Chapter 11: The Devil You Knew

VITTORIA'S POV

For exactly three seconds, I did not move.

I sat in that chair with my hands empty where the book had been and stared at Rosa's face while my brain tried to process what she had just said, and my body refused to accept any part of it.

Diego Alcazar was at the service entrance of the Giordano building.

Diego Alcazar, the man who had cheated on me with my cousin on the eve of our engagement. Diego Alcazar, who had looked at me across his living room without a single trace of guilt in his eyes while Abby scrambled to cover herself. Diego Alcazar, who, according to the story outline, my life had apparently decided to follow, was not just a cheating ex-fiancé but an undercover FBI agent who had been hunting Marcello Giordano for years and had just found the most convenient door into that hunt.

Me.

I picked the book off the floor slowly, set it on the side table, and looked at Rosa.

"Tell him I am not available," I said.

Rosa nodded and disappeared back towards the kitchen corridor.

I stood up from the chair, walked to the window and pressed two fingers against my temple, looking out at the city without seeing any of it.

How did he find me here? That was the first question, and it mattered more than any of the others because the answer to it would tell me exactly how much danger I was standing in. I had been inside this penthouse for less than three days. I had not contacted Diego. I had not told Nissi where I was, not with any specifics, and Nissi was the only person connected to Diego who was also connected to me.

Nissi.

My chest tightened around the name.

Rosa reappeared in the doorway, and the look on her face told me everything before she opened her mouth.

"He says he is not leaving," she said quietly. "He says to tell you that he knows about the Alfonso family and that you will want to hear what he has come to say before anyone else does."

The room felt smaller suddenly. The walls did not move, but the air between them compressed, and I stood in the middle of it and understood with absolute clarity that Diego had not come here out of guilt or love or any version of remorse. He had come because he had calculated exactly what leverage he needed to get me to open a door,r and he had used it with the precision of a man who had been trained to do exactly this.

"Tell him I will be down in five minutes," I said.

Rosa hesitated. "Mrs Giordano, Mr Giordano left strict instructions about visitors while he is away."

"I know," I said. "I will handle it."

She pressed her lips together in a way that suggested she disagreed with every word I had just said but was too professional to say so, then turned and went back down the corridor.

I went to the bedroom, splashed cold water on my face, looked at myself in the mirror for ten full seconds, and gave myself the only instruction that mattered.

Do not let him see that you are afraid.

The service entrance was at the back of the building, accessed through a narrow corridor off the kitchen that smelled of cleaning products and fresh linen. A heavy door with a keypad lock opened onto a small covered landing where deliveries were received.

Diego was standing on that landing with his hands in the pockets of a grey jacket, and the first thing I noticed was how deliberately casual he looked. How carefully assembled. The slightly loosened collar, the faint shadow of stubble that he had always known, made him look less like a threat and more like a man you wanted to trust.

The second thing I noticed was that he looked genuinely relieved when he saw me.

I did not let that move me at all.

"Vittoria." He stepped forward.

"Don't." I held up one hand, and he stopped. I kept the door half open behind me and stayed close enough to it that Rosa, hovering at a careful distance in the kitchen corridor, could still see me. "Say what you came to say and then leave. Quickly."

He looked at me with those sharp hazel eyes, and something that performed very well as hurt moved across his face. "Is that really how you want to do this? After three years?"

"After three years and what I watched you do on our couch with my cousin, yes," I said. "This is exactly how I want to do this. Talk."

He exhaled slowly. "I came because I was worried about you. When the engagement was cancelled, and then you disappeared completely, I was scared. I am scared, Vittoria. Do you understand what kind of man you are living with right now?"

"That is none of your concern."

"It is every concern of mine." He stepped closer, dropping his voice. "Marcello Giordano has seventeen confirmed kills that we know of. Seventeen that we can document. The actual number is significantly higher. He has people in law enforcement, in city government, in places that should be completely beyond his reach. He is not just dangerous, he is untouchable, and you are sleeping in his house."

We. That small word landed quietly, but I caught it.

"You said we," I said.

Something shifted in his expression. Too fast, there and then smoothed over, but I had been watching his face for three years,s and I knew every micro-movement it made.

"I meant people who care about you," he said. "Your family. Your friends."

"My family doesn't know where I am," I said. "And my friends are a very short list right now." I looked at him steadily. "How did you find me here, Diego?"

"It doesn't matter how I found you. What matters is getting you out."

"How did you find me here?"

He held my gaze for a moment, and in that moment, I watched him calculate his eyes. Deciding how much to give me. Measuring what version of the truth would be most useful to him right now.

"Nissi told me you were with someone connected to the Giordano family," he said finally. "I did the rest myself."

Nissi.

There it was.

I had known it was coming. I had known since the moment I found out about the wrong room, about the mixed-up numbers, about all of it. I had known that the universe does not make that particular kind of mistake without a hand behind it somewhere. But knowing something is coming and feeling it arrive are two entirely different experiences, and the confirmation of it landed in my chest like something blunt and heavy.

My childhood friend. The girl who had sat with me through every heartbreak since we were twelve years old and held my hand and told me I deserved better.

She had sent me into that room deliberately.

"I see," I said. My voice came out completely level, which was the best acting I had ever done in my life.

Diego was watching me carefully. "Come with me tonight. I have somewhere safe you can go, somewhere he will never find you, and we can talk properly and figure out the next step together."

"Together," I repeated.

"Yes. Together." He reached out and put his hand on my arm, and the touch was so familiar, so practised in its warmth, that I almost understood for the first time how completely I had been fooled by it for three years. "I made a terrible mistake, Vittoria. With Abby, with everything. I know that. But right now, none of that matters. What matters is getting you away from him before something happens to you."

I looked down at his hand on my arm.

Then I looked back up at his face.

And I said the truest thing I had said to him in three years. "You are not here for me, Diego."

His hand tightened slightly on my arm. "That's not true."

"It is." I removed his hand from my arm with both of mine, carefully, like removing something that did not belong to me. "I don't know exactly what you want from being here, but I know it is not me. So I am going to ask you one more time to leave, and then I am going to go back inside,e and we are going to pretend this visit never happened."

He stared at me. The warmth in his expression cooled by several degrees.

"You're making a mistake," he said quietly. "A very dangerous one."

"I have been making those lately," I replied. "I'm getting better at surviving them."

I stepped back through the door and let it close between us.

I stood in the corridor with my back against the door and my eyes on the kitchen ceiling, breathing slowly, and I did not move until I heard his footsteps leave the landing outside.

Rosa appeared from the corridor and looked at me without asking any questions, which made me like her more than I could reasonably explain.

"Thank you, Rosa," I said.

She nodded once. "Dinner will be ready at seven, Mrs Giordano."

I pushed off the door and walked back towards the sitting room, and I was almost at the hallway when my phone buzzed in my cardigan pocket.

A message from Nissi.

"Hey, babe, just checking in on you. Miss you so much. Let's meet up soon, yeah? I have so much to tell you."

I read it once. Twice.

Then I typed back four words and hit send before I could think too carefully about whether it was wise.

"I know, Nissi. Everything."

I put the phone back in my pocket and walked into the sitting room, and I had barely sat down when I heard the front door of the penthouse open and Marcello's voice in the entrance hall, low and clipped, cutting a conversation short.

He was back. Hours earlier than he had said.

And from the entrance hall came another voice I recognised, one of the men from his inner circle, speaking quickly and urgently, and above the distance and the walls I caught three words clearly.

Three words that stopped my blood completely.

"Alfonso. New York. Tonight."