Page 4 of Ruthless Silence
"Your dinner, Miss," he says slowly, recognizing my confusion. He's young, maybe my age, with a kind smile that reminds me of home.
I nod, then pull out a sheet of hotel stationary. My fingers work automatically, folding and creasing until a paper crane takes shape. Papa used to teach me this at our kitchen table in Rome, long before I knew about contracts and signatures and the price of being a Moretti. "Precision, cara," he'd say, guiding my small fingers through the folds. "In origami and in life, precision matters."
"That's beautiful," the waiter says, watching my hands. "Origami, right?"
"Yes." I risk more words. "I make many. One thousand cranes for… for a wish." My sentences will come faster and easier after a good night's sleep.
"What will you wish for?" His eyes are too knowing, like he sees through my exhaustion to something darker underneath.
The question catches me off guard. Do I look like someone planning murder?
"To be brave," I say finally, the truth slipping out before I can stop it. Brave enough to face the man whose signature changed my life. Brave enough to do what needs to be done.
His smile turns sad, like he knows brave girls don't last long in Chicago. "You look pretty brave to me. Coming to a new country, speaking a different language. That takes guts."
If only he knew what I really need bravery for.
After he leaves, I fold two more cranes. Hotel napkins become birds, each one a memory. This one for Papa, who taught me patience. Who should have walked me down an aisle someday, not died in a warehouse because of Rosetti bullets. This one for the girl I was before I saw that signature, before I understood that my life was never my own.
The tears come then, just three, sliding down my cheeks before I scrub them away. My father is gone. Uncle Roberto is gone. Everyone who should be here for my wedding is gone, and the man responsible is waiting for me across this cold city, his signature binding us together in ways he doesn't even know yet.
Nine hundred ninety-eight cranes now. Two more until my wish. Two more until I have to be brave enough to face the meeting in three days.
My eyes won't stay open anymore. The floor calls to me, softer than it should be with hotel carpet thick as clouds. I arrange myself among the paper cranes, their whitewings surrounding me like the ghosts of everyone I've lost. The contract lies beside me, Dante's signature visible in the lamplight.
Papa's photo rests against my chest, the edges soft from handling. In it, he's laughing at something off-camera, forever frozen in happiness. Before that night. Before the blood. Before everything changed. Before a signature destroyed our world.
"I'm here, Papa," I whisper to his image. "In the city of devils, just like you warned me about."
Something crinkles under my shoulder. A piece of hotel stationary I don't remember dropping. I pull it out, squinting at the elegant handwriting:
Welcome to Chicago, Miss Moretti.
No signature. The handwriting is elegant, feminine. Not him then. But someone who knows I'm here. Someone watching. The note doesn't frighten me as much as it should, but exhaustion wins. Let them watch. Let them see a woman surrounded by paper birds, clutching her dead father's photo, with her enemy's signature burned into her memory. In three days I'll be strong. In three days I'll be dangerous.
Tomorrow I prepare. I'll walk this foreign city, memorize the route to the meeting place, practice my English and my dagger work until both are weapons. The meeting in three days looms like a storm on the horizon.
Tonight, I'm just Ana.
Sleep takes me before I can count them again, and I dream of paper birds carrying me home to Rome, where my father waits with open arms and forgiveness for what I'm about to do. In the dream, there are no signatures, no contracts, no promises written in ink that bind like chains. Just Papa's laughter and the warm Roman sun, and a world where my future belongs to me alone.
3 - Dante
The conference room at Anderson & Associates sits forty floors above Chicago, and I arrive thirty minutes early to claim the tactical advantage. Morning light cuts harsh angles across the mahogany table where I position myself with my back to the windows. Let her squint into the sun while we negotiate her future.
My tablet displays Ana Moretti's surveillance photos in a neat grid. I swipe through them one more time, memorizing the way she moves, the tells in her shoulders when she's nervous. Three weeks of watching her, and she's still a contradiction. Trained to kill but cries at her father's grave. Studies sign language for a year to speak to a monster.
Marco enters without knocking, bringing the scent of his morning espresso and expensive cologne. At thirty-three, my brother commands every room he enters without effort. Marco stands at 6'2" of calculated authority, his dark brown hair kept short with military precision that matches his expensive Italian suits—today's is charcoal gray, impeccable as always, making the lawyers' designer attempts look like off-the-rack pretense. His eyes are darker than mine, almost black, the kind of eyes that have seen men die and ordered deaths with equal calm. The broad shoulders that fill out his jacket speak of physical power, but it's the stillness of him that makes grown men reconsider their life choices—Marco never needs to raise his voice because his very presence is volume enough. The very air seems to bendaround him, lawyers straightening in their chairs before he even speaks.
"Reviewing your bride's portfolio again?" He settles beside me, authority radiating from his stillness. "You've looked at those photos enough to draw them from memory."
I adjust my collar, ensuring the high fabric covers the scars on my throat. Old habit. The ruined tissue aches this morning, phantom pain from wounds that never fully heal.
"Try not to terrorize the girl, Dante." Marco's voice carries that particular tone that makes grown men reconsider their life choices. His command is absolute, even in suggestion. "We need this marriage to hold. No sending her running back to Rome on the first day."
I give him a look that says everything.Who says I'll terrorize her?
"That look. Exactly that look you're giving me right now." He actually laughs, a rare sound in these offices. "You look like you're planning murder, not marriage."
