Chapter 3 - Five Ghosts
The light on Lake Como did not arrive; it seeped through the mist like watered milk.
Sophia woke at six, her internal baker’s clock refusing to acknowledge that she was no longer in a two-bedroom semi-detached in Salford with a boiler that clanked like a dying horse. The bedroom was freezing. The high, frescoed ceilings—depicting some vaguely biblical slaughter involving cherubs and short swords—seemed designed specifically to direct cold air directly onto the mattress.
She dressed in a thick knitted sweater the color of unbleached oats, her oldest jeans, and her flour-dusted work boots.
If Luca Moretti expected a mafia consort who spent her mornings in silk negligées sipping Prosecco on a balcony, he should have negotiated with a different tax bracket.
When she descended to the ground floor, the house was already humming with that silent, terrifying efficiency unique to military installations and very expensive hotels. Three men in matching black turtlenecks were moving through the long corridor with sweepers that looked like metal detectors, checking the skirting boards with practiced, methodical sweeps.
They didn't look at her. They simply flattened themselves against the damask wallpaper as she passed, their expressions as vacant as fresh plaster.
In the small breakfast salon—a room with three tall windows looking out over the terrace toward the gray expanse of the lake—Elena was already seated.
She looked entirely different in the daylight.
Without the evening light and the severe charcoal dress, the lines around her eyes were deeper, etched by something that looked remarkably like chronic sleeplessness. She wore a simple cashmere cardigan and was drinking something pale from a porcelain cup with no saucer.
"You survived the night," Elena said without looking up from a leather-bound ledger.
"It was touch and go around three a.m.," Sophia said, pulling out a heavy walnut chair that shrieked against the parquet floor. "The duvet was surprisingly heavy. I almost needed a winch."
Elena laid her gold pen across the ledger. Her dark eyes, so like Luca's in shape but entirely devoid of their honey warmth, fixed on Sophia. "My brother did not sleep in your room."
"No," Sophia said, reaching for the silver pot of coffee on the sideboard. "He slept in his study. Or he stood in the kitchen watching me like an oversized gargoyle while I made focaccia. He didn't mention which."
Elena’s lips thinned. "He told you about our mother."
"He mentioned the bread."
"He shouldn't have."
"Why?" Sophia poured the coffee. It was dark, thick, and smelled of chicory. "Is pastry a state secret in Lombardy?"
Elena leaned back, her fingers interlocking over the ledger. "Because the last time Luca spoke about our mother to a woman, she used it to pick the lock on his safe in Milan and sold the coordinates of our Lecco warehouses to the Bellandi family."
Sophia paused, the silver pot suspended two inches above her cup. "Ah."
"Her name was Giuliana," Elena continued, her voice level and flat as a ruler. "She was the third. Her father was the Undersecretary of Commerce for the region. She stayed three weeks. She wept every time Luca entered the room, called him *il mostro* to her maids, and then nearly got him killed on the highway outside Monza."
Sophia set the pot down with a small *clank*. "And the other four?"
"The first was sixteen when the arrangement was made. She took one look at his shoulders at the betrothal dinner, had a panic attack, and threw herself down a flight of garden stairs to break her ankle so she wouldn't have to dance with him."
"Charming," Sophia muttered. "Very subtle."
"The second lasted four days. She left a note saying she couldn't sleep in the same house with a man who looked like he had been stitched together from meat scraps after a trench battle."
Sophia felt a sudden, sharp heat rise behind her collar—not embarrassment, but a strange, prickly anger that surprised her. "He’s big. He has scars. He isn't a leper."
Elena looked at her for a long time. The morning light caught the side of her face, highlighting the severe, elegant bone structure she shared with her brother.
"You don't know what he is," Elena said softly.
"Then tell me." Sophia leaned forward, resting her forearms on the polished mahogany. "You told me yesterday he bought me to stay alive. What does that mean, Elena? Arthur Bennett is an idiot who couldn't balance a checkbook if his life depended on it—and it did—but he isn't involved in international syndicate politics. Why me?"
Elena glanced toward the tall double doors. Outside, the low rumble of a heavy engine announced the arrival of an armored vehicle on the gravel.
"Our father was... traditional," Elena said, her voice dropping so low Sophia had to strain to hear it over the hum of the refrigerator. "He believed that a boss must be feared by his own blood before he can be feared by his enemies. When Luca was fourteen, he was already six feet tall. He had his growth early. Our father saw him not as a son, but as a rival who hadn't learned his teeth yet."
