“Signore Ferraro? Signore Moretti is looking for you both.” The housekeeper’s voice slid under the attic door. The knob rattled again. Luca’s fingers loosened; he hissed a curse, then smoothed his shirt, then mine—like tidying a file. The lock clicked. He opened the door a finger’s width and didn’t move.
“Tonight,” he said, close enough that I felt the word. “My bedroom. Midnight. Don’t make me come find you.”
“I can’t—”
“You will,” he replied, classroom-calm. “Or your father gets every photo with his coffee.”
He stepped aside. I walked past on legs that felt borrowed.
Downstairs, porcelain ticked. Papa and Sofia sat with coffee. “There you are! Bella, Luisa has already left.” Papa beamed. “Everything alright?”
“Gianna’s collection,” Ferraro said smoothly. “Quite emotional.”
I sat because muscle memory did the driving.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I’d like to rest.”
“You’re right,” Papa agreed, checking his watch. “È tardi.”
I climbed the stairs and locked my door, forehead to wood until coolness sobered my thoughts.
10:30. Ninety minutes until midnight.
I paced a groove into the rug. Sat. Stood. I could not go to his room. I could not let him keep writing my body like it was his paper. But the photos existed like a trapdoor beneath every step. If Papa saw them, grief would swallow him a second time, with my name attached.
11:00. The minute hand learned cruelty. I lit the tiny white candle, then blew it out as if flame could be evidence. I thought of Mama—Gianna in emerald silk, Gianna in jeans teaching me to waltz by the fig tree, Gianna who died because someone renamed obsession as love. Luca was that story in a tailored jacket.
11:15. I lay on the floor and traced the crack in the ceiling. Genoa to Rome to Tuscany to here. Geography of a trap. I thought of Papa rebuilding one day at a time while Luca stood nearby. If those images arrived with the espresso, Papa would decide he had failed twice—wife and daughter—under his own roof.
11:30. The choice stayed ugly. Go to Luca and be reshaped again. Refuse and hand my father a bomb with my face taped to it. I thought of Matteo’s face when I turned grief into a knife. I thought of Luisa, lighthouse-stubborn, who won’t abandon the shore.
11:45. A third option tasted like metal.
I opened the window. Night air rushed in—cool, lemon-sweet. Three floors below, the terrace lay pale and certain. It would be quick. Quiet, maybe. The photos would turn to static. No one would need to know what I couldn’t say.
Papa would grieve. He had Sofia now. He wouldn’t have to read details I can’t speak.
I climbed onto the sill and sat. My legs dangled into the dark. The stucco was rough under my palms. I wrapped my fingers around the frame and leaned forward until balance argued with me.
Midnight chimed from the chapel. That was my cue to walk down a hallway and let Luca say brava when I produced the answer he wanted. He’d notice soon. He’d knock with that reasonable voice that sounds like help.
Unless there wasn’t a girl to fetch.
I thought of Matteo—his hands around mine on a chapel kneeler, steady and careful, the way his thumb didn’t move because he wouldn’t ask for more than comfort. His text: You won’t be alone. I thought of Luisa’s loyalty and her pen clicking like a metronome. I thought of Mama counting “uno, due, tre,” of me turning the wrong way and being kissed on the forehead anyway.
The wind lifted my hair. The fall waited like a blank page.
I tipped forward.
A pool of light moved below, small and human. A lantern bobbed along the path, cutting a gold circle out of the dark. I knew him by the pause before the run. The lantern slipped, flame hiccuped, died. Footsteps quickened toward the house.
The night changed shape and my breath jerked and found itself. I pressed my spine to the frame and shook until my teeth knocked.
A soft knock at my door. “Bella?” Papa’s voice, gentled for sleeping houses. “Tesoro, are you asleep?”
I dropped inside, pulled the window to the latch, and stumbled to the bed. “Sì, Papa,” I called, making my voice the size of a yawn. “I’m okay.”
A pause. “Va bene. Buonanotte.” His steps receded.
I stood in the dark and listened to my pulse. Outside, a foot scuffed stone and stopped beneath my sill.
I crawled to the window and pressed my temple to the cool pane. The lantern lay dark on the stones, tilted like a boat after a storm. I pictured picking it up and carrying a circle of light wherever I walked. It felt like fantasy. It felt possible.
The clock pushed past twelve-fifteen. Minutes kept happening, stubborn and small. I pictured Luca checking his watch, deciding whether to come. I pictured Papa rinsing cups while Sofia dried them—two people practicing a future. Maybe joy could return to this house wearing another dress, on a path that didn’t step through me.
I drew my knees to my chest until the shaking slowed. I wasn’t brave but nothing about tomorrow looked kind.
Midnight had come and gone. The photos still existed; the threats still sat like stones. But I had stolen one minute from Luca, then five, then fifteen. I could steal another. I could keep them like warm coins and see how many it takes to buy a dawn.