Chapter 5
“I do.”
His hand touched mine on the stone and remained there. He did not grip it.
“But I won’t begin paying today. Today, I want coffee with you.”
I laughed, the sound quiet and surprised.
“Coffee? How sophisticated.”
“I can be sophisticated when I choose.”
“You can be several things when you choose.”
He took my hand.
On the balcony, with the sea awakening before us, the gesture felt more intimate than anything that had happened the night before.
We drank coffee at a small iron table.
A tray had been brought before I woke. There were small cakes, fruit, and espresso prepared exactly as I preferred it.
The fact that he knew cut into me in a beautiful way.
We spoke little.
The silence was full rather than empty.
At one point, his telephone rang. He examined the screen, turned the phone face down, and left it unanswered.
I understood that he had reserved the day for me.
“It will cause trouble,” I said.
“The trouble is downstairs.”
Stella called in the middle of the morning.
I answered from the unmade bed, lying on my side while Niko showered behind the bathroom door.
“I’ll be direct,” she began. “You answered too quickly. Something happened.”
“Stella.”
“It happened.”
“Stella.”
“You have the voice of a woman who slept.”
“I always sleep.”
“Not like this. This is the voice of a woman who slept with company and isn’t unhappy about it.”
“I’m ending the call.”
“No, you aren’t. I have known you since we were 16. I know your post-examination voice and your post-man voice.”
I pressed a pillow against my face and laughed into it.
When I returned the phone to my ear, Stella was waiting with the patience she reserved for important matters.
“Are you happy?” she asked without humor.
I considered the question.
“I’m at peace. For the 1st time in months.”
“Remember what I’m about to tell you. Peace is rarer than happiness. Hold on to it.”
I ended the call with a strange softness in my chest.
The next 2 days passed the way time passes when a person is no longer trying to survive each hour.
I ate with Niko and walked through the house beside him.
I returned to the library and failed to concentrate because he was reading on the opposite sofa, and his presence there was still too new.
Gennaro brought me a book I had mentioned once in the car.
When I thanked him, he inclined his head.
“The boss asked me to find it. I merely avoided ruining the task.”
I was about to laugh when Niko called for me.
A formal reception would take place on Saturday.
He warned me 2 days beforehand in his usual manner, without embellishment.
“There will be family heads, several allies, your father—”
He paused.
“And Lorenzo Greco.”
I became still.
“Why?”
“Because your father can’t remove him without a public reason. I’m going to provide one.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Eveina, you only need to be present. I’ll manage the rest.”
I did not like it, but I trusted him.
Trust was a new word when applied to Niko. It still hurt slightly to use, not because of the word itself but because of how easily it now came.
I descended into the reception hall wearing a wine-colored dress Niko had selected without consulting me.
I hated admitting that I would have selected the same one.
The room was crowded. Low chandeliers produced golden light. Waiters stood in formation, and conversations moved between Italian and dialects I did not yet fully understand.
Don Vittorio received guests in the center of the room.
Tommaso circulated as though taking everyone’s temperature.
My father stood in a corner holding a glass he was not drinking.
Lorenzo Greco stood nearby, smiling.
I recognized the smile. I had seen it during campaigns, at dinners, and in photographs where my father occupied the background.
Lorenzo was ordinary in almost every respect: average height, average features, and a well-cut suit.
Only his mouth was distinctive.
It always appeared to know something others did not.
Niko approached without sound and placed a light hand against my back, guiding me toward the center of the hall.
“Breathe,” he said near my ear. “Tonight, you don’t need to prove anything.”
“I know.”
“You don’t believe that yet, but you will.”
Lorenzo approached before dinner.
He held a glass and wore a broad smile. Two unfamiliar men followed, people who existed to form a chorus around him.
“Signora Santoro.”
He bowed slightly less than courtesy required.
“I brought a gift.”
“That wasn’t necessary, Signor Greco.”
“It was. I belong to another generation. We believe in tributes.”
He removed a small envelope from his jacket.
I recognized the paper before he opened it. It was the kind used to hold printed photographs.
“Memories,” Lorenzo said loudly enough for several groups around us to hear. “I thought the Santoro family might appreciate seeing where you came from. Your youth, friends, and former life.”
He opened the envelope.
The 1st photograph had been taken at a party 4 years earlier.
I was sitting at a table, laughing, with a tilted glass in my hand and a short dress.
There was nothing compromising in it.
Nothing at all.
But he displayed it as though a confession had been written on the back.
The room seemed to slow.
My father moved toward me and then stopped because Don Vittorio raised an eyebrow. No one moved until the old man permitted it.
I prepared to speak.
A sarcastic and dignified response waited on my tongue, large enough for the room.
I never used it.
Niko stood.
Until then, he had remained beside me with his hand resting against the back of my chair. Even the hand had not moved.
The sound of his chair being pushed backward affected the room like a door slamming.
“Lorenzo.”
Niko’s voice was low.
“Before you continue displaying your collection, may I display mine?”
He did not wait for permission.
From inside his jacket, he removed a folded stack of documents.
They were not inside an envelope. There were several printed pages marked with handwritten notes, the result of work performed by Tommaso and Gennaro over a period I had not understood.
“Tommaso spent 3 years assembling these documents,” Niko said calmly.
The calm carried a cutting edge.
“They show transfers made through a shell company in Catania. That company receives a percentage from every public contract passing through Arthur Shaw’s office.”
He raised the 1st document.
“The originating account belongs to you, Lorenzo.”
He displayed another.
“Copies of the blackmail messages, including dates and times.”
Then another.
“And photographs you chose not to show tonight because you preferred keeping them for yourself.”
