Chapter 11 - The Don’s Table6 months after my father died, I returned to the Victoria as its new general manager.
Not owner.
I had refused that.
Dante offered.
I laughed.
He offered again.
I threatened to break his expensive watch.
We compromised.
I would manage the restaurant.
I would receive a salary determined by an accountant who did not work for Moretti.
Aldo would remain.
Dante would own the building and keep his opinions outside the kitchen unless invited.
He agreed to the terms after 4 days of negotiations.
Apparently I had become the only employee in New York who required a mafia Don to sign a boundary agreement before allowing him to reserve dinner.
The Victoria reopened on a Tuesday.
Naturally.
At 5:45 p.m., I stood beneath the chandeliers wearing a black dress instead of an apron.
The room smelled of rosemary, fresh bread, and varnished wood.
Table 7 remained beside the window.
The bullet marks beneath the baseboard remained too.
I had decided not to repair them further.
Some scars deserved paint.
Some deserved memory.
Aldo approached with his black notebook.
“You are frowning.”
“I am managing.”
“Same face.”
He handed me the reservation sheet.
I looked down.
7:30.
Table 7.
Dante Moretti.
Party of 1.
I laughed.
“He reserved 3 weeks ago.”
“Tradition.”
“He lives 11 minutes away.”
“Powerful men enjoy unnecessary planning.”
I closed the notebook.
“Give him Table 4.”
Aldo stared.
“He requested 7.”
“I know.”
Aldo smiled slowly.
“My favorite manager.”
Dante arrived at 7:29.
The dining room changed as it always did when he entered.
People still noticed.
Some feared.
Some admired.
Some pretended not to know.
He wore a navy suit.
Almost identical to the 1st night.
His hair combed back.
Watch understated.
Calm belonging to a man who no longer needed to pretend he controlled everything because apparently dating me had cured at least 4 percent of his delusion.
Renzo entered behind him.
Helena followed.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Party of 1?”
Dante looked at Helena.
“She invited herself.”
Helena hugged me.
“I live in a free country.”
Renzo raised an eyebrow.
I looked at him.
“You came too.”
“I was ordered.”
“By whom?”
Helena smiled.
Renzo remained silent.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
I stored the information.
“Table 4.”
Dante looked toward Table 7.
“I reserved—”
“Table 4.”
He met my eyes.
Then smiled faintly.
“Of course.”
They sat.
I returned to the kitchen.
My life had become strange.
Helena completed her 2nd year at university and changed majors from economics to forensic accounting, which worried every criminal I knew more than police officers did.
She no longer lived in the Queens studio.
Neither did I.
We kept it for approximately 2 months because leaving felt like betrayal.
Then a pipe burst through the ceiling.
The landlord raised rent.
Sentiment surrendered.
Helena moved into student housing with a roommate who believed Renzo was her unusually intense uncle.
I rented the Chelsea apartment from Dante.
At market rate.
He complained.
I paid.
He sent the difference back once.
I donated it to a legal-aid organization.
He stopped.
Our relationship developed strange domestic rules.
Wednesday dinner at my apartment.
Sunday breakfast at his penthouse.
No armed men inside my building.
No unannounced investigations of my friends.
No paying my electricity.
No sending chefs because I complained about takeout once.
The last rule required repetition.
Dante violated it twice.
I retaliated by replacing the coffee inside his penthouse with decaffeinated beans.
There had been no 3rd violation.
At 8:10, I approached Table 4.
Dante looked up.
“Everything satisfactory?”
“No.”
“What is wrong?”
“You have not sat.”
“I am working.”
“You own the restaurant.”
“You employ me to manage it.”
“I do not employ you.”
“Excellent. Then you have no authority.”
Helena laughed into her water.
Renzo studied the wine list.
Traitor.
Dante leaned back.
“Dinner at 10?”
“I finish at 11.”
“11:15?”
“Perhaps.”
His face became too serious.
“Ask me later.”
Understanding softened him.
He nodded.
“Fine.”
That remained our language.
Not certainty.
Permission.
Renewal.
Choice.
At 9:32, a man entered the Victoria alone.
I noticed him because Aldo’s shoulder moved.
The old warning.
One shoulder.
Something wrong.
The man wore an ordinary gray coat.
Approximately 50.
Clean-shaven.
No visible weapon.
He approached the host stand and gave a name.
“Caruso.”
My body stopped.
Sofia.
I had never met her after the telephone calls.
She disappeared following Vittorio’s death.
No body.
No verified sighting.
No explanation.
The host looked toward the reservation book.
“There is no reservation.”
The man smiled.
“I am not here to eat.”
Dante had already noticed.
Renzo set down the wine list.
Helena looked between them.
I crossed toward the entrance.
“Can I help you?”
The man’s eyes moved over my face.
“You look exactly like Lucia when angry.”
I became cold.
“Who are you?”
“Marco Caruso.”
The name meant nothing immediately.
Then:
Sofia’s husband had been Carlo.
Marco.
Perhaps son.
Brother.
“Relationship?”
“To Sofia?”
“Yes.”
“Son.”
My stomach tightened.
“My cousin.”
“Half cousin.”
“Why are you here?”
He reached slowly inside his coat.
Dante stood.
Renzo’s hand disappeared beneath the table.
Marco stopped.
“Relax.”
He removed an envelope.
Placed it on the host stand.
“My mother died 4 days ago.”
Something shifted inside me despite never meeting her.
“She asked me to deliver this.”
“To me?”
“To Lucia’s oldest daughter.”
I stared at the envelope.
My name appeared in handwriting I did not recognize.
ISIDORA.
