CHAPTER 8

Dinner was held in a dining room that could have comfortably seated thirty people. The table was long and dark and polished to a mirror shine, set with fine china and crystal glasses and more pieces of silverware than I knew what to do with. Candles burned in tall holders down the center of the table, casting everything in a warm, flickering glow. The whole room smelled of good food and fresh flowers and money.

There were only three of us at that enormous table. Victor at the head. Rob to his left. Me to his right.

Dante's seat stayed empty.

The food came out in courses, brought by the quiet, efficient staff who appeared and disappeared like shadows. Each dish was better than the last—fresh seafood, pasta that tasted nothing like anything I'd ever made at home, bread still warm from the oven, olive oil that tasted like it had been pressed that morning.

I focused on the food because it gave me somewhere to put my eyes.

Rob was on his phone for most of it. He ate with one hand and scrolled with the other, contributing almost nothing to the conversation beyond one-word answers when his father addressed him directly. He didn't look at me once. Didn't ask if I liked the food. Didn't check if I was okay. Didn't acknowledge my presence at the table in any way that suggested I was anything more than a stranger who had wandered in off the street.

I kept my face neutral and my back straight and told myself I didn't care.

Victor, on the other hand, talked to me.

Not in a polite, obligatory, getting-through-the-dinner kind of way. He actually talked to me. He set down his wine glass, turned toward me, and asked me questions. Real questions. Where was I from? What did I do for work? Had I ever been to Italy before? What did I think of the island so far?

And he listened to the answers. Actually listened, his eyes steady on my face, asking follow-up questions, nodding thoughtfully, responding like what I was saying mattered to him.

I couldn't remember the last time someone had listened to me like that.

I answered carefully, keeping my voice light and my words simple, trying to present myself as a normal, calm, completely-fine person who was absolutely not having a crisis of any kind. I talked about my job—briefly, because it felt embarrassingly small in a room like this. I talked about my apartment, my city, the places I liked to go. I said it was my first time in Italy and that the coast was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

The whole time I spoke, I made sure not to look directly at him.

I looked at his chin. At the candles behind him. At the wine glass in his hand. At the painting on the wall just past his left shoulder. Anywhere but his eyes.

Because I knew what would happen if I looked at his eyes. I'd felt it already twice today. That pull, that strange, warm, unwanted current that moved through me when his gaze landed on mine. I couldn't afford to feel that at the dinner table with his son sitting three feet away.

So I looked at his chin and talked about my apartment and kept my breathing even.

Victor didn't push. He didn't comment on my avoidance. He just kept talking to me in that low, unhurried voice, refilling my water glass without being asked, making sure the bread basket was within my reach, treating me with more quiet consideration in one dinner than Rob had managed in an entire year.

Dante never came.

Victor mentioned it once, near the end of the meal—that his oldest had been delayed further, that he would likely arrive very late tonight or first thing tomorrow. Rob said nothing in response. Just picked up his phone again.

By the time dessert was cleared away, I was exhausted in a way that went bone deep. Not just tired—wrung out. The day had taken everything I had and then kept taking.

I set my napkin on the table and pushed my chair back gently.

"Please excuse me," I said, keeping my voice steady. "It's been a long day. Thank you for dinner—everything was wonderful."

Victor rose slightly from his chair as I stood, a small, old-fashioned gesture that caught me completely off guard. "Sleep well, Lia," he said simply.

Rob didn't look up from his phone.

I walked out of the dining room without looking back.

Sleep, it turned out, had no interest in me.

I lay in that beautiful bed in that beautiful room and stared at the ceiling while my mind refused to slow down. The nap I'd taken earlier had stolen all my tiredness and replaced it with a restless, buzzing wakefulness that wouldn't be reasoned with.

I tried everything.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, counting slowly like I'd read somewhere was supposed to help. I got to forty-seven before giving up.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall.

I rolled onto my other side and stared at the curtains.

I pulled out my phone and opened N*****x, scrolling through thumbnails for ten minutes before picking something at random. I watched about four minutes of it before realizing I had no idea what I was watching or who any of the people were.

I let it run in the background like noise.

It didn't help.

My brain was doing that thing it did when something hurt too much to look at directly—circling around it, poking at the edges, replaying pieces of the day in fragments. The sounds from the plane. Rob's cold, blank expression when he'd seen me crying. Better than you ever did. The weight of Victor's hand at the small of my back.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead and made myself stop.

I checked the time. Midnight. I'd been lying here for over three hours.

I sat up and pushed the covers back.

A walk. Fresh air. Something to do with my body so my brain would have something else to focus on. That was what I needed.

I changed out of my sleep clothes and into a loose pair of shorts and a soft oversized t-shirt, slid my feet into sandals, and slipped quietly out of my room.

The house was still and silent at this hour. My footsteps were swallowed by the carpet in the hallway, and then by the cool marble of the ground floor.

I found a door near the back of the house that opened outward onto a wide stone terrace.

The night air hit me immediately, and I closed my eyes for just a second and breathed it in. It was warm and soft and smelled of salt and something floral I couldn't name. The sky above the island was enormous and full of stars in a way that was simply impossible back home, where the city lights washed most of them out. Out here, with nothing but the ocean in every direction, the sky was absolutely packed with them—layer upon layer, deep and endless and humbling.

I stood there for a moment, just breathing.

Then I started walking.