Chapter 5 3AM

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Day two of confinement.

Elena had finished the first book Rosa brought her by noon. The second by evening. Now it was somewhere past midnight and she was lying on her back staring at the ceiling doing what she did best when her body was still and her mind wasn't.

Thinking.

Her father's face in that photograph. Laughing. Easy. Like a man who had never hidden vegetables under his daughter's bed to avoid debt collectors. Like a man who had never disappeared leaving nothing behind but unpaid bills and a daughter who spent three years pretending she didn't care.

Who were you?

Who were you before I knew you?

She turned onto her side.

The room was quiet. The house was quiet. That particular quality of silence that only existed between two and four in the morning when even the guards outside seemed to be running on half power.

She closed her eyes.

Opened them again.

Sleep Elena. You're confined to a room with nothing to do. The least your body can do is sleep.

She was just starting to drift when she heard it.

The door.

Not a knock. Just the soft mechanical sound of the handle turning. Slow. Like whoever was on the other side wasn't entirely aware they were doing it.

Elena sat up.

“Who's there?” She called out in a whisper.

The door opened.

Salvatore Romano walked into her room.

He was in a dark shirt and low slung shorts, his feet bare on the marble floor. His eyes were open but they had a quality to them she couldn't immediately name. Distant. Unfocused.

Elena didn't move.

Is he—

He walked to the chair in the corner of the room. The small armchair near the window. He sat down in it with the heavy, uncoordinated movement of someone whose body was running on muscle memory alone.

Then he was still.

Elena sat in her bed with her heart beating very carefully and watched Salvatore Romano sleep in her chair.

Okay—

Okay so this is happening.

She should call for Rosa. She should call for the guards. She should do literally anything other than sit here in the dark watching her captor sleepwalk into her room and settle into her furniture like he owned it.

Well, he does own it. He owns the whole house.

That's not the point.

She watched him for a long moment. His breathing was slow but uneven. His head had dropped forward slightly. His hands were loose in his lap but every few seconds his fingers would tighten. Like he was trying to hold something that kept slipping.

Then he spoke.

"I told you to stay inside."

Elena went completely still.

His eyes were still closed. His voice was different from his waking voice. Lower. The careful control stripped completely out of it.

She didn't answer.

"You never listen," he said. And the way he said it. Not angry. Just tired. Resigned. Like this was a very old argument with a person he'd had it with a thousand times before.

Elena pulled her knees to her chest.

You're not panicking. You're okay.

His fingers tightened again.

"They're outside." A pause. His jaw shifted. "I know they're outside. Just stay—" He stopped. His breathing changed. Shorter. Something moving behind his closed eyes. "Stay in the room. Please."

That last word.

Please.

Elena had heard Salvatore Romano speak to guards who flinched at the sound of his name. She had heard him say things in that quiet deadly voice that made the air in the room change temperature.

She had never heard him say please.

She got out of bed.

What's going on

She crossed the room slowly, the marble cold under her bare feet. She stopped in front of the chair and looked at him up close in the dark.

He looked younger like this. The hard architecture of his waking face softened by sleep into something very different.

There was a tension running through him though. Through his shoulders, his jaw, his hands. Whatever was happening behind his eyes it wasn't restful.

You should go back to bed.

You should absolutely go back to bed.

She reached out and touched his hand.

Just lightly. Just her fingers over his. Stilling that restless grip.

He went still immediately.

Elena stood there in the dark with her hand over his and felt something shift in the room that she had absolutely no framework for.

Then he said a name.

"Sofia."

Elena's hand went cold.

Her mother's name. In his mouth. In the dark. Said with the kind of weight that only came from carrying something for a very long time.

What.

She didn't move.

"I looked," he murmured. His voice fraying at the edges now. "I looked everywhere."

What are you saying.

What do you know about my mother.

But she didn't ask. Because he was asleep and whatever the answer was it was too big for three in the morning when she was standing barefoot in the dark holding the hand of a man who terrified her.

She straightened slowly.

She looked at the chair. At him folded into it with his long frame and his bare feet and his restless sleeping hands.

Then she looked at the bed.

She went to it. Pulled back the covers on the far side. Came back to the chair.

You're going to regret this.

"Hey," she said softly.

Nothing.

She put her hand on his shoulder. Carefully. Like she was handling something that could go either way.

"Hey. You can't sleep in the chair. Come on."

He stirred. Not fully. Just enough. His body responding to her voice the way it had responded to her touch.

He stood. Heavy and uncoordinated. Elena put her hand on his arm to steer him and he let her. Which was perhaps the strangest thing that had happened in a very strange few days.

She guided him to the bed.

He sat on the edge of it. Then lay down with the immediate heaviness of someone going under for the second time. His breathing slowed within seconds.

Elena stood beside the bed.

Okay. You can sleep in the chair now. That's a perfectly good chair.

She looked at the chair. Thought about the cold marble floor between here and there.

She looked at the bed. At the considerable space on the other side of a man who was deeply asleep and had shown no signs of waking.

She got in on the far edge.

She lay on her back staring at the ceiling.

The warmth coming off him from two feet away was completely impossible to ignore.

This is fine. This is a completely normal situation that normal people find themselves in all the time.

Shut up.

The room settled.

Outside the window the city was a distant hum. Inside there was just breathing. His slow and deep. Hers carefully measured.

Then he shifted.

Turned slightly. Towards her. And in doing so his hand moved across the covers and stopped just short of hers.

Not touching.

Just close.

Elena looked at the ceiling.

Her heart was doing the embarrassing thing again.

He knows your mother's name.

He said he looked everywhere.

What does that mean. What does any of that—

She turned her head and looked at his profile in the dark.

He looked peaceful now. Whatever had been chasing him through his sleep had apparently given up. His face was completely still. That scar at the corner of his eyebrow catching the faint light from the window.

Who are you.

The question again. But it felt different now than it had the first time she'd thought it. Less like a threat assessment. More like something she actually wanted the answer to.

Don't do that.

Don't you dare do that.

She turned back to the ceiling.

Closed her eyes.

And somewhere between one breath and the next, exhaustion finally pulled her under.

{---}

When Elena woke the room was gray with early light.

She was alone.

The covers on his side were smoothed back almost perfectly. Like he'd never been there at all.

Almost.

Except for the single indentation in the pillow beside hers. And the faint warmth still on that side of the bed that disappeared even as she pressed her hand to it.

Elena lay there for a long moment.

Then she pressed her face into her own pillow.

You are in so much trouble.

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