Chapter 11

Blair woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of someone humming badly off-key two floors down, and for one disoriented moment thought she was home before she remembered whose home this actually was.

Nicoletta was already at the stove when she came down, still humming, waving a wooden spoon at the chair across the counter without turning around. "Sit. Eat. You slept later than I expected — that's a good sign, actually. Means your body finally believed you were safe enough to stop keeping watch."

"I didn't realize I was that obvious."

"You weren't, to most people." Nicoletta set a plate down, considering. "I've just had a great deal of practice reading people who've learned not to relax around a room."

Blair didn't ask how she knew what that looked like. Something about the flat, practical way Nicoletta said it made it clear the answer wouldn't be a comfortable one, and this morning, comfortable was exactly what Blair wanted to hold onto a little longer.

"Where's Alessandro?"

"Making calls in the garden since six. He thinks I don't notice, so let's both pretend we don't." Nicoletta slid onto the stool beside her with her own coffee, studying Blair over the rim of it in a way that felt less like scrutiny than an old habit she hadn't bothered breaking. "He told me what happened. The window, the note. My son doesn't tell me things unless he's already decided they matter."

"I don't know what to do with that information."

"You don't have to do anything with it. I'm only telling you so you understand why I'm about to do this." She set her cup down and, without any further ceremony, reached over and closed her hand around Blair's wrist — not hard, but firm, deliberate, an exact echo of a grip Blair hadn't told her about in any detail at all. "If a man ever does this to you again, you don't pull straight back. You never win a fight against someone stronger by matching their strength. You turn your wrist toward his thumb — that's always the weak point in a grip, always — and you step into him instead of away. Try it."

"Into him?"

"Everyone's instinct is to run. Which is exactly what he's braced for." Nicoletta's grip tightened slightly, patient, waiting. "Go on."

Blair turned her wrist the way she'd been shown, stepped in rather than back, and felt Nicoletta's grip give way with almost no resistance at all — a small, startling victory that landed somewhere in her chest far heavier than the size of the motion should have accounted for.

"Again," Nicoletta said, already resetting her grip, something satisfied and unhurried in her voice. "Until you don't have to think about it."

They were on the fourth repetition, Blair's wrist finally starting to remember the motion without her mind walking it through each step, when Alessandro came in from the garden with his phone still in his hand and an expression that stopped both of them cold.

"Alessandro?"

"I have to go." He was already reaching for his jacket, some of the ease from the night before folded away so completely it might never have existed at all. "Marco will stay here with you both until I know more."

"Know more about what?"

He hesitated at the door, and for just a moment Blair watched him decide how much to give her, the way he always seemed to be deciding something just out of reach.

"A name came back on the note. I don't want to say it out loud until I'm certain, because if I'm right, saying it changes things I can't take back." He looked at her a beat longer than the sentence required, and something under the urgency softened just slightly. "I'll call you the moment I know."

Then he was gone, and the kitchen felt very quiet without him in it, and Nicoletta reached over and reset her grip on Blair's wrist like nothing at all had just happened.

"Again," she said.

Blair turned her wrist, stepped in, and tried very hard not to think about what kind of name a man like Alessandro was afraid to say out loud before he was certain of it.