Chapter 12: Not in the Contract

The car would come for us at eight.

At four in the afternoon I stood in the dark bedroom behind two locks, and I could not stop my hands from shaking.

I had put on the black dress Ruggiero's housekeeper found for me. I had taken it off again and put it on the bed.

I looked at the mirror.

The number over my head read 71.

It had climbed since the stockyard. It had not climbed enough.

Tonight I would stand in my father's house in front of every Family in the city and call his heir a murderer.

Ruggiero came in without knocking.

He stopped when he saw me in my slip, with my arms wrapped around myself.

"You should be resting," he said.

"I can't."

He shut the door and turned the locks.

"Separate rooms," I said. My voice wobbled. "That was the term."

"You keep saying that."

"It was the contract."

"I remember," he said, and crossed to me in three steps.

He did not touch me at first.

He stood so close I had to tip my head back, and he looked at my face for a long time.

"Tell me what you're afraid of," he said.

"That I'll say it and nobody will believe me."

"They'll believe you."

"That my father will look at me the way he did in the courtyard, and I'll go quiet."

"You won't."

"That I'll look up," I said, "and your number will be the one that moves."

He went still.

I had not meant to say it.

"Mine says thirty-six," he said, very low. "I'm thirty-four. You told me that's two years."

"Two years isn't enough."

"Then we'll change it again." He put his hand on my cheek. "Nerina. Stop looking at the air over my head. Look at me."

I looked.

His eyes were black and steady, and there was nothing in them I wanted to run from.

I put my hand flat on his chest.

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