Page 9 of Devil Among Men

Breakfast at eight, if we want it. As if this is a normal stay and we’re normal guests.

Maurizio thanks her and heads down the hall first, disappearing into one of the rooms without another word, the exhaustion finally catching up to him now that there’s nothing left to guard against for the next few hours.

Portia lingers in the doorway, staring down the dim hallway with a forlorn look in her gaze.

“You don’t have to stay awake worrying about anything,” I say. “We’ve got security on the property. If it makes you feel better, I’ll even guard your door.”

“You need sleep too.”

“I’ll manage.”

She studies me, deep emotion flickering in her gaze. “Which room’s mine?”

“Whichever one you want. I can take the other.”

Relief crosses her face. “The second one.”

I follow her partway down the hall, stopping a respectful distance from her door while she pushes it open—small, plain, a narrow bed with a faded quilt, a single window overlooking the olive grove outside.

She stands in the doorway a moment, one hand on the frame, and glances back at me.

“Thanks for getting me out tonight. I know things are still... complicated between us. But I won’t forget that.”

“I’ll always get you out,” I say. “No matter what’s complicated between us.”

She holds my gaze a second longer than she needs to before finally stepping inside and easing the door shut, the click of the latch the only sound left in the narrow hallway.

I turn and head back outside to take up watch, knowing full well neither of us is getting much sleep tonight regardless of which side of that door we’re on.

5

PORTIA

The breakfast room smells like espresso and warm bread, and underneath it, faintly, the smoke I still swear clings to my skin no matter how many times I showered last night.

Concetta, the woman from last night, spots me in the doorway before I’ve fully decided whether I’m hungry. Her name’s stitched into a faded apron worn thin at the pockets, and she waves me toward a small table by the window without asking what I want. She sets down a chipped white cup and a plate with a single pastry, flaky and dusted with sugar, and disappears back into the kitchen. No questions. No small talk. I get the sense she’s hosted people running from worse than us.

I wrap both hands around the espresso, letting the heat settle into my palms. Outside, the olive grove looks peaceful in the morning light, silver-green leaves shifting in a breeze that knows nothing about last night’s drive through the dark, nothing about the villa still smoldering somewhere behind us.

A body doesn’t know what to do with quiet after chaos. At least mine certainly doesn’t. My hands haven’t fully stopped shaking since the fire, not really, just enough that I’ve learned to hide it in small motions like this—wrapping a cup, folding a napkin, anything to keep them occupied.

I close my eyes, and I’m back on the stairs again, smoke thick enough to taste, Rafael’s hand locked around mine like he’d rather lose an arm than let go of me. I keep replaying the sound of that beam cracking overhead, the half-second where Jayla just crumpled and none of us could do anything but watch. I’ve covered fires before, professionally—stood outside burning buildings with a microphone, describing the damage in clean, detached sentences for a five o’clock broadcast. I never understood, not really, what it does to a person to be inside one instead. The way your whole body remembers a threat long after your mind’s convinced itself the danger’s passed.

I’m angrier than I expected to still be this morning, and not entirely at Rafael anymore. Some of it’s aimed at Vito, obviously, a man I’ve never even met who’s already cost me a home I only just started calling one. Some of it’s aimed at whatever version of my life led me here, chasing a story that turned into an entire existence I never signed up for. And some small, stubborn piece of it is aimed at myself, for how quickly I forgot to be furious with Rafael the second I watched him nearly die pulling me down that staircase.

I miss my parents—the actual ones, the ones panicking right now on the other side of an ocean over a fire on the news, unable to reach either of us. I think about my mother’s kitchen, always too warm, always smelling like garlic and whatever she’d insist on cooking even when nobody asked. I think about my father’s ridiculous laugh, the one that used to embarrass me in public as a teenager and that I’d give almost anything to hear right now. They didn’t have to take Jayla and me in. They chose to, and they never once made either of us feel like an obligation instead of a daughter. I hate that I can’t even tell them I’m safe. I hate that safe isn’t even true right now, not really, and keeping them in the dark feels like its own quiet betrayal on top of everything else this week has cost us.

I break off a piece of the pastry and eat it slowly, watching an old man walk his dog along the gravel road past the olive trees, entirely unaware that four strangers hiding thirty minutes from a burned villa are watching him do it.

There’s something almost obscene about how normal the rest of the world keeps being while mine’s on fire. I used to chase stories like ours for a living.

…now I’m living inside one and normalcy feels like I’m only allowed to observe from behind glass.

I bring the cup to my lips, finally, ready for that first bitter, grounding sip.

My phone rings before I get it down.

I answer so fast I nearly knock the cup over. “Jayla. How are you? What did the doctor say?”