The lion's den was an illusion. It only worked if the one entering believed they were a lamb.
Elena didn't believe it.
As she settled into the leather armchair, she felt the tensions of the Structure loosen, like steel cables cut clean.
The Fire had taken command. And the Fire had that terrifying superpower: it melted fear, prudence, and decorum, transforming her not into a crazy splinter, but into a necessary cataclysm. Inescapable.
Her only task now was learning to stop a millimeter before self-destruction.
Elena crossed her legs with a slow, deliberate movement. Her cream pants rode up, revealing her ankle and, crucially, the bruised wound on the top of her foot.
She didn't just expose it. She invaded Vittorio's vital space, pointing the tip of her foot toward him, a flagrant territorial violation.
And there it was.
The twitch.
Vittorio's eyes darted downward, a furtive movement, almost involuntary. It was the look of someone fighting an internal civil war: give in to the morbid curiosity of enjoying a detail that confirmed his hunt, or maintain the impeccable image of the ice man who doesn't crack even under the storm?
Elena's lips curved. Not a smile, but an almost imperceptible grimace of satisfaction.
Vittorio saw it. And for the first time, Elena saw a crack in his mask: amazement.
She was depriving him of the supreme satisfaction: that of having a trembling victim at his side.
He was studying her. He was wondering if she was conscious of the game, or if he was witnessing one of Elena's internal plays, where her personalities fought violently in a private theater to which only the two of them had access.
In the end, Vittorio seemed to convince himself it was a coincidence. That she was just desperately trying to keep up the social mask.
Elena turned toward him, aiming her cerulean eyes at him, now dark with defiance.
"Vittorio," she began, with a voice dripping with poisoned honey. "What a surprise to see you in the daylight. I thought you were a nocturnal creature."
His blood seemed to stop for an instant.
"Usually after parties you disappear until dawn," she continued, relentless, ignoring Luca's presence. "Last night, though, you went home early. Did the hunt go badly? Or did the prey get away?"
Pause. Cutting smile.
"It must be frustrating for someone with your... nocturnal reputation. Losing control of the situation, I mean."
Elena laughed, a crystalline and fake laugh. Luca, unaware, laughed with her, thinking of some joke about the serial womanizer.
Vittorio took the hit with the skill of a veteran. His blood temperature, however, started to rise. He could smell the provocation. But was it real? Or was it just predator paranoia?
He adjusted his cufflink, regaining control.
"Quality, my dear Elena, is the enemy of quantity," he replied, his baritone voice smooth as velvet. "Sometimes the buffet is rich, but the food is... poor. I preferred to retire before the wine turned to vinegar. Elegance lies in knowing when to leave the table."
Elena took the parry but didn't retreat. She was too close to the fire to feel the heat burn.
Two flames of the same intensity don't understand each other. They feel each other.
She extended her leg a little more. The tip of her shoe brushed against his.
"Really?" she murmured, lowering her gaze to Vittorio's shoes. "Strange. For someone who went home early... those shoes seem to have traveled a long way."
Vittorio froze.
"See those streaks?" Elena observed, with an almost distracted tone. "Wear from friction. Like when running. Or chasing something."
Pause. She smiled sweetly.
"I imagine you lost track of time in... good company. It happens when you're having fun, right?"
She raised her eyes to him.
"I hope you caught her, at least. It would be a shame to run so much... for nothing."
The doubt melted in Vittorio's veins like snow in the sun, replaced by pure adrenaline.
His heart started pumping, fueled by the scent of a prey that not only had escaped him but had now come back to bite his hand.
Possible?
Elena felt the atmospheric pressure change in the room.
Click.
Not just in her head. In his too.
The lock in Vittorio's mind clicked. The mask fell. He knew that she knew.
And suddenly, the office became too small.
Elena realized she had pushed too hard. She couldn't let the truth explode there, in front of Luca. It would take away the thrill of private discovery, but mostly it would deprive her of the escape routes necessary for survival.
Click - The Structure: "Stupid, reckless, arrogant."
She had to deflect. Immediately.
She turned abruptly toward Luca, breaking eye contact with the monster.
"So, this lunch?" she asked, with the practical tone of a businesswoman. "We both know it was bait, Luca. You didn't call me for my company. Something is tormenting you. Why are we here?"
She said that "we" including Vittorio on purpose, injecting into the lawyer's veins the idea that the two of them were a united front against the tormented empath. Accomplices.
Luca sighed, grateful to finally unload the burden. He opened a folder on the desk.
"The Lambs case," he said gravely. "We're at six victims. No apparent link. Different ages, opposite social classes. The only common thread is the last meal found in the stomach: lamb meat, cooked in an elaborate way."
He shook his head, running a hand through his curly hair.