The glass in Lorenzo’s hand trembled once.
I saw it.
“This is absurd,” he said.
“It isn’t absurd.”
Niko did not raise his voice.
“It is heavy. You confuse the 2 because you have never carried anything.”
My father closed his eyes briefly, like a man releasing a breath held for months.
Don Vittorio stood with the unhurried movement of someone certain that the room would wait for him.
“Lorenzo Greco,” he said, “you are no longer welcome on this island.”
“Don Vittorio, I can explain.”
“You may explain elsewhere. You have until tomorrow to leave Sicily. After that, I will no longer be polite.”
Two Santoro men moved from the room’s corners without being called.
Lorenzo was escorted out before the soup arrived.
No one commented.
The waiters resumed their work. Conversations returned at a lower volume, the way they resumed after a civilized execution.
I stared at the glass before me without seeing it.
“Eveina.”
Niko spoke near my ear.
“Look at me.”
I raised my eyes.
His were warm with anger that had not yet cooled.
“Your father’s political enemies intended to reach him through you,” he explained quietly.
The entire table was listening while pretending not to.
“Lorenzo is 1 of them. He is not the only one. Your father accepted this marriage because bringing you close to this family was the fastest way to place you among people capable of protecting you.”
He paused.
“It was never only business.”
I looked across the room at my father.
He stood motionless with his glass finally empty and his eyes moist.
“I need air.”
Niko nodded.
“I’ll meet you outside.”
I left through the side door, crossed the corridor where I had once confronted Bruno, and stepped onto the terrace.
The sea was on the other side of the estate, but its scent reached me, broad and salty.
My father followed.
His jacket was open, and he looked more exhausted than I had seen him even during the worst campaigns.
He stopped 3 steps away.
“I know you don’t want to listen to me.”
“I don’t know what I want. Speak anyway.”
He did not offer elaborate apologies or attempt to justify himself with attractive language.
He said he had searched for other solutions.
He said he had remained awake through the nights that required wakefulness.
He said he had been wrong not to tell me and did not expect immediate forgiveness.
“You aren’t receiving it,” I said. “But I’ll try.”
“That’s more than I deserve.”
“It’s less than I wish I could give, but it’s what exists.”
He nodded and did not approach.
He understood it was not yet the time.
“Are you all right with him?” he asked.
It was finally the question of a father.
I told him the truth.
“I am.”
On Sunday morning, I entered the garden before the sun became hot.
A stone path wound between olive trees toward the place where the land opened above the sea.
A stone bench rested beside a low wall. I sat and watched the line at which the water changed color.
Niko arrived without sound, as always.
He sat beside me and waited.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Ask.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
He turned toward me.
He took exactly as long as a man who understood the weight of the question needed to answer.
“I do.”
He continued before I could speak.
“But I don’t want you to remain because you signed a contract. I can’t tolerate that anymore. If you stay, it must be because you choose to stay.”
“And if I choose to leave?”
“I’ll place you in the car with Gennaro and open the front gate.”
I looked at him.
I believed him.
“I’ll stay.”
He closed his eyes.
There was no display, no attempt to seize me. He simply closed his eyes for 1 second and breathed differently.
“There’s another condition,” I said.
“What?”
“No more secrets. Not with me, about me, or around me.”
“Never again,” he said. “I promise.”
I kissed him on the bench with the smell of salt entering my lungs and a gull crossing through the light above us.
It was a short kiss. He laughed quietly in the middle of it, and for once nothing carried weight.
We remained together in silence afterward.
That was when a fragment of the previous night returned.
It had been spoken so casually that I had nearly lost it.
Before Lorenzo was removed from the reception, Don Vittorio had leaned toward Niko and murmured something I could not hear.
Niko had answered his father without looking at him, wearing a dry half smile.
I had heard only the final words.
“Too low. It can wait.”
I did not know what was too low or how long it could wait.
At the time, I had been too occupied with breathing to consider it.
Now the sentence returned like a small piece of food caught between the teeth.
I looked at Niko from the side.
His eyes were on the sea. His hand covered mine, and his shoulder rested against me.
He looked peaceful.
I swallowed the question.
I placed my head on his shoulder and allowed the sentence to recede.
What existed between us was too new to scratch open with a question.
I would ask later.
Niko squeezed my hand, and the sea continued moving as it always did when no one commanded it.
For a time, I believed his love would be enough.
I believed we would burn the world together if necessary.
But within a mafia family, a wife was not measured only by whether she was loved. She was measured by the child she carried.
The months began to pass.
Each month brought blood.
The mansion’s staircases became colder. Whispers followed me through its corridors.
Barren.
A mistake.
Dead weight.
Niko kept me behind closed doors and confronted his father in a low, lethal voice. He risked his position and the crown he was expected to inherit.
On the final night, he held me against his chest with his fingers trembling across my back.
“You’re mine,” he whispered. “Only mine. The rest can go to hell.”
Then I found the letter.
I saw the date and read the words he had never spoken to me. I discovered the secret he had carried since before he touched me on our wedding night.
My heart seemed to divide.
The ground disappeared beneath me.
A suitcase waited beneath the bed, and I held a note that still smelled of him.
I no longer knew whether the man who had made me a woman had ever truly loved me.
I no longer knew whether every kiss and promise had been another part of the plan.
And I did not know whether, if I disappeared that night, he would come after me to save me or destroy me because I had learned too much.
May you like
His love might still have been the last thing that killed me.
Disclaimer: This story is fictional and created for entertainment purposes only. Any names, characters, places, or events are fictitious or used fictitiously. No real person or organization is intended to be portrayed.
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