The interpreter hears too much. Send her away or we silence her hands.
Your fingers went cold.
For a moment, you could not feel the paper.
Dante took it gently before it fell.
“No one will touch you,” he said.
You looked at your hands.
Your hands that had given Sophia back her voice in rooms that ignored her.
Your hands that had been your bridge to Maya, your childhood friend.
Your hands that held your future.
For the first time, you understood the true shape of Dante’s world.
It did not just kill bodies.
It threatened meaning.
The next morning, you did not quit.
You moved in with Sophia.
Temporarily, you told yourself.
For safety.
For work.
For the woman who had looked at you in a restaurant and seen more than a waitress.
Sophia’s apartment became your refuge and your cage.
Dante increased security.
A driver took you to class.
A guard waited outside your interpreting lab.
Your classmates whispered.
Your professor asked if you were in trouble.
You said no.
That was not entirely true.
At night, you sat with Sophia on her balcony, signing under the city lights.
She told you about Sicily.
About losing her hearing gradually after a childhood illness.
About Dante as a boy, serious and watchful even at seven.
About his father, Carlo Vitelli, who built an empire out of shipping, fear, favors, and blood.
“My son inherited a throne he did not ask for,” she signed one night.
You looked through the glass doors, where Dante stood inside speaking quietly with his men.
“He could walk away.”
Sophia’s smile was sad.
“Could you walk away from someone you love if leaving them meant wolves came?”
You said nothing.
She looked at you too closely.
“You care for him.”
Your hands stilled.
“I care for you.”
She waved that away.
“I am old. Do not flirt badly with me.”
Heat rushed to your face.
“I don’t belong in his world.”
Sophia’s expression turned serious.
“No woman belongs in a world that asks her to become less. The question is whether Dante’s world changes near you, or swallows you.”
That sentence stayed with you.
It stayed when Dante began joining your evening lessons.
It stayed when he learned to sign, “Are you safe?” before he learned “good night.”
It stayed when he stood in the kitchen one morning, sleeves rolled up, arguing with Sophia about espresso while signing too dramatically and making her laugh.
It stayed when he drove you to class himself after another threat arrived.
And it stayed the night he kissed you.
It happened in the library of Sophia’s apartment, during a thunderstorm.
You had been translating old family letters for Sophia, some written in a mix of Italian and Sicilian. Dante entered quietly, carrying two cups of tea.
“You look tired,” he said.
“You look observant.”
“I am improving.”
You smiled.
Thunder rolled over the lake.
The power flickered once.
Then again.
For a moment, the room went dim, lit only by lightning and the warm glow of the city below.
Dante set down the tea.
“Elena.”
