Chapter 55: Go to your room, you don’t need to see this

Viktor looked up. And stopped.

Whatever he’d been about to say to Manuel simply didn’t arrive. He stared at her, the oversized shirt, the sweatpants pooling at her ankles, her hair loose and unbothered, with an expression that had no business appearing on the face of a man who, an hour ago, had seen her in silk and managed to recover his composure within seconds.

Manuel developed a sudden, urgent interest in his whiskey glass.

"Those are my clothes," Viktor said. He sounded almost wounded by the fact.

"I had clothes put in the drawer for you," he added, slower now, like he was trying to locate the part of this that had gone wrong. "There were options."

Sienna shrugged, entirely unbothered, and reached for an apple from the bowl on the counter. "I liked these better."

"This is comfortable," Sienna said, mostly to herself, looking around at the men’s shirt swallowing her arms.

"Since it’s only men in here, I might as well join the club."

The kitchen wasn’t hard to find. Stone counters, an old wood-fired oven that looked like it had been cooking things since before Italy was Italy, and to her genuine delight, every single ingredient she needed for her favourite pasta.

Almost every ingredient. Her secret one, the one thing that made it hers, that no recipe online could replicate because it came from a tiny spice shop two blocks from the library in Philadelphia and existed nowhere else on earth, that, predictably, was not available in a mountain fortress in Calabria.

She sighed.

Then shrugged. Some things you adjusted for. She worked quickly, easily, the kind of competence that came from doing something a thousand times before. Garlic. Olive oil. The good tomatoes.

Her hands moved without needing her brain’s permission for most of it, which left plenty of room for her brain to drift toward dungeons and gunshots and silk nightgowns and a man’s jacket that smelled like cedar and something darker underneath.

She pushed the thoughts aside. When it was done, she plated it and lifted the dish toward her face, breathing it in, and a small, satisfied smile broke across her features, the first uncomplicated thing she’d felt in days.

"That looks delicious." She hadn’t heard him arrive.

Manuel stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking at the plate with the open appreciation of a man who had clearly been living on takeout and whiskey for longer than was good for him.

Sienna looked up. Looked at him for exactly as long as politeness required. Set her plate down.

"I’m Manuel," he said, stepping a little closer.

"A friend of Viktor’s," Sienna said, no smile attached, "or an enemy?" Manuel blinked.

"That’s a very funny question to lead with."

"A friend, I don’t want to see." She pulled out a chair and sat. "An enemy, I might want to join hands with."

He laughed, a short, surprised sound, like he hadn’t expected that and was recalibrating his read of her on the spot.

"Wow." He leaned against the counter. "Okay. Well, Viktor’s like my older brother. Honestly, more of a brother to me than my actual brother. Marco."

Sienna paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.

"Marco is your brother." She considered this. "Interesting." A beat. "So, what they asked you to keep an eye on me?"

"Well, yeah." He had the grace to look slightly sheepish about it. "Marco and Viktor stepped out for a bit. They said I should be at your service. In case you needed anything."

"What a generous way to phrase babysitting duty," Sienna said dryly. She went back to her plate.

"There’s some left," she said, gesturing at the pot. "Serve yourself if you want." She kept eating. Manuel didn’t hold back.

He served himself a generous plate, fork already loaded, the steam still curling off the pasta as he leaned in for that first bite, then, "What do you think you’re doing?" The voice came from the doorway.

Manuel froze, fork halfway to his mouth. Viktor had always been good to him none of the usual edge in his tone, no real anger, but there was something else underneath it.

Something that sounded, if Manuel was being honest with himself, suspiciously like jealousy.

Viktor crossed the kitchen, lifted the fork clean out of Manuel’s hand, and tasted it himself before Manuel could so much as protest.

His eyebrows went up.

"Wow." He looked at Sienna, who was very deliberately not looking at him.

"My wife can really cook. Don’t you think?" He took another bite. Then another.

"This is... wow. Best pasta I’ve had in my life."

Sienna ignored him entirely and kept eating her own plate with the studied indifference of a woman who had decided, as a matter of principle, not to be flattered.

Manuel stood there, plate-less now, watching Viktor eat what should have been his lunch, silently wondering if he’d ever get to find out for himself.

Then a sound reached them from outside voices, movement, a car.

Viktor’s whole demeanor shifted at once, the warmth dropping away, replaced by the focused stillness she’d come to recognize.

"He must be here," Viktor said. He set the plate down, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and walked out without another word. Manuel followed close behind.

Sienna pushed her plate aside, the last of her food gone cold and forgotten, and rose to leave. She made it three steps before the voice stopped her.

It was Mandarin. Fast, frightened, the words tumbling over each other like a man trying to outrun something he couldn’t outrun.

She turned.

A Chinese man stood with his back pressed against the wall, hands raised, sweat darkening the collar of an otherwise immaculate suit. In front of him, Viktor held a gun level with the man’s forehead, close enough that the barrel almost touched skin.

"Where is my fucking money?" Viktor’s voice cracked through the room like a whip.

Behind him, Marco had a phone pressed to his ear, pacing, muttering. Manuel was doing the same, a few steps away, his free hand raking through his hair.

"I’m sorry, I still haven’t gotten in touch with the translator," Manuel said, lowering the phone just long enough to say it, then lifting it again.

The Chinese man kept talking, the same words looping out of him in a desperate rhythm. The money is on the fifth floor. Please don’t kill me. That’s all I know.

Nobody in the room understood a single word of it.

Sienna stayed where she was, just past the doorway, and looked at the man properly for the first time. No tattoos on his hands or neck.

A suit that fit him, tailored, not borrowed. Soft hands. He didn’t carry himself like the men usually pinned to walls in rooms like this.

"Sienna." Viktor’s head snapped toward her the second he registered she was standing there. "Go to your room. You don’t need to see this."