Chapter 6: The Woman Who Sees Too Much

VITTORIA'S POV

I did not sleep.

I lay on my side of that enormous bed, staring at the ceiling while the city glittered beyond the windows, and I replayed Ric's words until they carved themselves into the inside of my skull.

Same green eyes. Same bone structure.

He had said it so quietly. So deliberately. The way a man speaks when he already has the answer but wants to watch you squirm before he uses it.

Beside me, Marcello's breathing was deep and even. He slept like a man with no unresolved business, which was impressive considering his unresolved business could fill a courtroom. I turned my head and looked at him in the dark, at the hard line of his jaw, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the faint scar that curved below his collarbone like a crescent moon.

He was beautiful in the way dangerous things always are. The kind of beautiful that makes you forget, just for one second, what it is capable of.

I looked away and stared back at the ceiling.

I needed to get to Ric before Ric got to Marcello. But I did not even know what getting to Ric meant. Beg him? Threaten him? Offer him something? I had nothing to offer anyone in this building. I was a kindergarten teacher living on student loans who had accidentally married the most feared man in New York City. My entire negotiating power was zero.

The clock on the bedside table read 3:47 a.m.

I closed my eyes and willed morning not to come.

It came anyway.

The dining room stretched long and formal, the kind of table that expected silence and good posture. Floor-to-ceiling windows let in a grey morning light that made everything look like a painting nobody had quite finished yet.

Carmela was already seated when I walked in, a small cup of espresso in front of her and a newspaper folded at her elbow. She looked up the moment I appeared, and those dark eyes did their usual slow sweep of me from head to toe.

"You're early," she said.

"I couldn't sleep," I replied honestly, because I had already decided that the best lies are the ones wrapped tightly around the truth.

She gestured to the seat across from her without a word. I sat.

A woman in a dark uniform appeared from the kitchen doorway and placed a cup of espresso in front of me without being asked. I wrapped both hands around it, grateful for the warmth.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Carmela turned a page of her newspaper. I watched the steam curl off my coffee.

"My son has never brought a woman into this house," she said without looking up.

I kept my hands steady around the cup. "Never?"

"Not once. Not in thirty-five years." She turned another page. "So you can imagine what I thought when I heard he had married someone overnight."

"I can imagine," I said carefully.

She folded the newspaper and set it aside, and then she looked at me directly the way she had done yesterday, that slow, thorough look that felt less like curiosity and more like excavation.

"What do you want from him?" she asked.

The question landed flat on the table between us.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a simple question, child. Every woman who has ever tried to get close to my son has wanted something from him. Money. Protection. Status. Power by association." She picked up her espresso. "So I am asking you plainly, what is it that you want?"

I held her gaze. "I didn't plan any of this."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only honest one I have," I said, and something shifted very slightly in her expression. Not warmth exactly. More like the first millimetre of a door opening.

She set her cup down and leaned back in her chair, studying me with slightly less hostility than before.

"You are not what I expected," she said finally.

"What did you expect?"

"Someone louder. Someone more eager to impress." She tilted her head. "Most women in your position would be performing right now. Smiling too wide, talking too much, trying to make me like them."

"Would that have worked?" I asked.

The corner of her mouth moved. Almost a smile. Almost. "No."

I nodded slowly. "Then I saved us both the trouble."

She looked at me for another long beat, then picked up her newspaper again. Not dismissively. More like she needed something to do with her hands while she thought.

"Breakfast will be served in twenty minutes," she said. "My son prefers his eggs without salt. In case nobody told you."

It was the smallest thing. The tiniest offering. But from a woman like Carmela Giordano, I understood it for exactly what it was.

A test passed.

The rest of the morning moved slowly. Marcello spent most of it on phone calls behind closed doors, his voice low and clipped in that way that told me whatever was being discussed was not something I was meant to hear. I stayed out of his way and tried to learn the geography of the penthouse without making it obvious that was what I was doing so.

It was large enough to feel like its own small city. Multiple sitting rooms. A study with a door that was always locked. A terrace that wrapped around the entire east side, with a view that would have been beautiful under different circumstances.

I was standing on that terrace, my arms folded against the morning chill, when I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned, already bracing myself for Ric.

But it was Sera.

She came to stand beside me at the railing, a cigarette between her fingers, looking out at the city with a bored expression that I was beginning to think was her permanent face.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, and the question sounded almost genuine.

"Fine," I said.

She exhaled smoke slowly. "You know, you don't have to keep saying that."

I looked at her sideways. "Saying what?"

"Fine. Okay. I'm alright." She tapped ash over the railing. "Every woman who comes into this family for the first time says those same three words on repeat for about two weeks before they either break down or go completely numb."

"Which one did you do?" I asked.

She smiled at that, and for the first time,e it looked real. "I was born into this family, so I skipped the first stage and went straight to numb." She glanced at me. "But you're different. You walked in here with nothing but a surname and a straight spine, and my grandmother has already offered you breakfast conversation, which she has not done with anyone in this house in four years."

I said nothing.

Sera dropped the cigarette and crushed it under her heel. "I'm not your enemy, Vittoria. I just want you to know that. Not everyone in this building is waiting for you to fail."

She said it simply, without decoration, and I wanted to believe her. I genuinely did.

But I had trusted Nissi, and look where that had landed me.

"Thank you," I said, because it was the safest reply I had.

She nodded once and turned to leave, then stopped.

"One more thing." She said it with her back still to me. "My uncle Ric asked me this morning if I knew anything about a family called Alfonso."

My heart stopped.

"I told him I didn't." She turned her head just slightly, not enough to look at me fully, but enough. "But I thought you should know that he asked."

She walked back inside, and I stood on the terrace alone, the morning wind cutting straight through me.

Ric was already moving. He was asking questions, building a case one quiet conversation at a time, and when he had enough pieces, he would take them straight to Marcello.

I had maybe two days. Three if I was lucky.

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Alberto with cold, shaking fingers.

"Brother, I need you to listen to me carefully and do exactly what I say. Do not come looking for me. Do not ask questions. Stay away from anything connected to the Giordano name. I will explain everything when I can, but right now the most important thing you can do for this family is disappear. Please."

I stared at the message for three seconds, then sent it.

Behind me, through the glass, I could see that Marcello had finished his call. He was standing in the living room, looking out at the terrace, looking directly at me, his blue eyes unreadable from this distance.

I made myself smile at him.

He did not smile back.

He just watched me with that careful, measuring look that I was starting to realise was not casual at all.

Marcello Giordano was already suspicious.

And the worst part was that I had no idea how long he had been.