The light filtered through the window with the insolence of room service ordered the night before, which you bitterly regret upon waking because you forgot to hang the Do Not Disturb sign.
Elena opened one eye, then the other, feeling the physical weight of that unwanted brightness.
"Damn it. Damn Structure."
She knew she wouldn't go back to sleep. If she had wanted to wallow in sleep, she should have closed the shutters last night. But she hadn't.
Click. The Structure.
It had taken control while she slept, deciding that the day had to begin. That duties were calling. Even if the only thing Elena wanted was to disappear under the duvet.
She cursed herself. She cursed that internal parliament that made decisions without consulting her, leaving her with only the bill to pay.
She got out of bed lazily, dragging her feet toward the bathroom, continuing to mentally insult her unwanted efficiency.
She turned on the shower and waited, motionless, staring at the tiles, until the room became a cloud of dense steam. Only then did she slide inside.
She closed her eyes, hoping the heat would melt the muscle tension accumulated from the night run. But when she looked down at the drain, her breath caught in her throat.
The water under her feet wasn't clear.
It was an amber, dark liquid. A mix of alley dirt, asphalt residue, and streaks of dried blood dissolving into the vortex.
Her brain, that traitor, instantly took her back to the night before.
The rustle. The missed grip. The mask falling in the window reflection.
Vittorio.
Elena let the water run over her head, trying to drown that thought. And suddenly, the truth she needed arrived like a boulder.
"Stop it," she told herself. "You have duties. You have a day to face. You were attacked by an improvised thief who was thrown off by your reactivity. Period."
She lathered herself with excessive vigor, as if to scrub away the memory.
"You built a house of cards that you now have the task of blowing away. It's just paranoia born from the boredom of daily life. You told yourself a thrilling story about the Lawyer who massacres victims and you... you elected yourself the protagonist of that dark fairytale just to escape the grayness. Pathetic."
She stepped out of the shower purified, or at least that's what she forced herself to believe.
She marched to the walk-in closet with a martial step.
Click. The Structure had resumed total command. She chose a classic suit, cream-colored.
She hated that color.
Cream was an annoying, pretentious color. It didn't dare to be a brilliant, pure, honest white, and it refused to be just any gray. It gave itself an air of importance no one had asked for.
Colors should just exist, she thought as she slipped on the jacket. They shouldn't have pretensions.
But that day, cream was perfect. It was the color of social lies.
She put on her shoes - flats this time - and went down the stairs of the Porta Venezia building, merging into the traffic of cars, pedestrians, and Deliveroo riders zooming incessantly in the early morning hours. A faithful mirror of a frenetic society that doesn't know why it runs, it just does, out of inertia.
Elena didn't have much to do.
Her role as "entrepreneur" left her gaping holes of free time, but she categorically refused to paste on the image of the rich, lazy woman in front of her employees. So she spent her days in the office pretending to work, moving files and answering useless emails.
She was walking toward the office, sunglasses pulled down on her nose like a shield, when she saw him out of the corner of her eye.
"Damn it. Not this morning."
Luca.
Luca was what the world defined as "her friend." A pure empath, or rather, a man who saw the world through the eyes of others because his own had gone out too long ago.
He was a profiler, a police consultant for cases that made even the most experienced officers vomit. He had the toxic habit of sharing his thoughts with her, passing them off as venting, but in reality, he was looking for another point of view that wasn't the victim's.
Luca was an emotional parasite: when reality was too uncomfortable, he went to Vittorio for the predator's vision, cold and logical. Then he came to her, because Elena had the same dark vision but knew how to mitigate it with the filters of social decorum.
Elena didn't know that he played the same game with both of them. She served him to digest the bite that Vittorio had made even more bitter.
Luca didn't have the courage to look into the abyss with his own eyes, for fear of never being able to come back.
Elena saw that he was picking up the pace to catch up with her. She did the same, trying to shake off the looming social expectations.
He was wearing that worn but elegant coat, hair messed up in that "acceptable" way that didn't pigeonhole him in the "eccentric rebel" category, but rather in that of the inept.
