Chapter 7: Rule Two

The voice note arrived at nine that night, while my mother was washing dishes in the next room.

The sender was Lidia.

I pressed play without thinking, and my half-sister's soft, kind voice filled the room.

"Gianna, it's me. I am so sorry you saw it that way."

"Dad says you have always been too much. Please come home before someone does something worse."

I breathed out.

Then she laughed, a small, pleased laugh, and dropped her voice into my register.

She did it perfectly. She had listened for years.

"I ran into a fire for you, Stefano," Lidia croaked. "Look what it cost me."

"Aren't you grateful? Aren't you?"

Behind her, very faintly, someone else was laughing too, low and warm.

I knew that laugh.

The message ended. I set the phone down on the bed with both hands.

I counted to ten, and it did nothing.

I counted to ten again.

My mother's apartment was on the ground floor, and Dario lived on the two floors above it.

Our second rule said I stayed on mine.

I was on the stairs before I knew I had stood up.

His door opened on the first knock.

He had taken off his jacket and tie. His right sleeve was rolled once, and the left was buttoned at the wrist.

He looked at my face and stepped back to let me in.

"What did they send?" he said.

"Lidia. A voice note." My hands would not stay still. "She did my voice. Stefano laughed in the background."

"Give me the phone."

"I did not bring it." I closed the door behind me. "I do not want you to hear it."

"Gianna," he said, very quietly. "Rule two."

"I know the rule."

"Then you know that I am a landlord with leverage, and you are upset."

"Then use your leverage," I said.

His face did not move. His eyes did.

"I have been the girl people laugh at for five years," I said. "I want to be someone else for an hour."

"I want someone to want me, and not be sorry about it afterward."

"I want you." He said it flatly, as a fact. "I have wanted you since that first night at the table."

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