He’s about to say more—he always has more—when my phone pulses once, a text lighting the top of the screen like a fuse.
Pia: Heads up. Restaurant photo of you with Harrison and Theodore making rounds.
My heart kicks against my ribs. Harrison follows my glance to the phone, then back to my face, savoring the flicker like fine wine.
“Ah,” he says, satisfied. “Showtime.” He raises the breadstick like a toast. “To family—first poison you drink and the last habit you break.”
He bites.
I look at Grandpa, and he looks at me, and in his eyes I see the whole story and the ending I want—less secrets and more confession.
I turn back to Harrison and fold my napkin very carefully, because I am done being the girl who trembles before men who mistake noise for power.
“Enjoy your bread,” I tell him, steady. “You won’t be welcome for dessert.”
The restaurant doors open on a gust of cold air that doesn’t belong to June.
Heads turn. My pulse answers before my brain catches up, because my body knows the storm I married.
Vasso…my husband…the undeniable love of my life, is here.
And he’sincandescent.
I rise shakily to my feet. Harrison smiles wider.
“Now,” he says brightly, “this should be fun.”
25
VASSO
“She fights for you. Even when you may not deserve it. You’re anidiotaif you let her go.”
Vecchio says it before he says hello.
We’re three minutes into a video conference call that should be about vote math and side letters, but my phone pings and the photo hits my screen.
Naomi at a Midtown restaurant, her grandfather at her right, Harrison at her left like rot in a ripe fruit.
A black haze washes over my eyes and the room tilts.
Mara goes silent mid-sentence. On the other end, I hear a wineglass put down like a gavel.
“You’ve seen the picture.” It’s not a question to the old man.
Old, weary eyes watch me. “I know that look so let me repeat myself. She fights for you,” Enzo repeats, voice amused, eyes unamused. “Even when you may not deserve it. You’re anidiotaif you let her go.”
“I didn’t say I was letting anyone go,” I reply, too even, which is how I sound when I’m bleeding.
“No,ragazzo. You grow quiet the way men do when the old pain knocks. You forget the girl has teeth. Go. We’ll hold theline.” A beat, dry. “And don’t start a war in the restaurant. I like that place.”
Mara clears her throat. “I’ll brief counsel. I’ll also text security at the restaurant to keep cameras back if this turns… cinematic.”
“Handle it,” I say, already on my feet, already shrugging into a jacket, fingers clenching around the phone holding the photo I can’t stop looking at. Naomi’s face is composed in the shot; her hand is near the butter knife, notonit in battle mode. Harrison’s smile is the one foxes wear when they discover someone left the coop gate open.
I kill the line to Vecchio.
The office door ricochets off the stop and of course, the elevator takes too long because elevators hate men with adrenaline. When I slam inside, the mirrored steel throws back a glimpse of myself—an unhinged man who looks like he’s about to auction his temper to the highest bidder—and hear a voice older than Vecchio’s, the one that learned to whisper in servants’ halls:
