Page 10 of Blood Orange Christmas
I tell myself not to fall, but it happens anyway. Somewhere between his mouth against my shoulder in the quiet mornings and his hand at the small of my back when we walk through the garden at night, I feel the slide of it, terrifying and inevitable. Falling in love with a man like Dante is the worst thing I could do, and still, my heart refuses to listen.
One evening after dinner, when the house has gone quiet and he’s left his coat draped over the back of a chair, I slip it on for warmth, burying myself in the scent of smoke and citrus that clings to him. My fingers brush the lining, catch on something hard, and I freeze. I reach in, expecting maybe a flask or some forgotten trinket, but what I pull free is cold steel, heavy,undeniable. A gun, tucked neatly inside as though it belonged there all along.
My stomach drops, breath snared in my throat. I shove it back into the pocket, the weight of it burning through the fabric as if it could sear my skin. I tell myself not to think, not to imagine, but the sound of his voice cuts through the silence before I can even decide what to do. He’s in the next room, phone pressed to his ear, his tone sharp, commanding.
“I’ll handle it,” he says, clipped and final. “Clean it up quietly. No loose ends.”
The words chill me more than the gun did. I stand there in his coat, heart pounding, pretending for one dangerous moment that I don’t understand what they mean. But I do. And the knowledge makes me shake, not from fear alone but from the aching truth that I don’t know if I could leave him, even if I should.
5
SERENA
Idon’t sleep that night. I sit on the edge of his bed with his coat in my lap and the weight in its lining still heavy in my head. I hear the echo of his voice from the next room—handle it, clean it up, no loose ends—and I try to pretend it could mean anything else. It doesn’t. When he comes back, he watches me like he can read every thought I’m trying to bury. He doesn’t take the coat from me. He just reaches, slides his fingers under my chin, and tilts my face up.
“Serena.”
My name in his mouth is a soft order. I should pull away. I don’t. I rise when he draws me up and he kisses me slowly, like he’s making a promise, and that’s the worst part. I want the promise. I want the lie. He lays me down and his hands are careful, like I’m something fragile and not a mess of nerves. After, he holds me with his mouth close to my hair and says almost nothing. I count his heartbeats and try not to keep score.
The next morning, I tell myself to leave. I shower. I dress. I make breakfast I don’t eat. He comes into the kitchen in a dark shirtand no tie, and the room changes around him like it always does. The staff pretend not to look. His guard—Harrison, the one with the wolf-head cufflinks—nods once and ghosts back to the hall.
“Stay for lunch,” Dante says, casual like it’s not a command. “I’ll be back before two.”
“I have another client tomorrow,” I lie.
He is very still. “You don’t.”
My mouth goes dry. “What are you doing today?”
“Accounts,” he says, which I’m starting to understand is a polite word for something else. He kisses me once, quickly. “I’ll call you. Don’t leave the grounds.”
I nod. I don’t promise.
The villa breathes in a different rhythm when he’s gone. Fewer feet, fewer voices. The gardeners work in the back and pretend the stone lions by the fountain don’t watch them. I prep a marinade and chop fennel and try not to flinch when the house phone rings in the office down the hall. The day stretches. He doesn’t call. When the sun dips, I take a plate and a glass of water out to the loggia just to feel air that hasn’t been filtered through silence.
I’m halfway through the water when two men in maintenance jackets come up the service path. At first I think they’re new. I stand to tell them deliveries go to the east gate, but the taller one says my name and the other already has his hand inside his jacket. I know, instantly, how stupid I have been.
“Sorry, signorina,” the tall one says, almost gently. “We don’t want to make a scene.”
“Then don’t,” I say, and my voice shakes in a way that makes both of them relax. They think fear means I’ll be easy. “You don’t need to do this.”
“But we do,” one of them replies. “And if you cause trouble, we’ll do it anyway, but it will be messier.”
They steer me toward the side door. I glance to the kitchen, where a porter is stacking plates. He looks up, looks down, and his hands move faster. If he saw, he’ll pretend he didn’t. I step wrongly, on purpose, and the shorter one catches my elbow. The taller one smiles like he has all the time in the world. He smells like cheap cologne and metal.
We turn into the stone corridor under the north stair, where the walls dampen sound. The taller man pulls a plastic tie from his pocket. “Wrists, please.”
“Please,” I echo, because I need breath to keep from fainting, not the tie. “You don’t have to?—”
“It’s for everyone’s safety,” he says, as if we are all equal in this safety. A second later, the tie bites my skin. He guides me forward. His hand is polite and firm at the same time.
They don’t take me out the main gate. They use the gardener’s door that feeds into the grove, and there’s a van waiting beyond the hedges. It isn’t white because that would be too obvious. It’s gray and it hums like it’s bored. The shorter man opens the side door and the taller one nods me in. I want to scream. I don’t. I want to run. I can’t. I step up into the dark belly of the van and sit where they tell me to sit, and when the door thunks shut, the world gets very small.
“Phones?” the driver asks.
“None,” the tall one says. “She’s clean.”
I left my phone on the kitchen counter, but they’re wrong about my being clean. Every surface of me smells like his house. It’s on my hair and my clothes and my skin. The men don’t care. We pull away. I try to keep track of turns, but the driver is good and the city blurs into a map that doesn’t want to be read. We take a tunnel. We pass a gate with a stone arch and a flag I don’t recognize. We cross a bridge where the air changes and the van rattles. I keep thinking if I memorize the order of things, I can tell someone later. Later is a word I use to keep breathing.
