he pulled her close — arms completely around her, her face against his neck — and held on with the particular grip of someone who had decided to stop pretending he didn't need this.
"The beginning," he said into her hair. Like he was trying it on. Like he was deciding whether to believe it.
"The beginning," she confirmed.
He held her tighter.
Outside the city moved through its dark hours.
Inside the house on the hill two people held onto each other.
And somewhere across the city a man named Ricci made plans that he believed would end everything.
He had never been more wrong about anything in his life.
- Writer
