Page 283 of The Lies We Play

The apartment feels suddenly too bright.

Too small.

I answer.

“I’m listening,” I say.

And just like that, Florence begins to let me go.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Livia

Now. . .

“Livia.” Eleonora’s voice is urgent. “The car is six minutes from your building. Plane is on the ground at Peretola in twenty. Bag you were told to pack, nothing more. We’ll move the rest later. Leave the apartment unlocked so our people can empty the place. The institute will be told it’s a family emergency. Your phone stays with you, airplane mode the moment the car arrives. Confirm.”

My hand closes around the edge of the counter.

For one second, Florence goes completely still around me.

Not the city. The city is moving. It always moves. Someone is laughing below my window. A scooter passes too fast on the street. Somewhere in the building, a door closes with the ordinary confidence of a person who expects to come home again.

I don’t know if I will.

“Okay,” I say.

“You’ll be all right.” The call ends abruptly.

The bag has been ready for three days. A couple of changes of clothes. Personal documents, including my passport, are in the inner zip. The burner. A book. The laptop.

I take it off the closet shelf and put it by the door.

The apartment looks different when I turn back.

Not emptier.

Accused.

My coffee cup is still on the counter. The pastry bag Moises left sits beside it, folded at the top, ridiculous and tender and too human for a room I am about to abandon. The strawberry bombolone is still inside. I grab it because I can't leave it sitting there to rot. I don't know why that is the thing I care about. I don't know why grief chooses a pastry when the rest of a life is standing in rooms waiting to be erased.

I grab my coat.

I take the key off the wall.

I lock the door behind me.

Then I stop.

My breath comes once, shallow and useless.

I unlock it.

I put the key on the hook beside the frame as they requested. Eleonora’s people will know what to do with a key on a hook.

I go down the stairs.

The car is at the curb when I push the building’s front door open. Dark sedan. Tinted glass. A man in a black coat stands beside the rear door, already waiting, one hand resting near the handle. He is broad through the shoulders, expression neutral, the kind of man whose stillness has been trained into him.