Chapter 7

By the second morning, the man at the end of the street had stopped pretending to be casual about it.

Blair watched him from the kitchen window while her mother refilled a coffee neither of them wanted. Same dark car. Same unhurried patience Alessandro's men all seemed to share, like it had been taught to them in a single afternoon.

"You don't have to go out today," Fiorella said, not for the first time.

"I'm going to the market. It's daylight. There's a man watching the house whose entire job is apparently watching the house." Blair reached for her bag before her mother could build a better argument. "I can't live in this kitchen for thirty days, Mamma."

Fiorella didn't stop her. She did, notably, watch her all the way to the end of the driveway from the window, which Blair chose not to mention.

* * *

She smelled the citrus stall before she saw who was standing next to it.

"You've got some nerve."

Sofia stood with her arms crossed, sunglasses pushed up into hair too perfectly arranged for a Tuesday morning, looking at Blair like she'd found something unpleasant stuck to her shoe.

"Sofia—"

"Don't." One sharp word, enough to stop her. "Andrew told me everything. About the men who work for the Lumieres. About how you're mixed up with dangerous people now. About how you attacked him when he tried to help you understand what you were getting yourself into."

Blair stood very still, watching seven years of Andrew's talent for rearranging the truth laid out fresh in someone else's mouth.

"That's not what happened."

"Of course you'd say that."

"I'm not lying to you, Sofia."

"You don't even know me." Something flickered under the certainty — not quite doubt, but close enough to its neighborhood. "Why do you even care what I think happened?"

It would have been easier to shrug and walk away. The old Blair would have. The old Blair would have smiled and let the lie stand and found a much quieter way to make sure Sofia regretted taking Andrew's side.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you." She said it plainly, no performance in it at all. "I mean that. More than you'd believe."

That landed somewhere Sofia clearly hadn't braced for. Her arms unfolded, just slightly.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Blair made herself stop there, because the truth had nowhere safe left to go. "Just — be careful. That's all I'm asking."

Sofia's eyes narrowed, searching Blair's face for the angle she was clearly sure had to be there.

"He said you'd do this." Quieter now, almost to herself. "Twist it around. Make yourself sound like you're the one worried about me." A beat. "He said you'd know exactly what to say to make it sound true."

The market noise went on around them, entirely indifferent to how much had just gone very cold in Blair's chest.

He'd prepared her for this. Not reacted to it — prepared for it, in advance, like he'd known exactly which conversation was coming and built Sofia a shield for it before Blair had even decided to have one.

"Sofia, whatever he told you to expect from me—"

"I have to go." She was already stepping back, sunglasses coming back down like a door closing. "Stay away from him. From me. Just — stay away."

She made it four steps before she looked back, just once, something unresolved still sitting in her face. Then she kept walking, and didn't look back again.

* * *

Blair sat on the low wall outside the market for a long time before she took out her phone.

The number Alessandro had given her father was saved under a single letter. She stared at it long enough that the screen dimmed twice before she pressed call.

"Yes." He picked up on the second ring, no greeting, like he'd been expecting the number.

"It's Blair."

"I know." A pause, brief and precise. "What happened?"

She told him. All of it — Sofia, the market, the particular chill of finding out Andrew had rehearsed her reaction before she'd ever had it. Alessandro didn't interrupt once.

When she finished, the silence on the line went on long enough that she checked to see if the call had dropped.

"He's not just angry," Alessandro said finally, low and even, more to himself than to her. "He's organized. That's worse."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I need to find out who's helping him think that clearly." Another pause, shorter this time. "Go home, Blair. I'll deal with it."

The line went dead before she could ask what, exactly, dealing with it was going to look like.

She sat with the phone in her lap a while longer, watching the citrus stall's awning shift in the wind, and wasn't at all sure whether she'd just protected herself or handed something loaded to a man who'd already told her, quite plainly, that he wasn't in the habit of sending gentle messages.