“Why did she disappear?”
“Because Bellini believed she betrayed Vittorio during the church meeting.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
Dante approached.
Marco looked at him.
“Moretti.”
“Caruso.”
The temperature dropped approximately 5 degrees.
I stepped between them.
“Not inside my restaurant.”
Dante’s expression almost changed.
Marco smiled.
“Definitely Lucia’s daughter.”
I picked up the envelope.
It was thick.
“What is inside?”
“My mother’s confession.”
“About what?”
“Your mother’s death.”
The world became quiet.
Behind me, a glass touched a table.
Someone laughed.
The kitchen door opened.
Ordinary life continued.
I stared at Marco.
“My mother died in a car accident.”
“No.”
Dante moved closer.
“Isidora.”
I did not look at him.
“What are you saying?”
Marco’s face lost humor.
“Lucia Veil was killed.”
The envelope became heavy inside my hand.
“By Bellini?”
Marco looked toward Dante.
Then back at me.
“No.”
My heartbeat slowed strangely.
“Who?”
He answered carefully.
“Alessandro Moretti.”
The name of Dante’s father.
I turned.
Dante had become completely still.
He did not say impossible.
He did not deny it.
He looked at the envelope.
Then at me.
“I did not know.”
I believed him immediately.
That was almost unbearable.
Marco stepped backward.
“My mother wrote everything. Names, dates, witnesses.”
“Why now?”
“She was dying.”
I laughed without humor.
“Apparently dying parents become honest.”
Marco absorbed the bitterness.
“She believed Lucia deserved the truth returned to her daughters.”
He walked toward the door.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“Did your mother help kill mine?”
His expression changed.
“No.”
“Was she there?”
“Yes.”
My hands became cold.
“What did she do?”
“She tried to stop it.”
Then he left.
I stood inside the Victoria holding an envelope that might destroy the last stable piece of Dante’s family history.
Dante did not touch me.
Good.
I opened it.
6 handwritten pages.
A photograph.
A police report.
A letter.
The photograph showed my mother’s damaged car.
I closed my eyes.
13 years old.
Hospital.
Rain.
My father’s hands.
No.
I opened them.
Sofia’s confession began:
Lucia discovered Alessandro Moretti had ordered Matteo’s death and intended to expose him using the ledger.
My eyes moved quickly.
Alessandro discovered her plan.
He ordered the brakes cut.
Sofia learned too late.
Carlo attempted to intervene.
Bellini allowed the killing because Lucia’s silence benefited both families.
My mother’s accident had been an execution.
I stopped reading.
Dante stood approximately 4 feet away.
His face looked gray.
“Isidora.”
“Do not.”
He stopped.
I continued reading.
Alessandro regretted it afterward.
Helped Richard hide.
Allowed my father to disappear.
Protected me and Helena indirectly for several years.
Guilt again.
The Moretti family’s favorite substitute for morality.
I folded the letter.
Very carefully.
Helena stood beside me now.
Tears covered her face.
“Mom?”
I handed her the page.
She read.
Renzo remained near the table.
He looked older suddenly.
“Did you know?” Dante asked him.
Renzo’s face tightened.
“No.”
Dante believed him.
I did too.
Dante looked at me.
“My father—”
“Do not explain him.”
“I was not going to.”
“Good.”
I walked toward Table 7.
The restaurant continued operating because sometimes catastrophe happened during dinner service and employees still required instructions.
I sat.
The original table.
My mother met my father there.
I met Dante there.
Apparently every generation of my family required this piece of furniture to ruin them.
Dante followed but remained standing.
“Sit.”
He did.
I looked at him.
“Your father killed my mother.”
“Yes.”
“You did not know.”
“No.”
“I believe you.”
His throat moved.
“I do not know what to do with that.”
“Neither do I.”
I looked toward Helena.
She sat with Renzo several tables away, reading Sofia’s confession again.
“I want every record about Alessandro Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“Everything.”
“Yes.”
“No security filter.”
He hesitated.
I raised 1 eyebrow.
“Everything.”
“Yes.”
“I want to know whether anyone still alive participated.”
“Yes.”
“And if they did?”
Dante’s expression became cold.
“What do you want?”
The question frightened me.
Because he meant it.
If I named death, he might bring it.
I thought of my mother.
Her green coat.
Her recipes.
Her telling me to cut onions smaller because Helena complained.
I thought of Richard destroying himself through cowardly protection.
I thought of Dante learning control could not substitute for care.
“I want the truth made public where it can be public.”
He nodded.
“And where crimes can still be prosecuted, I want prosecution.”
Another nod.
“No executions.”
He held my gaze.
“No executions.”
I exhaled.
This was the difference.
Between inheritance and choice.
Between Alessandro and Dante.
Between my father and me.
“You may hate that.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
His mouth almost moved.
“I expected that response.”
I looked toward his hands.
The same hands that killed.
The same hands that waited now.
“My mother was killed by your father.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
Dante stopped breathing.
It was the 1st time I had said it.
I almost laughed at the cruelty of timing.
His eyes changed completely.
I continued.
“I hate that both are true at the same time.”
He looked downward.
“Isidora.”
“I do not know what happens next.”
“I know.”
“Wrong sentence.”
He swallowed.
“I will wait for you to decide.”
Better.
Much better.
I reached across the table.
Not to take his hand.
Only to place mine beside it.
Approximately 1 inch away.
The same distance inside the armored car months earlier.
He noticed.
Neither of us moved closer.
Outside, Manhattan continued shining through the new glass.
May you like
Inside, Table 7 held generations of lies.
This time, no one would paint over them.