Too lazy to adapt to social standards, Elena judged mercilessly, and too cowardly to detach from them openly.
He lengthened his stride. Unless she wanted to look like someone who was officially running away, she knew he would catch her.
She didn't want to meet him. Not today. Not after the attack.
She knew exactly what would happen: Luca would look at her searching for the "victim." He would project onto her his need to save or analyze her. He would never accept, nor understand, that a part of her had enjoyed running away from that danger.
She adjusted her sunglasses. At least that way he couldn't look her in the eyes.
"Elena!"
He reached her, out of breath. He immediately started talking about this and that, the usual verbal dance he used every time he wanted an opinion on a case. He got there in roundabout ways, without having the courage to ask, manipulating the interlocutor into expressing an unrequested opinion.
Elena cut him short, icy.
"I'm late, Luca. Forgive me."
She accelerated, passing him.
And that was the moment it happened.
The quick step made the hem of her cream pants lift. Luca looked down and saw.
He saw the cut, the bruised wound on the top of her foot, where the shoe didn't cover.
Immediately, Elena felt the wave of his projection hit her: Victim. Fragile. Wounded.
She dismissed him before he could open his mouth.
"I fell down the stairs. I'm clumsy, you know that."
The lie was banal, but Luca drank it up. He was too busy with his own monsters to really analyze other people's, and she was too composed, too much cream and detachment, to look like someone who had fought for her life a few hours before.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"I'd love to have lunch together," he threw out there, with that beaten dog look. "We both need to chat."
Elena knew what those words hid: the prelude to the unrequested opinions he desperately needed.
"I can't promise anything, I'm very busy today. We'll talk for lunch."
She slipped into her office building, shutting him out beyond the entrance turnstiles, accessible only with a badge.
Once at her desk, in her familiar and sterile space, she felt safe.
But the silence didn't last long. A doubt crept into her mind, thin as a needle.
"What if he's following the Lambs case?"
The thought bloomed rapidly.
"If he wants an opinion on that, I might have more elements to analyze yesterday's attack. I could figure out if Vittorio is involved."
Her internal drivers started a brawl to take the wheel.
Click. The Structure: "Work! Distract yourself! Normalize!"
Click. The Boredom: "I'm sick of this... Luca always does this, he's predictable."
Click. The Introvert: "Close the mental shutters, go back to sleep."
Click. The Extrovert: "It's just lunch with a friend."
Then, the Fire took control.
The Fire was pure chaos. It followed no rules, had no social needs. It just burned. It wanted to know. It wanted to get closer to the flame.
Elena's hand moved on its own. She grabbed her phone, opened Whatsapp.
"Let's meet for lunch. I'll join you at your office."
Send.
She tortured herself until lunch time, despising and blaming herself for that vice of hers of always wanting something more, of never settling for quiet.
When the moment came, her brain shut off. She put it on autopilot.
Her feet started walking toward Luca's studio, one step after another, mechanical.
She entered the building, greeted the secretary who knew her, walked down the corridor.
She knocked on the door.
"Come in."
Elena opened it.
Her gaze didn't meet Luca's.
It was Vittorio catalyzing the air in the room.
He was sitting in the guest chair, impeccable, relaxed. His eyes were wearing the mask of everyday life while he conversed with Luca, a polite smile on his lips.
But when he heard the door open, he turned.
He saw her.
And Elena noticed the movement.
It was a matter of nanoseconds. Vittorio's eyes didn't seek her face. They shifted downward. Toward her foot.
A lightning-fast, surgical glance. As if they already knew exactly where to look and what to search for.
Then they went back up, meeting hers, charged with a terrifying awareness.
Her blood froze in her veins.
Click. The Instinct: "Run."
Click. The Structure: "Sit down. Normalize. Adapt."
And at the end of it all, only the smell of Fire remained, burning everything it came into contact with.
Elena entered, closing the door behind her. She sat next to Vittorio, looking at Luca across the desk, as if she had just entered the lion's den of her own free will.