Not Normal

Episode Four

CHIARA

The phone woke me, buzzing itself halfway off the nightstand until I finally grabbed it, still half asleep. The screen lit up with everything I'd been too exhausted to look at last night. Nine missed calls from my father. Fourteen from Levi. Six from Lillian. And Sofia, calling right now, her name flashing across the cracked screen like she'd been trying all night and had just decided to make the phone ring until I answered.

I answered.

"Where are you?" Sofia said, before I'd even gotten a word out. "Are you okay? Chiara, please tell me you're okay."

"I'm fine, Sof."

"You're fine." A short, disbelieving laugh. "You left your own wedding in the middle of a storm and nobody has seen you since. Where are you? What happened?"

I sat up, pressing my palm against my eyes. "It's a lot. I can't do it over the phone."

"Then don't do it over the phone. Meet me somewhere."

"There's a cafe near Tribeca. Give me thirty minutes."

"I'll be there in twenty."

I hung up and sat there for a second, the ring cold and heavy on my finger, the weight of last night settling back in now that the shock had worn off enough to actually feel like something. My chest ached in a way sleep hadn't fixed at all.

I got up and went to the vanity to find something to pull my hair back with, and that was when I saw it. A small case, sitting neatly beside a brush that wasn't mine. I opened it out of habit more than anything.

My glasses prescription. Not a similar one. Mine, down to the exact numbers I'd had for years.

I stood there holding them for a long moment, turning them over like they might explain themselves if I looked at them long enough. They didn't. I thought about all the ways a person could find out someone's prescription, an optometrist's office, an insurance record, a pharmacy, and none of them were things you got access to by accident. I put them on anyway, because I needed to see clearly more than I needed to figure out how he knew, and the room sharpened into focus around me.

I showered quickly, my mind too loud to actually process the water or the heat, and when I stepped into the closet to find something to wear, I stopped.

It wasn't empty. Silk blouses, tailored trousers, a row of dresses still with their tags tucked discreetly inside the collars, all of it hanging there like it had been waiting for me specifically. I checked a blouse without thinking, some reflex from years of dressing for court, and the size was right. Not close. Right.

I stood there for a long moment, one hand still on the hanger, doing the math on how long it takes to have an entire wardrobe made in someone's exact measurements. Longer than one night. Longer, probably, than the two hours he'd known I existed as anything other than a name in a file.

I got dressed anyway, because I needed to move, and thinking too hard about it in that closet wasn't going to get me to Sofia any faster. I pulled my hair back, grabbed my bag, and went.

Downstairs, a woman I didn't recognize was polishing the same spot on the counter for what looked like the second time.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't think we've met."

She looked up, startled, then smiled. "Marta, ma'am. I do the mornings here." A pause, like she was deciding whether to add the rest. "Mrs. Vitiello."

The name landed strange, the way it probably would for a while. "Is Alessio here?"

"He left for the office an hour ago." She wiped her hands on her apron. "He asked me to tell you, if you wanted to leave the house today, there's a driver on call, or the car in the garage is yours to use. He said you'd probably prefer the second option."

I blinked. "He said that?"

"His exact words, ma'am."

I didn't know what to do with that, so I didn't do anything with it. I just thanked her, took the keys she offered, and drove myself to the cafe, because he'd been right, and I didn't love that he'd been right.

Sofia was already there when I arrived, two coffees on the table, her leg bouncing under it in a way that meant she'd been sitting there working herself up for the last ten minutes. Her eyes went past me to the window the second I sat down.

"Is that what you drove here?" she asked, staring at the car idling at the curb like it had personally offended her. "Chiara, that thing probably costs more than my apartment."

"I didn't ask what it cost."

"Clearly."

"Okay," she said, dragging her eyes back to me. "Talk."

So I told her. All of it. Levi and Lillian in that room. The photo I took instead of screaming. The rain, the car, the stranger who knew my name before I ever gave it to him. The courthouse. The ring, with initials that were mine and a date that wasn't yesterday's.

Sofia didn't say a word through most of it. She just sat there, coffee going cold in her hands, her face doing something between horror and fury I'd never quite seen on her before.

"Chiara." Her voice came out low when I finally stopped talking. "You married a man who had your glasses prescription ready before you even told him you exist."

"I know how it sounds."

"It doesn't sound like anything, because there's no version of that sentence that sounds okay." She reached across the table and grabbed my hand, the one with the ring. "I need you to promise me you're being careful. I need you to actually promise, not just say it."

"I'm being careful, Sof."

"You said that about Levi too."

That landed harder than she probably meant it to. I didn't have an answer for it, and for a second neither of us said anything, the noise of the cafe filling in the space where one should have been.

"What do you actually know about him?" she asked finally. "Not what he told you. What you actually know."

"His name. His company. That he apparently knows things about my life I've never told anyone."

"Chiara, that's not normal. None of what you just told me is normal."

"I know."

"Do you? Because that didn't sound like fear just now. That sounded like you cataloguing evidence."

She wasn't wrong, and that scared me more than anything Alessio had said or done in the last twelve hours.

My phone rang.

Lillian.

I almost didn't answer. Then I did, because some habits don't break just because someone breaks your heart.

"Chiara." Her voice was wrong, thin and fast in a way I'd never heard from her. "Chiara, you need to come to the hospital right now."

My whole body went still. Across the table, Sofia was already on her feet, reading my face before I'd said a single word.

"What happened?" I asked, my voice barely holding together.

"It's Dad." A breath, ragged, close to breaking. "He collapsed at the office an hour ago. They think it's his heart."