Page 359 of Rosetti Family New York
By the time I escort him back to the main entrance, my jaw aches from maintaining pleasant expressions and my head pounds with exhaustion. He presses my hand a moment too long in farewell, his fingers cold and damp against my palm.
"Until next time, my dear. I look forward to our continued association."
I watch him disappear into the crowd of tourists, then retreat to the staff break room for coffee that tastes like freedom, even if it's temporary. But the caffeine only makes my heart race, adding to the jittery feeling that comes from too little sleep and too much stress.
The café near Lincoln Center is a short walk through the summer heat. It serves overpriced salads to underweight women who spend their afternoons discussing charity committees and weekend houses in the Hamptons. I fit right in, picking at arugula while pretending to listen to conversations about nothing that matters.
My phone sits silent on the white marble table. No calls from Chase's office demanding my presence somewhere. No emergencies requiring the Callahan family's public face. For exactly forty-three minutes, I'm just a woman having lunch alone in Manhattan.
I think about my unknown woman sometimes in moments like this. Wonder if she ever sat in cafés in 18th-century Paris, plotting her next refusal to conform. Did she feel this same restless energy, this hunger for something more than the life laid out for her?
The arugula tastes like paper. Everything tastes like paper lately, except for the few stolen moments in that alcove with a portrait of someone who chose defiance over safety.
My phone buzzes. Rebecca, Chase's assistant. Another event, another obligation, another scripted performance as the dutifulniece. I stare at the message without opening it, savoring these last few seconds of anonymity.
A woman at the next table laughs at something her companion said, the sound bright and genuine and completely unguarded. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. Can't remember the last time I felt anything that didn't have to be measured and modulated for public consumption.
I open the message. Next Friday. The charity gala. Wear black. Arrive at seven. Be visible.
Be visible. But not too visible. Present but not prominent. Charming but not memorable enough to overshadow the real business happening in the shadows.
I pay for the salad I barely touched and step back into the summer heat, already composing my face for whatever comes next. The afternoon stretches ahead with blessed emptiness. No more appointments, no more performances. Just the walk home to my loft, where I can finally drop the mask for a few hours.
The walk should be pleasant. Tribeca at sunset, golden light slanting between buildings, the city settling into its evening rhythm. Should be, but something feels wrong.
It starts as a prickle between my shoulder blades. The sense of being watched, studied, catalogued. I've learned to trust these instincts over the years. They've kept me safe in situations where naive trust would have been dangerous.
I pause at a storefront window, using the reflection to scan the street behind me. Pedestrians hurrying home from work, a few tourists with cameras, nothing obviously threatening. But the feeling persists, sharp as a blade against my spine, made worse by the fatigue that has my nerves on edge.
There. A man in a dark suit, lingering by a newsstand he's obviously not reading. When I turn the corner, he follows at a distance that seems calculated. Not close enough to be obvious, not far enough to lose sight of me.
My pulse quickens. This isn't paranoia. This is reality crashing into my structured world. Someone is following me, and the list of people who might want to keep tabs on Chase Callahan's niece isn't short.
I duck into a bodega, grabbing a bottle of water I don't need while watching the street through the window. The man stops across the street, checking his phone with studied casualness. Professional. Deliberate. Definitely not random.
When I emerge five minutes later, he's gone. But a black sedan idles at the corner, tinted windows reflecting nothing back at me. It pulls away as I approach, smooth and silent.
By the time I reach my building, my hands shake with more than just caffeine and exhaustion. I fumble the keycard twice before the lock clicks open. The doorman nods his usual greeting, oblivious to the fear coursing through my veins.
In the elevator, I stare at my reflection in the polished steel doors. Still pristine on the surface. Still the Iceflower, untouchable and serene. But underneath, something is shifting. Something that feels like the first crack in a wall that's been holding back years of suppressed truth.
My life isn't really mine. It never has been. I'm a playing piece in games I don't understand, moved around a board I can't see by players whose rules I'll never learn.
But tonight, for the first time in years, I felt something other than resigned acceptance. Tonight, walking home with unknown eyes tracking my every step, I felt alive.
Terrified, but alive.
And maybe, just maybe, that's exactly what my unknown woman would have felt, walking through Paris with the weight of other people's expectations pressing down on her shoulders, choosing defiance anyway.
Maybe courage isn't the absence of fear. Maybe it's feeling trapped and watched and constrained, and still finding ways to be authentically yourself.
Even if no one will ever know your name.
3
Matteo
The black SUV idles like a predator outside Isabella's building, and I lean against its polished surface with my phone in one hand, silver coin dancing between the fingers of the other. From my position on the sidewalk, I have a clear view of the Tribeca building's glass lobby, watching the elevator indicator climb toward her floor.
