I Won't Bridge an Impossible Gap novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Lantern Street

I went down to the gate myself, with the black drive in a fist inside my pocket.

Alessio came with me, his arm in a sling and a guard on each side.

Ilaria Montanari stood on the gravel outside the iron bars.

She had no coat on, and her hair was coming out of its knot.

"You watched it?" she asked.

"No."

"Then you don't know what's on it."

"I know what it is," I said. "I saw the photograph."

For the first time, something moved in her face.

She had expected me to run.

"Then you know I'm going to show it on Saturday," she said. "To the council, to my father, to every family at that table. Thief. The gold digger who spent nothing was a pickpocket the night she met you."

"Ilaria," said Alessio.

"Don't." She did not look at him. "Don't say my name like that. Not with her standing there."

"You sent a man with a gun to my window."

"I did not." Her voice cracked. "I did not. That was my father, and I told him I would never forgive him, and I haven't slept."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

"I wanted you to see her, Alessio. I wanted you to see her the way I do."

"I see her."

"You see what you want to see. You always did."

"And you," I said, "see what you were told to see since you were nine."

She went white.

"Keep the drive," I said, and I held it out through the bars. "I don't need to watch it. I'll see it on Saturday, with everyone."

Ilaria stared at the black plastic in my palm.

She did not take it.

"Why aren't you afraid?" she said.

"I am. I'm only more afraid of lying to him again."

She turned, and she walked back down the hill, and I put the drive back in my pocket.

Alessio did not ask what was on it.

I loved him for that, and it frightened me.

"Tomorrow night is the festival in the Quartieri," he said. "Teresa's asked us to come."

"The Madonna?"

"The Madonna."

"They carry her up the street with the lanterns," I said slowly.

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