"It's chaos, Elena. We're looking for a disorganized sadist. Someone acting on impulse, driven by blind rage. A killer who doesn't plan, who pours his manias onto random victims because he can't handle his frustration. It's... it's dirty."
Elena felt the disapproval radiating from Vittorio like a heat wave.
And indeed, the lawyer's voice cut the air, icy and surgical.
"You're wrong, Luca."
Vittorio wasn't looking at the photos. He was looking at the void, or perhaps an image only he saw.
"There is nothing disorganized about this. And there is no rage. Rage is messy, it leaves traces. Here there isn't even a fingerprint."
He leaned forward slightly.
"You're not looking for a sadist. You're looking for an aesthete. Someone who isn't 'venting manias,' but who is cleaning the world. He's a gardener pulling weeds so the garden is symmetrical."
Elena felt a shiver down her spine. It wasn't fear. It was recognition.
She leaned forward too, invading the desk space, physically getting closer to Luca but spiritually to Vittorio.
"You really can't see with the artist's eyes, can you, Luca?"
She didn't use the word "monster."
She probed Vittorio's reaction out of the corner of her eye. He let out an imperceptible sigh, as if someone had just lifted a weight off his chest. Someone had seen him for the first time.
"Artist?" repeated Luca, scandalized.
"Don't look for innocent victims," Elena continued, her voice picking up rhythm, guided by a dark logic that seemed the only sensible one to her. "Look for the guilty. Not guilty of criminal offenses, Luca. Look for the guilty of social repulsions."
Vittorio turned to look at her. The lawyer mask was gone. There was amazement. Admiration. And total confusion.
Elena didn't stop.
"Look for the greedy. The ignorant who flaunt culture. The crude. The slothful who occupy space without giving anything back. Look for those who dirty the world but live inside society in a normal, ordinary way, unaware of being an unbearable annoyance for those who... for those who see reality without filters."
She turned to Vittorio, holding his gaze.
"Don't ask yourself what turned them into victims. Ask yourself what made them butchers of other people's lives, before someone stopped them."
The silence in the room was deafening.
Vittorio looked at her as if he had just discovered that a gear of the universe turned backward.
She was an impossible variable. A woman in a cream suit with an abyss under her skin that maybe, just maybe, scared even him.
He had to test her. He had to understand if it was a bluff or if it was steel.
"Fascinating analysis," Vittorio said, voice low. Then, his gaze fell heavily on her foot again.
"What did you do to yourself, exactly?"
The question was a weapon.
There was no concern. There was the arrogance of someone who wants to put her back in her place, who wants to see her waver. His eyes were loaded with fake pity. Or maybe the predator wanted to sniff if there was still fear under that bravado.
A jolt of pure annoyance ran down Elena's spine.
How dare he?
How dare he still consider her a victim after what she had just said? How dare he ignore the fact that she saw him and wasn't running away screaming?
They stared at each other. A silent battle to see who looked away first.
It was Luca, moved by the oppression of that silence he couldn't decipher, who broke the spell.
"I told you," he intervened with a nervous laugh of courtesy, trying to restore harmony. "She fell down the stairs. She's chronically clumsy, our Elena."
Our Elena. Ours. The clumsy one. The victim.
Elena glared at Luca, then turned back to Vittorio, icy. The spell was broken, but the anger remained.
She stood up abruptly.
"I wish I had the time you gentlemen have, to lose myself in intellectual salons discussing the banality of evil," she said, smoothing her jacket with a sharp gesture. "But I have a company to run."
It was a lie, obviously. She had nothing to do. But she had to get out of that room before setting everything on fire.
"Have a good lunch."
She headed for the door without waiting for an answer, waving vaguely, and closed it behind her with a definitive click.
She walked toward the elevator, her steps echoing in her head like war drums. She tried to shake off the physical annoyance of being pigeonholed into a definition that didn't belong to her.
"Arrogant, stupid viveur," she hissed through her teeth as she pressed the call button. "And stupid me. Stupid for thinking he could be anything more than the banal predator he revealed himself to be last night. He's just a narcissist with a bloody hobby."
The elevator doors opened. Elena entered, alone.
The doors closed, sealing her in metal.
As soon as the cabin started to descend and the cellular network started working again, the phone in her bag vibrated.
A single stroke. Sharp.
Elena pulled it out, almost reluctantly.
An unsaved number. But she didn't need to save it.
The message glowed on the screen:
Dinner at my place tonight. I have a lamb in the oven waiting for you.
The world stopped turning. Or maybe it started turning too fast.
The ground beneath her feet was gone, as if the elevator cables had been cut. But she didn't fall into the void. She remained suspended, in a terrifying lack of gravity.
The gray of the elevator disappeared. The office disappeared. Luca disappeared.
Around her, suddenly, there was only Fire.