Page 66 of The Broker

Doing my best to ignore it, I stuff my clothes into a duffel bag. But try as I might, my gaze keeps returning to it.

It’s a lovely piece of jewelry—delicate, understated, and beautiful. The man who commissioned it knew me. I named myself Sparrow because it was a small, unobtrusive bird, and that’s how I saw myself.

But Dante’s sparrow isn’t unobtrusive. It gleams golden, perched on a ring of diamonds, cherished and infinitely precious.

My eyes prickle with unshed tears. My fingers trail over the pendant, and then I jerk them away. Nobody’s ever seen me the way Dante Colonna saw me.

But it was all based on a lie.

The doorbell sounds, and I hear Leo’s voice. He says something to Dante, and Dante replies. There’s a murmur of conversation, and then the front door clicks shut with a finality that tears at my heart.

He’s gone.

It’s over.

I sink onto the mattress, fighting the urge to run after Dante, fighting the urge to forgive him. There haven’t been many people I could lean on for support in my life. Not my parents, for sure. I looked after them more than they looked after me. Lucia’s parents were comforting and stable influences for a while, but they died when I needed them the most. All through school, Lucia was my best friend, but after her parents died, she fled Venice and didn’t talk to me for two years.

Dante was the only person there for me from the day I met him. He’s been an annoyingly steadfast rock at my side. When I was sick, he brought me coffee and made me take my migraine meds. When I was nervous about my first field mission, he arrived to be my bodyguard, irritating me so much that I forgot to be afraid.

But it goes back much longer than the last few months. Every time I’ve needed him in the last ten years, he’s been there with sarcasm and support. He could have gone back to Rome after Roberto’s death, but he stayed in Venice. I can never forget the first time he watched Angelica for me. She was six months old, her first tooth was coming in, and she was miserable. I swear to God, she cried for thirty hours in a row. She would fall asleep for about ten minutes, then wake up with a scream, her tiny face scrunched up and red. She would cry and cry, and I couldn’t seem to make it better. I held her in my arms, fed her, and changed her—nothing seemed to help.

Then, I had a migraine flare-up.

I never knew how Dante found out, but when I was at the point of passing out, he knocked on my door and said, “You need to rest. I’m going to take her out for a bit.”

I was torn between gratitude and suspicion. “Do you even know how to handle a baby?”

“You figured it out,” he said with a shrug, plucking Angelica out of her crib and cradling her in his large hands. “I will, too.” He looked at me then, his expression serious. “I will keep her safe, Valentina. I promise.”

I expected it to be a disaster. I fully expected him to be back in under an hour, worn out and at the end of his tether. But I hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time in more than a week, and I was almost delirious with the lack of sleep. My head was pounding, my migraine so bad that I could barely keep my eyes open, and there was no one else I could ask for help.

“You have to text me every hour,” I said. “I need to know she’s okay.”

“I will.”

It hadn’t been a disaster. The texts came like clockwork. Photos of Angelica at the park. Photos of her giggling at the flock of pigeons in Piazza San Marco. Photos of her swaddled in a blanket, asleep in Dante’s arms.

I slept for twelve hours, then asked him to bring my daughter back. When he returned with Angelica, she was in a new dress, wearing a clean diaper, and she smelled like a mixture of clean baby and soap. “See you later, patatina,” Dante said, blowing a bubble into her tiny palm and making her giggle.

“You’re good with her,” I remarked, surprised.

“She’s family,” he replied. “And you are, too. If you need help, Valentina, call me. I’m happy to watch her while you get some sleep.”

We’ve always bickered. Dante can be overprotective, and I like my independence. But I never doubted he loved Angelica like his own daughter. And I never,everdoubted that he would be there if I needed him.

Which is why this is so hard and so tempting to keep leaning on him. To brush his lie away and pretend it didn’t happen.

I love Dante, and he loves me back. But I can’t be with someone who won’t tell me the truth. I can’t let this slide. A little lie here or a little lie there will build up, and before I know it, I won’t be Dante’s partner. I’ll be his golden sparrow, cherished and protected, but in a cage.

Leo comes up the stairs. “So, you’re leaving,” he says, his expression troubled. “Create a lot of extra work for me, why don’t you?”

His tone is light and teasing, but his words cause a dam to burst inside me. Tears turn into deep sobs that wrack my body. “Valentina,” Leo says in alarm. The security chief is forty-one years old, so you think he would have dealt with crying women before, but his expression betrays that he has no idea what to do with me. “Come here.”

He folds me into his arms. “You are amazing,” he says. “Did Dante tell you that? Because you are. I was here when we took Padua, and it was a bloody mess. But Bergamo?” His tone is admiring. “We took over Bergamo without bloodshed, without a single battle. All because of you.”

He pats my back as tears roll unchecked down my cheeks. “It’s going to be okay,” he says.

I let myself cry for three minutes. No more. Then, I dry my eyes and pull myself together. I don’t have the luxury of wallowing. I have a daughter to take care of. “Sorry about that,” I mutter. “I got mascara on your shirt.”