روايات بقلم David Lois

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE CARMELA'S POVThe third time Alexei found me, I wasn't surprised.I'd been half expecting it for two weeks. It was that particular awareness you develop around certain people, the sense that a conversation isn't finished just because it ended. He had that quality. Everything he said felt like an opening move rather than a conclusion.It happened at a charity event Gabriele had taken me to. It was a room that screamed old money, good wine. The kind of room where everyone knew everyone and nobody said anything directly. I'd been gallivanting and passing time for an hour when I felt him before I saw him. I felt that shift in the air that meant someone was paying the wrong kind of attention.I turned and there he was.Alexei was standing six feet away, dressed like he belonged there, which in this world meant he probably did."Signora Conti." He crossed to me without hurry. "You look well.""I feel well," I said. "Are you following me to these things?""Gabriele and th

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHTCARMELA’S POVI found Gabriele in his office twenty minutes later. He was standing at the window with a glass of whiskey he hadn't drunk yet, his back to the room, and I could tell from the set of his shoulders that he was still processing the dinner.I closed the door behind me."You saw it," I said.He didn't turn around. "Yes.""Marco has been laying the groundwork. Those aren't new conversations. He's been having them for weeks. You could see it in how quickly Rinaldo agreed. Tonight was just the first time he was comfortable enough to surface it in front of you directly."Gabriele turned then, and his expression was the controlled, dangerous flatness that I'd learned meant he was furious about something and had decided not to show it. "I know what he was doing.""Then you know we need to move faster." I crossed to the desk and stood across from him. "He's going to keep doing it. Quietly, in rooms you're not in, until enough people are asking the same questions

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVENCARMELA’S POVMy father had been away for five days on business in Rome, and he came back to the estate the same way he always did — quietly, without ceremony, like he'd simply stepped out for an hour rather than been gone nearly a week. I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment before descending, taking the time I needed to arrange my face into something that looked like a daughter pleased to see her father.It was getting harder every time."Piccola." He opened his arms when I reached the bottom step and I let him pull me in, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne, feeling the solid weight of his embrace, and somewhere underneath all of it the cold, quiet knowledge of what his name looked like on a payment record dated three days before my sister's brakes were cut."Papa," I said, pulling back and smiling. "I never knew you were back.""I just came back," he said, waving a hand. "Gabriele called for a meeting." His eyes moved over my face with pract

GABRIELE'S POVI stepped into the hallway and took in the scene.Alexei's hand was around her wrist. The closeness. The low voices."Carmela." I kept my voice level. "Go inside."She looked at me for a moment and then she went, pulling the door halfway closed behind her.I finally turned to Alexei.He was already watching me with that cool and collected composure, his hands relaxed at his sides now and nothing in his posture suggesting he'd been doing anything worth explaining."What were you discussing?" I asked."Nothing that concerns the business," he said."Everything that happens in this house concerns me.""Of course." He inclined his head slightly. "I was saying goodbye. Your wife was passing through. The conversation was brief.""Brief conversations don't require that kind of proximity."Something moved in his expression. Not guilt. Not confession. It was something harder to name. "I meant no disrespect, Gabriele. You have my word on that.""Your word," I said, "is something I

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREECARMELA’S POVI'd been avoiding the east hallway for three days. Gabriele’s office in particular.Alexei Volkov had been coming to the estate for the past three days.It wasn't difficult to justify to myself. There were other staircases, other routes to the kitchen, other ways to move through this house that didn't take me anywhere near Gabriele's office while Alexei Volkov was supposedly inside discussing shipping routes or territory or whatever business had brought him back to Naples this time. I told myself I was being efficient. I told myself the note still sitting in my desk drawer had nothing to do with the path I chose to walk every morning.I didn't believe myself, but I kept saying it anyway, because the alternative was admitting that a single folded card had rearranged something fundamental in me, and I wasn't ready to admit that to anyone, least of all myself.Today I needed coffee, and the kitchen was closer through the east hallway than around the long

CARMELA'S POVI stared at the document for a long moment before I trusted myself to speak.The original record predated the payment by four months, which meant whatever my father had agreed to do hadn't started with a single transaction. It had started with a conversation. A negotiation. Something slow enough that there had been time, somewhere in those four months, for someone to change their mind.But he hadn't."Where did you get this?" I asked.Gabriele watched me carefully. "I've had it for a while. I didn't know what it meant until last night, when I remembered what Elena asked me." He paused. "I should have shown you sooner. I wasn't sure it was relevant.""It's relevant," I said."You're very calm about this."I looked up at him. "What would you like me to do instead?"He didn't answer that. He just watched me with that particular attention he had, the one that missed very little, and I wondered for the first time whether he already suspected something about my father that he