THE CONTRACT AND THE ONE RULE

I signed my name on the last line and felt it settle into my bones like a second heartbeat.

The pen was heavy and black and expensive, the paper was thick, the words on it were precise and cold. Six months of exclusive interpretation,housing in the east wing of the estate,security at all times, full payment of medical expenses for my mother Maria Rossi at the long term care facility of her choosing, a monthly salary larger than I had earned in two years, and at the bottom a clause in small print that I read three times.

Either party may end this agreement early by mutual written consent.

I looked up, Dante was watching me from the other side of the desk, Victor had gone, Enzo and Pietro had gone. The lamp had stopped flickering after Pietro disconnected something behind the wall and now the office was steady and warm. We were alone for the first time since the hospital.

I signed a question and asked why the clause about early ending had to be mutual. I asked why he did not just let me leave if I wanted to.

He took a long time to answer, he rose from his chair and walked to the window and stood with his back to me, i watched his shoulders, they were very straight, they were the shoulders of a man who had carried a house on them since he was twenty two.

When he turned he signed slowly, he signed that the clause was not a trap. He signed that it was a protection. If I could leave on my own at any moment then Hayes could demand that I leave, Adrian Cole could demand that I leave, Victor could demand that I leave, but a contract that needed his signature as well as mine meant no one could pressure me into walking out into the open where I would be easiest to take.

I understood it then, the rule that bound me also shielded me, It was a cage with the door held shut from the inside against everyone else.

I signed that I understood. Then I signed that I had a condition of my own.

His eyebrow lifted. It was a small movement but I had learned to read the small ones.

I signed that I would interpret for him in every meeting but I would never again change his words without telling him first. I signed that if I disagreed I would say so aloud to him alone and let him decide. I signed that I would not be his weapon but I would be his voice and a voice is allowed to be honest.

He looked at me for a very long moment. Then he signed one word. Agreed.

I let out a breath I had been holding for ten minutes. My hands felt lighter.

He walked back to the desk and sat on the edge of it, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him. He lifted his hands again. This time his signing was slower and quieter. It was the way a man signs when he wants every word to land exactly where he aims it.

He signed that he had one rule for me.

I waited.

He signed that I was not to fall for him.

I did not laugh. I wanted to. The sentence was so absurd and so arrogant and so honest that it hit me in the chest like a thrown stone. I signed back that I had no intention of falling for a man who ordered broken hands and bought hospital bills in cash.

He signed that he knew. He signed that this was exactly why he was saying it. He signed that he had watched many people grow attached to the one who protected them. He signed that it was a natural thing. He signed that it was also a dangerous thing because attachment makes people reckless and recklessness gets them killed.

I signed that it sounded like a rule he had made for himself and not for me.

His hands stopped in the air.

For a moment neither of us moved. The lamp hummed. Outside a guard crossed the lawn and his boots crunched in the frost. I realized that I had said something true and that Dante had not expected it. His face did not change but his eyes did. They softened by a degree that only someone who had spent ten years reading hands would notice.

He lowered his hands. He signed that dinner was at eight and that his sister Sofia would be there. He signed that she was the only person in the house who would be kind to me without wanting something. He signed that I should eat.

I nodded and picked up the contract and folded it and slid it into my coat pocket where the missing button used to be. He watched me do it and then he turned away to give me privacy and I walked out of the office with my heart beating in places it did not belong.

A woman in a grey uniform was waiting in the hall. Her name was Rosa and she was the housekeeper. She was small and round and she had eyes that missed nothing. She led me to the east wing and showed me how to find the kitchen and the library and the staircase that led to the garden. She told me that the house was quiet at night and that I should not be afraid of the sounds. She told me that old houses breathe.

I bathed in a marble tub with water so hot it made my skin glow. I put on the only clean dress I had packed which was dark green and slightly too big. I looked at myself in the mirror and did not recognize the woman looking back. She looked like someone who had survived something and did not yet know the cost.

At eight o clock I walked downstairs to a dining room with a table long enough to seat twenty. The chandelier above it was made of a hundred crystal drops. Candles burned along the center. Only three places were set.

Dante sat at the head. Victor sat on his right with a glass of red wine and a face like winter. And on the left side of the table a young woman with curly dark hair and a bright wide smile was already waving at me with both hands.

She was perhaps twenty four. She wore a yellow sweater and a pair of silver earrings shaped like tiny moons. She jumped up from her chair before I reached the table and hugged me without asking. She smelled like vanilla and green apples.

She said I am Sofia and you are Elena and I have been dying to meet you since Dante told me about you three weeks ago. She said it all in one breath. She said it in English and then she said it again in sign language with hands that were clumsy and eager and unmistakably loving.

I stared at her. She had learned. She had learned some sign language for her brother. It was not fluent. It was full of mistakes. But the effort in her fingers was so open and so brave that I felt my eyes burn.

I signed back slowly so she could follow. I signed that it was a pleasure to meet her. I signed that her signing was beautiful.

She blushed and said she had only learned forty signs but that she was practicing every night. She said she wanted to be able to talk to Dante without anyone in between. She said that for ten years every conversation with her brother had passed through some stranger and that she was tired of strangers.

The word stranger landed oddly and I felt a flicker of discomfort. I glanced at Dante. He was watching his sister with a look I had not seen on him before. It was not the look of a Don. It was the look of a man who loved someone more than he knew how to say.

We sat. A servant brought bowls of soup and then plates of roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary. Sofia talked and talked. She told me stories about the house and about her brother and about the time he accidentally set the kitchen curtains on fire at fifteen while trying to cook for her birthday. She told me that Dante could not cook to save his life but that he had once stayed up all night learning a recipe because she had cried over a bad day.

I interpreted her stories for Dante because he could not hear them. He watched my hands and rolled his eyes at the curtain story and the corner of his mouth lifted in that tiny almost invisible way. Sofia saw it and squealed. She said I made him smile and no one had made him smile in years.

Victor said nothing. He ate his chicken and drank his wine and looked at me over the rim of his glass like a man doing arithmetic.

When dessert came Sofia leaned across the table and lowered her voice. She said there was something I should know. She said Dante had never allowed a stranger to live in the east wing. It had belonged to their mother and had been locked since her death. She said when he gave me the keys that morning she had thought she was dreaming.

I turned to Dante with a question in my hands. He did not meet my eyes. He signed that the east wing was the safest part of the house. He signed that it had nothing to do with sentiment.

But Sofia grinned at me and whispered that he was lying and that she had never seen her brother lie so badly.

That night I lay in the canopy bed and listened to the old house breathe. I was warm and fed and safe for the first time in months. And yet I could not sleep. Something in the dark was whispering and I could not tell if it was the wind or my own heart.

At two in the morning I heard a sound that did not belong to either.

It was a low broken cough from the far end of the hall. It came again and again. It was the sound of someone choking on pain.

I threw on a robe and slipped out of my room and followed it down the corridor toward the west wing. A thin strip of light glowed beneath a heavy door. I pressed my ear against the wood and I heard something I should never have been able to hear.

A man was trying to say a name. And he was failing.