Chapter 13: The Loving Wife

The woman Raf trusted was sixty, wore her glasses on a chain, and fitted the wire without a word.

"Left side, under the band," she said. "Breathe out."

I breathed out.

The tape was cold against my ribs, and the little battery lay flat at the small of my back.

Raf stood at the window with his back turned the whole time.

"Say something," the woman told me.

"My name is Elena Rinaldi, and I am going home to my husband."

She nodded at a recorder in her bag.

"Clean," she said.

Raf walked me to the car himself.

He pressed a second phone into my hand, so small it fit inside my boot.

"It only receives," he said. "Nobody can call it but me. If it buzzes, it is me."

"I know."

"Rule three."

"I'm breaking it," I said. "I told you."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he opened the car door, and I got in without touching him, and I did not look back.

The elevator to the penthouse opened on the private floor at six that evening.

Sandro was waiting in the hall in his shirtsleeves.

He had not slept either. I could see it in his eyes.

"Amore," he said.

He kissed my forehead and held me by both shoulders.

His hands slid down my arms and stopped at my elbows.

They did not go near my ribs.

"You are thin," he said.

"I'm pregnant, Sandro."

"I know." He smiled. "I have been counting the days."

The cold went all the way through me, and I smiled back.

He took my coat and hung it up himself, the way he used to when he wanted something.

"I have something to show you," he said.

My old sitting room had been painted pale yellow.

My desk was gone, and my father's photographs were gone.

A white crib stood by the window, and on the table lay a shoebox tied with ribbon.

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