The iron stairs rang under Saverio's shoes, and Renata climbed them with her keys still in her hand.
His floor was one long room over the water, glass on three sides.
Saverio: This floor is mine. Tonight it's yours. Nobody comes up those stairs without my word.
Two of his men were already at the bottom of the steps. A third took the top landing.
Saverio: Two on the stairs. One at your door. You don't go down alone, day or night.
Renata: And if I do?
Saverio: Then I bring you back up myself, and you won't like the way I do it.
Luca was on the long couch with his shirt open and a clean bandage taped over his ribs.
Luca: You brought the Sartori bitch onto your own floor. Look at her, boys. A thief in a maid's apron.
One of the men laughed. Another said something low that she didn't need to hear twice.
Renata: Your brother is alive because of my hands. You can thank me or you can shut your mouth.
Saverio caught her arm before the last word landed, and his grip left white dents in her skin.
Saverio: Don't you talk to my brother. Not one word.
Renata: He called me a whore in front of your men. Should I curtsy too?
He turned her by the arm and put her back into the window frame. The cold steel knocked the breath out of her.
Saverio: Try to leave this floor alone and I'll throw you off the pier myself. Tell me you hear me.
She heard him. Her throat closed up, and her pulse knocked hard in her wrists.
She pulled her arm out of his hand, and four red marks showed where his fingers had been.
Renata: Then hear my rules. That lock stays mine, and nobody walks in on me. Not to check on me. Not you.
Saverio: A lock won't stop me.
Renata: No. My terms will. You shook on them in front of your men.
Renata: I work, I eat, I keep my own money. I'm not a thing you keep upstairs.
Saverio looked at her a long moment, then nodded once at the door.
Saverio: Everybody out.
Luca got up slow, one hand on his ribs, and stopped level with her.
He leaned in close enough that she could smell the sweat on him.
Luca: Sleep light, cunt. I still owe you for that table.
The steel door shut, and the room went quiet except for the water under the floor.
He turned her arm over in the lamp. Four red marks, already going dark.
Saverio: That's what my hand does. Now you know.
Renata: I said unless I ask for it.
She stepped in instead of back, and her hands found the top button of his shirt.
She opened one button, then the next, and his breathing changed under her fingers.
He didn't move. That was the strangest part, a man like him standing still for her hands.
She put her palm flat on his stomach and slid it down over his trousers.
He was hard through the cloth, and when she pressed, his jaw went tight and a rough sound came out of him.
Saverio: You're playing with something that bites.
Renata: Then don't bite.
His mouth came down on her throat, and her head went back against the glass.
His palm pushed further under her shirt on her ribs, warm and wide.
Her hips moved against his before she told them to, and her own breath sounded strange in her ears.
She wanted it. Her body wanted it so badly that her hands shook.
But her door still had a lock she hadn't turned, and her name was still not her own.
Renata: Stop. Not tonight.
Saverio: Say why.
Renata: Because I'm not going to bed with a man who owns the stairs I walk down.
Renata: When you want me and not the thing you keep, ask me again.
His hands came off her slowly, and the room felt colder for it.
Renata: Most people are afraid of you. I'm only careful.
Something moved in his face then, close to respect and not soft at all.
She shut her door and turned the key herself, and heard the guard settle outside it.
Through the glass she could see two men on the stairs and Saverio below at the rail, his shirt still hanging open.
He had given her a floor and set a leash on it.
She had taken the floor and kept the leash loose.
Which of them would set the real terms, she didn't know yet.