Dante's POV
I have made men disappear for less than that message.
I read it once.
That is enough.
I hand the phone back to Aria and I walk to the window and I stand where the wall covers me and I look down at the street below and I count.
Two men. Black car parked badly across from the building. The engine is off but the exhaust is still warm. I can see it in the cold morning air. They have been there long enough to get comfortable but not long enough to think they haven't been seen.
Amateurs.
Silvio is getting desperate if this is who he is sending.
"Dante."
Aria's voice comes from behind me. She is trying to keep it steady. I can hear the effort it costs her, the slight tightness underneath the word, the breath she takes before she says my name.
I turn around.
She is standing in the middle of her kitchen holding the phone in both hands and looking at me with those warm brown eyes that are doing something complicated right now. Not full fear. Not quite. Something sitting between fear and fury, which in my experience is always the more dangerous combination.
"Who sent that?" she asks.
"Someone who made a mistake."
"That is not an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now."
Her jaw tightens. She sets the phone down on the counter face down, like she cannot stand to look at it, and crosses her arms and looks at me with the particular expression I am already learning means she is about to say something I will not enjoy hearing.
"There are men outside," I tell her before she can.
She still goes. "What?"
"Black car. Across the street. Two of them." I watch her face process that. "They are watching the building."
"How long?"
"Long enough."
She moves toward the window. I step in front of her without thinking one hand out, not touching, just blocking.
"Don't," I say. "Don't go near the window."
She looks up at me. We are close. Closer than we have been since last night when she was pressing bandaging against my side with careful hands and pretending not to notice that I was watching her do it.
"Get away from me," she says quietly. Not angry. Something worse. Scared and refusing to show it completely.
I step back.
She deserves that much.
I pull out my phone.
It cracked across the corner last night before the alley, before everything went wrong but it still works. I type one message to Marco and send it before Aria can ask who I am contacting.
Location compromised. Two outside. Come quiet.
The response comes in under thirty seconds.
15 minutes.
I put the phone back in my pocket.
"Who was that?" Aria asks.
"Someone who is going to fix this."
"Fix this." She repeats the words slowly. Carefully. Like she is turning them over to check what is underneath them. "Someone is threatening me in my own home and you are going to fix it."
"Yes."
"Just like that."
"Just like that."
She stares at me.
And then she laughs. Not a happy laugh. The short sharp kind that comes out when something is so far beyond what a person expected that the only available response is completely absurd.
"Okay," she says. "Okay." She presses both hands flat on the kitchen counter and drops her head and takes one slow breath. Then she lifts her head back up. "You have fifteen minutes to tell me exactly what is happening. Who you are. Why are there men outside my building? And why am I receiving a threatening message on my phone at eight in the morning is apparently something that just gets fixed."
I look at her.
She looks back.
She means every word. I can see it. This woman who found a stranger bleeding in an alley and brought him home and made him coffee and faced down her best friend's sharp eyes without flinching is standing in her small kitchen at eight in the morning giving me fifteen minutes and meaning every second of it.
Nobody gives me deadlines.
"Sit down," I say.
"I'll stand."
Of course she will.
I tell her what she needs to know.
Not everything. Not yet. But enough. My name in full. What that name means in this city. Who is outside and who sent them and the short version of why is that I have an enemy in Naples who has wanted me dead for a long time and last night was his latest attempt and it failed, which means he will try again, and he has now connected me to this address and to her.
I watch her face while I talk.
She doesn't interrupt. Doesn't look away. Doesn't do the thing most people do when they first understand what the Moretti name actually means, that particular mix of fear and fascination that people spend the rest of the conversation trying to hide.
She just listens.
When I finish she is quiet for a moment.
"The most powerful Don in Rome," she says finally.
"Yes."
"Was bleeding in an alley behind my restaurant."
"Yes."
"And I brought him home."
"You did."
Another silence. She looks at the ceiling briefly. Then back at me.
"I want you out of my apartment," she says.
Something moves through my chest. I do not examine it.
"I know," I say.
"But you can't leave yet because there are men outside."
"Not safely. No."
"And your person is coming in—" she glances at the clock — "eleven minutes."
"Yes."
She nods slowly. Processing. Reorganising. I watch her do it, watch her take something enormous and frightening and begin quietly building a structure around it that she can stand inside without collapsing. There is something that I did not expect to find in a waitress from Trastevere.
Something that looks, from the inside, remarkably like strength.
"Fine," she says. "Eleven minutes."
Marco arrives at nine.
Three knocks. Specific pattern. I cross to the door before Aria can open it and Marco steps inside with the quiet efficiency of a man who does not need to announce himself anywhere.
He is in dark clothes. Eyes moving through the apartment in one sweep exits, windows, Aria before coming to rest on me. His gaze drops to my side. Then back to my face.
"You look terrible," he says.
"Thank you, Marco."
"The car outside is Calabrese's. Two men. Low level." He glances at Aria. Look back at me. Switches to a look that asks the question he is not going to ask out loud in front of her.
"She knows," I say.
His expression does not change. But something behind his eyes shifts in the particular way Marco's eyes shift when he disapproves of something and has decided not to say so yet.
"We need to move you," he says.
"I know."
"The palazzo—"
"Not yet." I look at Aria. She is leaning against the counter with her arms crossed, watching Marco with those direct eyes, not intimidated in the slightest by a man who has made people considerably more powerful than her deeply uncomfortable. "We need to deal with the street first."
Marco nods. Pulls out his own phone.
"I'll need ten minutes," he says.
"Take them."
He steps back toward the door. Then stops. Turns his head slightly toward Aria without fully looking at her.
"Miss Russo," he says. Flat. Professional. "Stay away from the windows."
Aria looks at him.
"Everyone keeps saying that," she says.
Marco's mouth does something that is almost not quite nothing.
Then he steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him.
The apartment is quiet.
Just the two of us and the sound of Rome waking up outside and the knowledge of what is parked on the street below.
Aria pushes off the counter and walks to the stove and puts the moka pot back on without asking. I watch her move around her small kitchen efficiently, purposefully, choosing action over panic the way people do when panic is a luxury they have decided they cannot afford.
"Your friend," I say. "Sofia."
She stiffens slightly. Keeps her back to me.
"What about her?"
"She cannot come back here."
Silence.
"I know," she says. Quiet. And under that quiet is something that costs her. I can hear it.
"This will be over—"
"Don't." She turns around. Her eyes are steady but her hands around the moka pot are tight. "Don't tell me how long it will take or that it will be fine because you don't know that and I don't want to be managed right now, Dante. I want to be told the truth."
I look at her.
She looks back.
And for reasons I cannot explain and will not examine right now I find myself saying—
"I don't know how long. But I will not let anything happen to you."
She stares at me.
"You don't even know me," she says.
"No," I say. "I don't."
My phone vibrates.
Marco. Two words.
Street clear.
I look up.
"We need to leave," I say. "Now. Pack what you need for a few days."
Aria's face changes.
"A few days," she says slowly. "Leave. To go where?"
I hold her gaze.
"Somewhere safe," I say.
"Dante—"
"Aria." I take one step toward her. Just one. "Pack a bag."
She opens her mouth.
My phone vibrates again.
This time it is not Marco.
It is a number I have not seen in three years. A number I deleted and somehow did not manage to make stop existing.
One message.
I see you found someone to play nurse, Dante.
Charming girl.
I look forward to meeting her.
My hand closes around the phone.