Chapter 7: Separate Rooms

Rocco took the little gold key off Bianca's wrist himself.

He undid the clasp with two fingers and dropped the key into his pocket.

"Drive Miss Ruggiero to the gate," he told the men by the door. "She keeps her clothes and nothing else."

"And the doctor," the oldest elder said, "for her arm."

"The doctor can meet her at the gate."

Bianca looked at him for a long time.

Then she looked at me, and she went out between two bodyguards without another word.

She would be back.

I just didn't know when.

That evening the oldest elder came to my door with his cane in one hand and his hat in the other.

"Mrs. Ferrante," he said, and bowed from the waist.

"I was wrong this morning. The family was wrong. I ask your pardon."

The other two elders stood behind him and bowed too.

"I'll think about it," I said.

His eyebrows went up.

Then he laughed, short and rough, the first sound of pleasure I had heard out of him.

"The Don chose well," he said, and went away.

The whole house changed after that.

The maids stopped whispering when I passed.

The men on the stairs stepped aside and called me ma'am.

Dinner was a long table with candles, and Rocco sat at the head and said almost nothing.

He did not ask me why I had really come.

At eleven I stood in my room in front of the mirror and looked at the ring.

Term one was separate rooms.

I had written it myself.

I thought about the coat he had put over my shoulders that morning in front of six men.

I thought about how long he had looked at the knife before he looked at her.

I thought about my sister dying in this house in a different life.

Then I thought about the man down the hall, who had never once been cruel to me.

I opened my door.

His room was at the end of the corridor, with a line of light under the door.

I did not knock.

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