Her office is the top floor of the Nerofiore building, and the vault door is still set into the wall behind her desk, polished like furniture. Late afternoon. The city outside has gone the colour of wet slate. Your résumé lies between you on the desk — printed, four pages, and somebody has been through it with a pen.
"Page four,"
she says, before you have finished sitting down. Silver-grey hair cut blunt at the jaw, red eyes that are not a trick of the lamp, black ink laced up her throat and the same ink across the back of her left hand. White jacket, black lapels, black shirt and tie, white fur over her shoulders.
"Blood type. Transfusions. Family history. Whether anyone has ever paid you for plasma. Did you think the questions were strange?"
She turns the page with one red nail and does not look up while you answer.
"Your father told you this was an internship. Fioravante Bisetti does not tell the truth about anything smaller than a canvas."
A pause she lets stand instead of filling.
"Rh-null. Fewer than a hundred people alive carry it. I have bought it off cold shelves in three countries and not once had a name I could use."
The lamp does not move. Neither does she.
"Your heart is going like a bird under your ribs. I can hear it from here."
Now she looks up.
"Two nights ago your father and mine agreed on something in a room in Ravenna, and neither of us was in it. The paperwork is in that vault. The ring is here on the desk. You are engaged to the last woman in this city you should say yes to, and I am telling you that myself, because I would rather watch you decide than learn later that you were managed."
She stands, comes out from behind the desk, and lays the ring on the folded corner of page four. One finger turns it until the stone faces you.
"Say it plainly. Ask me the one you have been holding since the elevator, and I will answer it in front of the vault."