Page 5 of The Secrets We Keep

“I think I’ll leave it. And good luck bolstering my competition. You think I don’t have safeguards in place to make sure no one can rise above me? I grease my palms very well.”

“It’s your choice, Nero.” Matteo sighed and waved a hand, as if bored with the entire interaction. “Far be it from me to come all this way to try and bring a little peace to this island.”

“From where I’m standing, you’re the one who stirred up all the trouble to begin with. Be careful, Bianchi. You know what happens when you fly too close to the sun.”

Chapter Three

Sunlight slanted over the bed in bright slashes, and she groaned, rolling away from the window and shoving a pillow over her face. She made a mental note to buy some fucking curtains.

She was just drifting back to sleep when banging on the front door echoed down the hallway. Heart leaping into her throat, she bolted up in bed and checked the time. Barely nine in the morning. Who would be knocking on her door at this hour? Had they found her already? No. No. She’d been careful. So careful.

The banging stopped, the silence more deafening than the noise, and then quickly resumed, making her jump. Tumbling out of bed, she hopped into a pair of leggings, nearly crashing into the bedside table, and tugged a tank top over her head.

“Who is it?” she called as she darted down the hallway and into the kitchen.

“Maintenance with a furniture delivery.”

She peered through the peephole, her heart rate slowly returning to normal when she saw the men standing in the hallway, the building’s logo emblazoned on their white button-down shirts and furniture loaded on carts behind them.

Running her fingers through her hair to smooth the worst of the tangles, she swept the door open and smiled. “I didn’t realize you’d be coming by so early.”

“Sorry if we woke you,” the tall guy said, looking her up and down, his eyes lingering on her bare feet in a way that made her wish she’d put on socks. “We’re supposed to swap out the furniture in the second bedroom for office stuff.”

“Yes. That’s great. Thanks.”

She led them down the hallway to the second bedroom, closing the door to her room and concealing the rumpled sheets of the bed. No need for any of them to get any ideas about her bed or her feet.

“Want anything anywhere in particular?” the tall guy asked.

“Just the desk facing the windows in the middle of the room. The bookcases along that wall.”

They nodded, and she retreated to the kitchen to stay out of their way. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t have any food in the apartment. Normally she soothed morning hunger pains with a strong shot of espresso, but she didn’t have any of that either. She should make a list.

Opening drawers in the kitchen until she found a tidy junk drawer with a small pad of paper and a pen, some rubber bands, and other various supplies, she added a countertop espresso maker and jotted down some of her favorite pantry staples.

Cooking was the one thing that had kept her grounded during her time in Berlin. Her family’s recipes existed only in her head now. She’d recently started writing them down, keeping them in a notebook her mother would have loved. Anything to feel like she had a little piece of them with her again.

Glancing up at the view and the sun glinting off the water, she added blackout curtains to her list, underlining it twice. She didn’t know why the morning had to announce itself so early. In a perfect world, the sun wouldn’t rise until ten.

She didn’t start her new job for a few days, so she still had some time to unpack and settle in. The first thing she wanted to do was wander the neighborhood and acclimate herself. She hadn’t spent much time in this part of Catania before leaving the island. It would be best to get her bearings.

The hum of voices from the bedroom grew louder, and she looked up to see the men coming down the hallway with the mattress and box spring loaded onto the cart. They waved her away when she moved to open the door for them. After another two trips, the incessant banging of a hammer and squeal of a drill, and lots of swearing, the second bedroom was now an office, and the apartment was silent again.

Crossing to the living room, she bent to inspect the boxes she’d brought in last night and stacked behind the couch. Plucking the one she needed from the stack, she carried it down the hall. She set it on the edge of the desk and split the tape with her fingernail. Moving the unassuming t-shirts she’d laid on top out of the way, she lifted out the stacks of notebooks and set them on the desk.

Dropping into the chair, she reached for the one on top and flipped it open to the first page. Details about that night were hard to recall at first. Everything about her memory was fuzzy and unclear, like watching TV through static.

She’d read somewhere that writing it all down could help bring things into sharper focus. So she’d walked down to a local shop, bought a spiral-bound notebook and a pen, and carried it home.

Sitting cross-legged on the worn chair in the corner of the room she was renting, she'd begun writing down whatever came to her in a rapid stream of consciousness. Snippets of memories, flashes of what happened, things that popped into her head both before and after that night.

It was all so emotional at first while she grasped for what she wanted to remember and grappled with the pain of the loss. Over time, it became more clinical, detached, analytical. It was the only way she could look at it and not fall apart.

Then it became strategic. A plan to put her life back together. A roadmap to help her pick up all her broken pieces and reassemble them into something recognizable. Making the plan had kept her going when the grief and the pain were too much. Sometimes, it was the only thing that got her out of bed in the morning.

If moving to Sicily was the second part of the plan, getting a job at Gallo Industries was the first. And she’d been able to do that with a series of interviews online. She’d put her university degree and her remote work for a prestigious German engineering company to good use. She spoke four languages, was at the top of her class, and had several certifications. A perfect candidate.

She’d used all that and her willingness to relocate to negotiate an excellent salary and benefits package. But it wasn’t the money she was after. It was the access. Nero Gallo had something she wanted, and she needed this job to get close enough to take it.

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