Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I do not open the door right away.

Every muscle in my body wants to run to the balcony, but the balcony is the second floor, and I have already died once tonight without finding out what a fall feels like.

"Who is it?" I ask. My voice is steadier than my knees.

A dry chuckle comes through the wood. "You know who. You have been reading my name in your own head for the last ten minutes."

[Skill 'Read Lies (Lv. 1)': No lie detected.]

[Warning: Second System signature approaching. Distance: 0 meters.]

Zero meters. Just the thickness of a door.

Luca said the old man could barely walk. Two strokes, a third that would kill him. I think about calling out for Luca, who is on a couch somewhere down the hall. Then I think about the way the voice said come back from the dead, and I understand something cold: if I shout, whatever happens next happens in front of Luca. And I do not know yet whether Luca should hear it.

I open the door.

Salvatore Vescari is not what I pictured.

He is small. Thin as a rail, in a plain gray robe, with white hair combed flat and a face folded into a thousand lines. One hand rests on a cane. The other hangs at his side, and I see the faint tremor in it. He looks like any old man waiting for a bus.

Then I look at his eyes, and the bus stop disappears.

They are black and calm and old in a way that has nothing to do with age. They are the eyes of someone who has seen the same thing happen many times.

"There she is," he says gently. "The bride."

"You're supposed to be in the east vault," I say.

"I am supposed to be dead. I have been many things I was supposed to be." He tips his head toward the room. "May I?"

It is the politest request I have ever heard from a man who could end my life with a nod. I step aside.

He walks in slowly, leaning on the cane, and I notice something wrong. His steps are even. The tremor in his hand does not reach his legs. The way he carries his weight is the way a healthy man carries it, only slowed down for show.

[Scan: Target is not suffering from stroke damage.]

[Scan: Target physical condition: Enhanced.]

[Scan: Target is using a System.]

He lowers himself into the armchair by the window and gestures to the edge of the bed. I do not sit. He does not seem to mind.

"You are wondering," he says, "how a dying man walks."

"I'm wondering a lot of things."

"Then let us save time." His eyes drift to the corner of the room, just above my left shoulder, where the system's text hangs. He is looking exactly at it. "Yours is called the Pleasure System. Mine is the Legacy System. They are cousins. They find people who die with something unfinished."

My breath leaves me.

I cannot speak. I cannot move. For three years I lived in this house, and tonight an eighty-year-old man walks into my bedroom and says the one sentence I was sure no one alive could ever say.

[Alert: Target has accessed Host's interface.]

[Alert: Target is reading Host's data.]

"You can see it," I whisper.

"I can see the edge of it. Like looking at a lit window from the street." He smiles. It is a kind smile, which is the most frightening thing about it. "Do not worry. I will not read more than you let me. I have no taste for it. I only needed to confirm that the rumors were true."

"What rumors?"

"That the girl I picked out of eleven would be the one to wake up."

The room tilts.

"You knew," I say. "You knew I would die."

"I knew many girls would." His voice does not change. "Ten of the eleven did, in one way or another. Different years, different husbands. Not all by a gun." He pauses. "You were the only one who came back."

[Truthfulness: 100%.]

[Notice: This is not a threat. This is an explanation.]

I grip the bedpost. "You chose me for the contract knowing that."

"I chose you because the Legacy System showed me which candidate would end the Vescari line, and which would save it." He folds both hands over the head of his cane. "I could not tell which, Elena. That is the honest answer. It showed me a fork, and you stood at the center of it."

End it or save it. Three words. They sit in my mind like a stone.

"Does Luca know?"

"My grandson knows his grandfather is alive and that his wife is no ordinary woman. He does not know the rest." Something flickers in the old man's face, a flash of real sorrow. "He is the best of us. And the one most likely to be destroyed by what is coming."

"What is coming?"

"The Dragon Moon." He says it quietly. "Your system has already told you. Ninety days."

I stare at him. "What happens on the Dragon Moon?"

"A door opens. The families have been waiting for it for a hundred years. They think it is a prize." He looks toward the window, at the dark. "It is a hunger. And whoever stands closest when it opens, it will take."

The ache at my spine pulses once, a faint warning, and I realize I am clutching the bedpost so hard my fingers hurt.

"Why tell me?"

"Because the first time, you died ignorant. And I think it is only fair that you do not die that way twice."

His eyes come back to me. They are clear, and sharp, and something in them is almost pleading.

"I need you to do two things. First, do not tell my grandson what you remember. Not yet. Not about the stairs, not about the gun. If he learns what he did in that life, it will break him before the Moon, and I need him whole."

My jaw tightens. "He let me die."

"He did," Salvatore says. "And I am asking you anyway."

[Mission update: Do not reveal the first death to the Target.]

[Penalty for disclosure: Unknown.]

"And the second thing?"

For the first time, the old man hesitates. He looks down at his hands.

"Someone in this house wants you dead before the Moon," he says. "Not Sophia. Not the Morettis. Someone close. Someone who knows what you are." He raises his eyes. "That person is the reason you died the first time. And they are already awake."

The room goes silent.

"Who?"

"I do not know." The words cost him, I can see. "My System can see the fork. It cannot see the knife."

A thin, cold fear slides down my spine. Not the old kind, the helpless kind. This is the kind that sharpens.

"You said they know what I am."

"Yes."

"Then they have a system too."

He does not answer, which is an answer.

The old man pushes himself up on the cane. It takes him a moment. At the door he pauses and looks back with an expression I cannot read: pride, grief, and something that might be apology.

"Sleep, little wife. You will need it. In the morning my grandson will take you to meet the family, and every person at that table will be smiling at you." His voice drops. "Count the ones who do not blink."

He opens the door. The hallway is dark.

Then I hear a second pair of footsteps, quick and quiet, coming fast from the far end of the corridor.

Luca's voice, low and sharp. "Nonno? What are you doing out of the vault?"

Salvatore does not turn around. He only looks at me, one last time, and mouths three words with no sound.

Trust no one.

[WARNING.]

[Target 'Salvatore Vescari' has just lied to the Host.]

[Skill 'Read Lies' detected a deception in the last 60 seconds.]

[Specific statement flagged: ———]

The line of text cuts off, scrambled, as if something is blocking it.

The old man walks away. Luca's silhouette stops in the doorway, looking from his grandfather's back to my face, and in the dim light his expression is a question I cannot answer.

"What did he say to you?" Luca asks.

And I realize I have no idea which of the old man's words was the lie.