Chapter 1 - More than willingly.
The second his small body settled against my chest, his crying stopped.
Not gradually.
Completely.
He pressed his damp cheek beneath my chin and released a long, trembling sigh.
I stared at Luca.
Luca stared at me.
Behind him, the older man who had whispered earlier crossed himself.
“All right,” I said.
“Now somebody really needs to explain why everyone is acting like I just performed a miracle.”
The older man looked at Luca.
Luca looked at him.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Excellent.
Very reassuring.”
Leo reached toward my necklace.
There it was.
The explanation.
I almost laughed from relief.
“I knew it.”
I touched the small silver pendant.
“He likes shiny things.”
But Luca’s expression did not change.
“What is that?” he asked.
“A necklace.”
“I can see that.”
“Then we’re making wonderful progress.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
There was that almost-smile again, except it disappeared too quickly.
“The pendant,” he said.
“Where did you get it?”
I looked down.
The necklace wasn’t valuable.
At least, I had never believed it was.
A slender silver chain held an oval pendant no larger than my thumbnail.
Tiny vines had been engraved around its edge, worn smooth with age.
There was no gemstone, no expensive setting.
Just silver.
Just memory.
“My mother gave it to me.”
“When?”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Avery.”
The way he said my name bothered me.
Not threatening.
Too careful.
“My twenty-first birthday,” I said.
“But she’d had it forever.
I used to play with it when I was little.”
The older man shifted in his chair.
Luca noticed.
“So you recognize it too,” I said.
“No,” he answered immediately.
The older man said, “Luca—”
“Uncle.”
One word.
A warning, perhaps, but not the kind Greg had imagined when he’d told me to behave myself.
It sounded more like a nephew asking someone not to open a door he wasn’t ready to walk through.
That only made me more curious.
Leo lifted his head.
His fingers closed around the pendant.
Then, with the intense concentration only babies seemed capable of giving completely ordinary objects, he rubbed his thumb across the engraved vines.
Luca went pale.
Actually pale.
I had spent my entire adult life working service jobs.
I was good at reading faces.
I knew irritation, entitlement, embarrassment, attraction, suspicion.
What passed through Luca’s expression was grief.
Raw and immediate.
I instinctively covered Leo’s hand with mine.
“I think you should take him back.”
“No.”
I blinked.
Luca exhaled and softened his voice.
“Please.
Just another minute.”
Something about that please changed the atmosphere.
I sat carefully in the empty chair beside him.
Leo curled against me as if we did this every Friday night.
Around us, Aurelia resumed pretending not to stare.
A server carried plates past our table.
Somebody laughed too loudly near the bar.
The pianist returned to playing.
But Table Twelve had become its own separate world.
“What was your mother’s name?”
Luca asked.
I stiffened.
“That feels personal.”
“It is.”
“Then why should I answer?”
He nodded slowly.
For the first time, I sensed that Luca Moretti was a man accustomed to answers arriving immediately, yet he appeared to be deliberately stopping himself from demanding one.
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
“Not unless you choose to.”
That surprised me.
I studied him.
“Mara Bennett.”
His uncle closed his eyes.
Luca didn’t move.
My stomach dropped.
“You know that name.”
His uncle looked toward me.
“Your mother’s full name,” he said gently.
“Was it Mara Elise Bennett?”
I stood so fast the chair scraped against the floor.
Leo startled.
I immediately sat again.
“Sorry,” I whispered to him.
Then I looked at the men.
“How do you know my mother?”
Luca’s uncle spoke first.
“My name is Enzo Moretti.”
“Congratulations.”
His mouth twitched.
Luca almost looked annoyed at him for finding me amusing.
Enzo leaned forward.
“I knew someone named Mara a long time ago.”
“Knew how?”
“Through family.”
“My family?”
He hesitated.
Wrong move.
I had endured too many years of incomplete explanations.
My mother had been the queen of them.
Where did you grow up?
Different places.
Do you have sisters?
Not anymore.
What about grandparents?
They’re gone, sweetheart.
Who was my father?
Someone who wasn’t ready to be one.
Every answer had closed a door.
Eventually I stopped knocking.
Now a stranger was sitting in front of me, saying my mother’s name as if the door had never been locked at all.
I shifted Leo toward Luca.
“This is becoming too strange.”
Leo resisted immediately.
His lower lip trembled.
“Hey,” I murmured.
“You’re okay.”
I let him keep one hand wrapped around my finger while Luca held him.
That compromise seemed acceptable.
For Leo, anyway.
Not for me.
“You recognized the necklace,” I said.
Enzo glanced at Luca again.
I lost patience.
“If you two communicate entirely through meaningful eye contact, I’m going back to work.”
Luca reached inside his jacket.
One of the bodyguards moved slightly, and my entire body tensed before Luca pulled out nothing more dangerous than a phone.
He unlocked it.
Scrolled.
Stopped.
Then placed it on the table.
The photograph showed a woman standing on a sunlit porch.
She had dark auburn hair.
Gray-blue eyes.
A wide smile.
For one disorienting second, I thought I was looking at myself.
Not exactly.
Her face was narrower.
Her hair was longer.
There were small differences around the eyes and mouth.
But enough similarity existed that my breath disappeared.
She was holding a newborn.
Leo.
And around her neck was a silver oval pendant engraved with tiny vines.
I stopped breathing.
“Who is she?”
Luca’s voice became quiet.
“My wife.”
The word carried its own answer.
Not ex-wife.
Not Leo’s mother.
Wife, spoken in the past tense without saying the past tense.
I looked again at the photograph.
“She looks like me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You obviously know something.”
“I know less than you think.”
Leo reached toward the phone.
Luca turned it facedown.
“What was her name?”
I asked.
“Isabel.”
A strange sensation moved through me.
Not recognition.
Something weaker.
An echo.
“My mother used to say that name.”
Enzo leaned forward.
“When?”
“I don’t know.
When I was little.”
I pressed my fingertips against my temple.
There were fragments of childhood that lived in useless places inside my mind.
A woman’s handwriting on a Christmas card.
My mother crying once while washing dishes.
A box she kept on the top shelf of her closet.
A song she stopped singing halfway through.
The name Isabel.
Maybe.
Or maybe I only wanted to remember it now.
“My mother died three years ago,” I said.
Enzo’s expression softened.
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded because people always said that.
Usually I knew what to do with the words.
Tonight I didn’t.
Greg appeared near the table, looking as if he had aged five years.
“Avery, everything all right?”
“No.”
Greg turned white.
I almost felt bad.
“Not restaurant-related,” I added.
He looked unconvinced.
Luca stood.
“Mr.
Harris, Miss Bennett is finished for the evening.”
My head snapped toward him.
“Excuse me?”
Greg immediately nodded.
“Of course.”
“No.”
I stood too.
“I decide when I’m finished.”
Luca looked at me.
Something unreadable flickered across his face.
Then he surprised me again.
“You’re right.”
Greg looked between us.
I folded my arms.
“If I’m leaving early, it’s because I choose to leave early.”
“Understood.”
May you like
“And I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
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