LOGINAMELIA
Don Vittorio's study had a window that looked out over the whole harbor, and in seven years I had been inside it exactly twice, both times to be introduced to someone.
On Saturday morning, a guard knocked on my door at ten o'clock and said the Don would see me, and I followed him down the main stairs with Pino behind us, through the dark wood hall where the portraits of dead DeSantos watched me from their frames. The guard opened the study door and stepped aside, and I wa
AMELIARico knocked at ten past five, with the plain, flat knock of a man who had decided long ago that nobody in this house deserved a code.I was already dressed, because I hadn't slept, and I opened the door on a corridor still dark except for the lamp at Pino's window. Rico stood there in his black coat with a thick folder under his arm and a thermos in his gloved hand, and behind him two soldiers waited with a ring of keys between them."The boss says you'll help me with the guest list," he said."He told you that?""He told me last night, and he told me twice." He glanced at the open door behind me, at the lamp, at the suitcase on the floor, which I had shut and pushed against the wall. "The men start at six. They'll do the west corridor first, so I'd rather you weren't standing in it.""Will they go through my things?""They'll go through everyone's things, Miss Raines, and they'll put them back." He said it kindly, the way a doctor says it won't hurt. "Bring a coat. The librar
AMELIAAt a quarter to midnight I stood outside Luca's door in my gray sweater, with my fist raised, and I had made up my mind to tell him everything.I had decided it in the conservatory, with orange juice drying on my fingers, and I had held to it through dinner and through the long hour afterward, when I sat on my bed and watched the shadow of Pino's feet move back and forth under the door. Adrian had said nine masks, and Lucinda had asked for a third count, and a green silk voice had told me over a tea tray that a minute was not long. If the house was already closing around me, I would rather walk out of it on my own feet than be carried.I had wrapped the crimson mask in a scarf and pushed it deep into the lining of my suitcase, where the zipper pocket ran along the seam. Then I had come to the east wing alone, past the guard at the corner who knew me and looked away, and now I stood in front of the second door with my palm damp against my sleeve.Tw
AMELIAThe mansion had a glass conservatory on its southern side, full of lemon trees in clay pots, and on Monday afternoon I went there to hide a mask.I had not decided where. I only knew that the crimson half-mask with its thin gold edge had been lying at the bottom of my coat pocket for nine days, heavy as a stone, and that every time I passed a guard I felt it through the cloth. Pino sat on a bench just inside the glass door with a newspaper, and I walked among the pots, trailing my fingers over the waxy leaves, and wondered whether a person could bury a mask in a pot of dirt without being seen."If you're planning to steal a lemon, take the one on the left," said a voice. "The ones on the right are bitter."I jumped. Adrian was sitting on the rim of an old stone fountain at the far end, in his shirt sleeves, with a pile of contracts on his knee and a ripe orange in one hand. The low sun through the glass turned his dark blond hair to brass."
AMELIADon Vittorio's study had a window that looked out over the whole harbor, and in seven years I had been inside it exactly twice, both times to be introduced to someone.On Saturday morning, a guard knocked on my door at ten o'clock and said the Don would see me, and I followed him down the main stairs with Pino behind us, through the dark wood hall where the portraits of dead DeSantos watched me from their frames. The guard opened the study door and stepped aside, and I walked in, and the door shut at my back with a soft, final click.The room was long and dim and smelled of pipe smoke and old paper. A huge desk of black wood stood at the far end, and behind it, against the window, a gray sea glittered under a low sky. On the wall to the right hung a single portrait, the only one in the house that wasn't of a man: a young woman with dark hair and Luca's gray eyes, holding a white rose.Vittorio stood in front of it with his hands behind his back.
AMELIAOn Friday morning Pino walked me to the rose garden, because a girl who can't leave the house is still allowed to look at the sky, and Rico Falco was waiting on the gravel path with his hands behind his back."Pino, take a cigarette," Rico said. "Ten minutes, by the fountain.""The Don said...""The Don said Miss Raines doesn't leave the house, and she hasn't. I'm standing beside her." Rico didn't raise his voice. "Go."Pino went. The garden was cold and bare, the rose bushes cut back to thorny sticks, and a white mist lay over the lawn that sloped down toward the harbor wall. I pulled my coat tighter, and Rico fell into step beside me without being asked, his leather gloves creaking softly, and for a while neither of us spoke."I wasn't born in this house," he said at last."I know.""Do you know how I came into it?" He didn't wait for my answer. "I was nineteen, and I was stealing from the Don's harbor. Crates of fruit
AMELIAVittorio never sent for me that night, and I sat on the marble bench in the hall until nearly midnight before Rico came and told me, in a voice as dry as paper, that I could go to bed."What did the Don say?" I asked."To you? Nothing." He pulled his gloves tighter. "To the boss, a great deal, and none of it was kind. From now on nobody leaves this house without the Don's word, and the boss doesn't leave without me, and you don't leave your corridor without Pino." He studied my face. "He didn't mention the photograph again, Miss Raines. I'd take that as a mercy, and I wouldn't ask for more."I took it as a mercy. I also took it as a warning, and I lay awake until the windows turned gray, counting the ways a person could be photographed in the dark.On Thursday afternoon, with Pino at his window and the whole house holding its breath, I did the only thing I could think of that was ordinary. I sat on my bed with my knees pulled up and telephon







