CHAPTER 6: Nico

My first morning outside I expected a wall with legs. And by that I mean the kind of guard who answered questions with one word, and walked three steps behind me with his hand near his jacket, and his face set to permanent warning. The human version of a locked door.

Instead I got Nico, the one introduced to me as Dante's must trusted guide.

He was waiting by the side entrance at six fifteen when I came downstairs. Broad and solid with an open honest face, and the kind of eyes that noticed everything without making a show of it. He was holding two cups of coffee and held one out to me before I had even said good morning.

I looked at it. "Is this a power move?"

"It's a flat white," he said. "Elena made it and she thought you might need it."

I took the coffee, iit was perfect and I decided to give Nico ten minutes before I made up my mind about him.

We walked the eastern garden path without talking, the morning was cool and still with mist sitting low on the grass. The roses just catching the early light and somewhere in the cypress trees along the boundary, wall birds were making considerably more noise than felt necessary for six in the morning. Under any other circumstances it would have been a beautiful morning but under these circumstances it was a beautiful prison, and I was still learning the difference.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Twelve years with the family and eight working directly with Dante."

"And you're loyal to him."

"Completely."

I looked at the stone wall at the far end of the path. Four meters at least with a smooth face and nothing to grip. "Even knowing what he does."

Nico was quiet for a moment in the thinking way rather than the defensive way, like someone who had sat with that question before and arrived somewhere honest about it. "There are worse men running worse things in this city and I've seen them up close," he said glancing at me sideways. "Dante has lines he doesn't cross and that matters more than people think."

"He killed someone two nights ago."

"A man who was selling information that would have gotten innocent people hurt including you whether you know the details yet or not." He said it plainly without flinching or dressing it up, I drank my coffee while looking at the roses and thought about what he said.

We walked to the end of the path, turned back and walked it again and the guards at the boundary wall didn't look at us at all. They looked outward at everything beyond the walls rather than at the world inside them. I was starting to understand the difference between protecting and containing even if I hadn't decided yet what to do with that understanding.

"You want to ask me something," Nico said.

"Am I that obvious?"

"You've been working up to it since we left the house." The corner of his mouth moved. "Ask."

"Will you help me get out?"

He didn't hesitate even slightly. "No."

"Because Dante told you not to."

"Because it would get you killed and I don't want that on my conscience." He looked at me directly with that steady honest face. "I know this isn't what you chose and I know being here feels like a cage, but the people looking for you right now are not people you want to meet on a dark road alone. Dante's walls are the only thing between you and that conversation happening tonight."

I looked at the gravel path beneath my feet and hated that he was making complete sense.

"He hasn't done this before," I said. "Brought someone here like this?"

Nico was quiet for a beat. "No he hasn't."

"What does that mean?"

"I honestly don't know yet and neither does he I think." He finished his coffee and we walked past the rose beds back toward the fountain, I turned that over carefully in my mind because Elena had said it last night, and now Nico was saying it again. These were two people who knew Dante Marchetti better than almost anyone, and they were both pointing at the same thing without being able to name it. He hadn't done this before. Whatever this was.

"He had a sister," I said.

The change in Nico was immediate.

Not dramatic because he didn't stop walking or turn to look at me, but something went through him. A stillness that moved from his shoulders down through the rest of him like a current being switched off, and his jaw tightened once and then carefully released.

"Giulia," I said quietly. "That was her name wasn't it."

"Yes," he said. Just that one word.

"What happened to her?"

The silence that followed wasn't the thinking kind. It was the kind that comes when a question lands somewhere that still hurts and the answer lives in a place a person has learned to step around carefully. Because stepping directly on it costs too much, he stopped walking and looked at the fountain in the center of the drive, with the water moving silver in the early light and then he looked at me.

"That's not my story to tell," he said and he said it softly without shutting me out completely. But just placing the boundary down carefully like something he was protecting rather than hiding, and there was a difference between those two things and I could feel it clearly.

I nodded and didn't push.

We walked back to the house without speaking, and I thought about the way his whole body had gone quiet at her name. The way he had looked at the fountain like he needed somewhere to put his eyes that wasn't my face, and whatever had happened to Giulia Marchetti had left marks on everyone who loved her. Deep ones. The kind that didn't fade with time but just got quieter and more carefully managed.

Nobody was going to tell me what it was until someone decided I had earned the right to know, and I was going to earn that right.

I just didn't know yet what it was going to cost me.