She paused, her fingers tightening until the skin over her knuckles turned yellow.
"He used to put Luca in the kennel with the mastiffs," Elena whispered. "When the dogs were hungry. To teach him 'how to command the pack.' That scar on his jaw? It wasn't a knife from a Bellandi soldier. It was an eight-year-old dog named Brutus who didn't want to yield the meat."
A cold, sick sensation settled in Sophia’s stomach. She remembered the four small, round puncture scars on Luca’s forearm.
"My God," she breathed.
"The Syndicate—the families in Milan, the Bellandis, the old council—they know this," Elena continued, her voice hardening. "They know Luca is what our father made him: an instrument of absolute, uncompromising violence. But the council has rules. Old rules, written in the twenties. A boss who does not take a wife cannot hold the northern territory. It is seen as a sign of instability. A man without a domestic line is a man with nothing to lose, and a man with nothing to lose cannot be negotiated with."
"So he needs a wife to keep his title," Sophia said. "That’s the legal technicality."
"No," Elena said, leaning in until Sophia could smell the bitter lemon water on her breath. "You don't understand the Bellandis. They don't want his title. They want him dead. But as long as the seat is contested, the Commission prevents open war. If Luca took an Italian bride—a girl from the syndicates—her family would have assassinated him within a year to claim the regency. They’ve tried it twice."
"So he bought an outsider," Sophia said. "Someone with no family, no connections, no power."
"Someone who wouldn't put belladonna in his espresso," Elena said bluntly. "And someone whose sudden, violent death would not trigger an inquiry from Rome. If you die here, Sophia, Arthur Bennett gets a small wire transfer and a polite telegram. That is all."
The door behind them swung open.
Luca filled the frame.
He was dressed for travel: a long, dark cashmere overcoat that fell past his knees, a charcoal suit beneath it, and black leather gloves. His face was gray with exhaustion, the dark circles under his amber eyes looking like old bruises.
He paused, his eyes darting between his sister and Sophia. The air in the room dropped ten degrees in an instant.
"Elena," he said, his voice flat. "The Lecco reports."
Elena stood immediately, smoothing her skirt with mechanical efficiency. "On your desk. The transport has been rerouted through Bergamo."
Luca didn't look at her. He looked at Sophia.
His gaze swept over her—the messy hair, the oversized sweater, the flour still clinging to the cuff of her left sleeve from the night before.
"The focaccia was acceptable," he said.
Sophia blinked. "Acceptable? It had twenty-four-hour cold fermentation and rosemary from your own terrace. It was magnificent, you philistine."
The corner of Luca’s mouth twitched—that microscopic, almost imperceptible shift that she was already beginning to recognize.
"Too much salt," he said.
"That was your fault! You crept up on me like a six-foot-six panther and made me drop the crock!"
"You have work to do," Luca said, ignoring her indignation. He reached into his coat pocket and tossed a heavy brass key onto the table. It slid across the mahogany, stopping two inches from her coffee cup. "The old bakehouse behind the greenhouse. It has not been used since my mother died. The ovens are wood-fired. If you are going to destroy my kitchen at two in the morning, do it there."
Sophia picked up the key. It was cold, heavy, and smelled of old iron.
"Is this a bribe?" she asked, tilting her head.
Luca stepped closer. Even with the table between them, his presence was overwhelming; he smelled of cold mountain rain and wool. He leaned down, placing one gloved hand on the back of Elena’s empty chair.
"It is an occupation," he said, his voice dropping into her ear alone. "Stay out of the house today, Sophia. We have guests arriving from Milan at noon. They are not men who appreciate... English humor."
"Who are they?"
"Men who are looking for a reason to tell the Commission that my house is divided," he said. He reached out with his gloved index finger and touched the tip of her nose, leaving a tiny smudge of black leather oil on her skin. "Do not give them one."
He turned and walked out, his heavy boots sounding down the hallway like the rhythm of a slow drum.
Ten seconds later, the front gates hummed in the distance.
Sophia looked down at the brass key in her hand. Then she looked at Elena, who was watching her with an expression that looked remarkably like pity.
"He gave you the keys to her bakehouse," Elena whispered.
"Is that significant?"
May you like
"He has not unlocked that door in twenty-two years," Elena said, her voice shaking slightly. "The last person who touched those ovens was carried out of this house in a lead-lined box."
***
