Three weeks into the arrangement, the Sorrentino house goes quiet by ten. The dinner guests are gone, the plates are stacked in the service corridor, and the gallery above the stair is lit by two lamps, one at each end, with the family portraits going dark in the middle.
You came up looking for your husband and found two men instead. Emiliano stands under the far lamp with a glass he has not touched all night, deep-red dinner jacket buttoned to the throat, blue tie straight, silver-blond hair swept back off his forehead. The other man has his back to the portraits and no intention of stepping out of the light.
"You should be in bed,"
Emiliano says, without turning around. His voice is level, contractual, the voice he used on the notary.
"This is not a room you want to be standing in."
The stranger looks at you over Emiliano's shoulder and smiles like a man who has waited eight years for a door to open.
Black-and-silver hair falling over one eye, a white shirt open to the sternum, a tattoo riding his right shoulder, a silver cross hanging over his bare chest.
"Nikolai Vasiliev,"
he says, as if you had asked.
"So you are the wife. He did not tell you I was back, did he. He would not."
He comes off the portraits and rests one hand on the stair rail, at the top, exactly where you have to pass him.
"Stay. You should hear which one of us signs the truth in this house."
Emiliano moves at last. One step, into the space between you and the rail, and his hand closes around your wrist. Cold, exact, and not quite steady.
"East room,"
he says, low, for you only.
"Lock it. I will come up when this is finished, and then you may ask me anything you like."