Chương 2
Matteo had watched men receive death sentences with that same blankness.
He felt irritation first. It came easily, a familiar defense against confusion.
“This is not a surprise,” he said. “You knew why the marriage was arranged.”
She stared at the pattern in the carpet.
“Your father explained the agreement.”
Her fingers curled against the skirt.
Matteo waited.
At last, she nodded.
“Then we don’t need to make this more complicated than it already is.”
Her breathing changed. A shallow inhale. Another. The kind a body took when it had forgotten what came after.
He told himself she was nervous. He told himself Marco had raised a sheltered daughter, though nothing he knew about Marco supported the idea that the man sheltered anyone.
Sofia lifted both hands toward the back of her dress. Her fingers found the top of the zipper but could not grip it. She tried again, twisting her shoulders until she winced.
Matteo watched for several seconds before understanding what she wanted.
“You need help?”
She nodded without turning.
He approached.
Her back became rigid.
Up close, he could smell the wedding on both of them—cigar smoke, champagne, expensive candles, the faint chemical sweetness of hair spray. Beneath those odors clung something simpler: sweat and lavender soap.
He lifted the veil away from the zipper.
Sofia’s skin was cold.
The room was warm enough that Matteo had opened three buttons of his shirt, yet gooseflesh covered her shoulders. When his knuckle brushed the nape of her neck, she sucked in a breath and held it.
His hand paused.
“Sofia.”
“I can’t reach it.”
“I know.”
“Please.”
He pulled the zipper.
The sound was dry and harsh, each metal tooth separating from the next. The back of the dress opened slowly. A strip of pale skin appeared between the two sides of embroidered fabric.
Then a bruise emerged beneath the lace.
Matteo stopped.
It lay below her left shoulder blade, yellow at the edges and deep violet at the center. Not small. Not accidental.
Sofia tried to pull away, but the dress had loosened around her body. One side slipped from her shoulder, exposing another bruise near her spine.
Matteo drew the zipper lower.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He froze with his fingers on the tab.
The word was not a refusal sharpened by anger. It broke apart in her throat.
Matteo released the zipper.
The dress continued opening under its own weight.
For one suspended moment, Sofia held the front against her chest. Then the skirt dragged downward, pulling the bodice with it. Silk and lace collapsed around her ankles in a heavy, expensive heap.
Underneath, she wore a plain white cotton camisole and matching shorts.
And bruises.
They covered her ribs in fading layers, some old enough to have turned green, some so recent they remained nearly black. Finger-shaped marks circled one wrist. A narrow red abrasion crossed the other. Near her right hip, swelling distorted the clean line of bone. Medical tape showed beneath the edge of the camisole.
Matteo did not breathe.
The ballroom returned to him in fragments. Marco DeLuca laughing beneath the chandeliers. Marco raising a glass to loyalty. Marco placing his daughter’s hand into Matteo’s and squeezing both their fingers together.
A proud father.
A peaceful alliance.
A lie in a five-thousand-dollar tuxedo.
Sofia bent to pull the dress back up.
Pain stopped her. She made a small sound and pressed a hand to her ribs.
“Leave it,” Matteo said.
She looked at him over her shoulder.
His voice had changed. He heard it himself.
“Who did that?”
“No one.”
Matteo stared at the bruises.
“Try again.”
She clutched the camisole to her chest, though it covered her completely. Her eyes moved toward the door.
Matteo stepped between her and the bed without thinking. She recoiled so violently that her heel caught in the fallen dress. She stumbled backward.
He caught her by the upper arm.
Sofia twisted in his grip, both hands flying to his wrist.
“Don’t.”
This time it came out as a sob.
Matteo let go immediately.
She stayed bent away from him, arms crossed over her body. Tears gathered along her lower lashes but did not fall. She looked prepared to be punished for having made noise.
He backed up.
One step.
Then another.
“I’m not touching you.”
Her breath shuddered.
“I said I’m not touching you.”
She watched his hands.
Matteo lowered them slowly and kept them where she could see them.
A pulse beat hard in his jaw. For years, men had mistaken his stillness for calm. It was rarely calm. Stillness was where he kept rage before deciding what to do with it.
He picked up the duvet from the bed and held it out.
Sofia did not take it.
He placed it on the mattress within her reach and moved farther away.
After several seconds, she grabbed the duvet and wrapped it around herself. The cotton camisole disappeared. So did most of the evidence, but not the bruising on her wrist.
Matteo looked away first.
He walked into the sitting room and took his phone from his jacket.
His security chief answered on the second ring.
“What happened?” Rizzo asked.
No greeting. Rizzo had spent fifteen years receiving calls after midnight.
“Get Dr. Hall here.”
A pause. “For you?”
“No.”
Matteo looked toward the bedroom doorway. Sofia stood exactly where he had left her, the white duvet gathered under her chin.
“For my wife.”
Rizzo’s silence lasted half a second too long. “Is she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Bleeding?”
“Not that I can see.”
“I’ll call Hall.”
“And lock the floor. No one comes up without my permission.”
“The DeLuca detail is still outside the elevator.”
Matteo’s gaze hardened. “Remove them.”
“How politely?”
“I don’t care.”
Rizzo exhaled through his nose. “That generally means I’m going to care later.”
“Get them off the floor.”
May you like
He ended the call.
Sofia had moved to the edge of the bed. She sat with her bare feet close together, the duvet wrapped around her. The wedding dress remained pooled on the carpet. Without it, she looked less like Marco DeLuca’s daughter and more like a woman who had not slept in days.
