Page 3 of Ruthless Silence
The escalator carries me down while I clutch the portfolio tighter. A businessman pushes past me, muttering something that sounds angry. I catch only fragments: "…in the way… tourists…" My cheeks burn, but my spine straightens automatically.Posture, Ana,I hear Zio Roberto's voice from years of training.A Moretti never shows weakness in public.Even exhausted, even lost, even planning murder, I am still a Moretti.
The sliding doors open to August heat that steals my breath. It's nothing like Roman summer. This is wet, heavy, pressing against my skin like a living thing. The hotel air conditioning will smell like artificial lemon and cold, nothing like home. Mama's basil plant on the windowsill, Papa's cigarettes, the ancient dust of Roman streets. I join a line of people waiting for taxis, grateful that some things are universal.
"Where to, lady?" The taxi driver's words slur together in a way my English teacher never prepared me for.
I hold out the hotel card with shaking fingers, and he glances at it before pulling into traffic with a lurch that throws me against the door. My body automatically catalogs the space. Two doors, breakable partition, driver's weapon likely under his seat. Old habits from years of training with Zio Roberto.
"First time in Chicago?" He watches me in the mirror while weaving between cars.
"Yes." I search for more words, find them slipping away. "I come for… wedding."
"Wedding! Hey, that's nice. Whose wedding? You got family here?"
Family. The word sits bitter on my tongue. In our world, marriage contracts are sealed in blood, not ink. "My wedding. I marry… soon. In three days."
His eyebrows rise in the mirror. "You don't sound too happy about it."
I don't know how to explain that I'm marrying my enemy. That the man waiting for me in this city took everything from me when I was fourteen. The English words tangle in my throat, and I stay silent, thinking of that signature, those bold strokes that signed away my future before I could even write my own name.
Outside the window, Chicago rushes past. All glass and steel reaching toward the sky. So different from Rome's ancient stones and narrow streets. The signs blur together. Street names I can't pronounce, advertisements that move too fast to read. I feel lost in this maze of concrete and lights, every turn taking me deeper into unfamiliar territory. Deeper into his world.
The driver keeps talking, his accent turning every word into a puzzle. Something about baseball, maybe? Or construction? I catch familiar words. "Downtown," "traffic," "Italian." But the context escapes me. I nod when his voice rises, hope that's the right response.
"You okay back there?" He's looking at me again, concern creasing his face. "You look a little green."
Green? I know green is a color, but why would I look… oh. Sick. He thinks I'm going to be sick.
"I'm okay," I manage. "Just… tired. Long flight."
A black car changes lanes behind us, maintaining the same distance through three turns. My hand drifts to my purse where Papa's knife rests against the lining. Ten years of preparation, and I still jump at shadows. The car follows through anotherturn. Just traffic, I tell myself. Chicago is full of black cars. Not everyone is watching me.
But someone definitely is.
The hotel suite door clicks shut behind me, and finally, finally, I'm alone.
I sink onto the bed, letting my body collapse into the impossible softness. The air conditioning hums too cold against my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms. Everything here is too much. Too big, too cold, too foreign. The portfolio sits beside me, and I can't stop myself from pulling out the contract again.
There it is. His signature. In three days, mine will sit below it.
The doorman had helped with my bags, his hand reaching for the suitcase. I'd stepped back automatically. In my world, you don't let strangers touch your belongings. They might plant something. Or take something. The desk clerk's eyes had lingered on my name when I signed in. Moretti. Even here, thousands of miles from home, it means something.
My phone weighs heavy in my hand as I open the ASL app I've been using for the past year. All too soon, I will meet him. The silent devil who haunts my nightmares. At least with him, I won't stumble over English words. My signs are perfect. I've made sure of that. Every night for a year, I've practiced until my hands could form the words in my sleep. I know exactly how we'll communicate. Through signs, the language I've learned specifically for him. So he can't ever speak behind my back.
Hello. My name is Ana. I'm here to fulfill the contract.
My fingers move through the signs automatically. Formal, cold, giving nothing away. Not:I'm here to kill you.Not:You murdered my family.Just the facts, signed with precision my father would have admired.
I type his name into my phone before I can stop myself. Dante Rosetti. The images are all blurred, distant, like trying to photograph smoke. Chicago's ghost, they call him in one article.The silent enforcer. Even Google can't capture him properly. But there's one photo, grainy and taken from far away. Even in shadow, he's beautiful in that dangerous way that makes smart women stupid.
"I am pleased to meet you," I say aloud in English, hating how thick my accent sounds.
The words are textbook perfect and completely wrong. Americans don't speak like this. They say things like "Hey" and "What's up" and a dozen other phrases that mean nothing close to what they actually say.
In the mirror, I look young. Lost. Nothing like the woman I need to be in three days. Someone who can face a monster without flinching. I pull my hair back, try to look older, more sophisticated. More like someone who belongs in his world. Someone who grew up knowing that men like him exist, beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Someone whose future wasn't sold with a signature before she could walk.
My reflection mocks me. I look exactly like what I am: a twenty-three-year-old woman from Rome who's never taken a life, never done anything brave except board a plane to marry her enemy.
Room service arrives while I'm unpacking, the waiter wheeling in a cart with covered dishes.
