“Caterina?” He turns to his daughter. “Is it true?”
She cats her eyes down and nods with a trembling lower lip. “Yes, Father.”
There’s a long pause, during which he bows his head and clenches his hand into a shaking fist on the white linen tablecloth. The room holds its breath. Finally he lifts his gaze, spearing first me and then his daughter.
“Then, you’ll marry.”
I’m watching her more carefully than I’ve ever watched anyone before, so I clock the tiny shake of her head before she catches herself.
“But…” She trails off, and I can feel the conflict in her body as she tries to figure out her new reality. “The Church.”
“Can be bought off.” Don Marco nods. “Of course, if you want to enter the cloister now, we can make that happen instead.”
“Peace is cheap,” Rafferty says quietly, putting an opinion where one isn’t needed. “War is not. Cayce is going to claim her. The Church can take another innocent.”
Caterina lifts her hand and sets two fingers on the edge of the box. She doesn’t look at her father, or at Rafferty. She looks at me like she’s measuring whether I’m worth giving her trust to.
She nods and—finally—looks to her father. “I will consider it,” she says, and the way she saysIsounds like a quiet revolution announced into a microphone. “After the first course.”
The room exhales. Relief. Regret. Both.
“We’ll meet with the lawyers and draw up the contracts and prenuptial agreements tomorrow,” Don Marco says, reclaiminggravity. “Tonight, we eat and celebrate the joining of our families.”
The server returns, summoned by the sound of knives sheathing. Plates arrive—creamy risotto and filet so tender a spoon could slice it through. Conversation pivots to shipping routes, container audits, vendors who forget to send invoices. I answer when asked. I keep my hands visible. I don’t posture. I’m aware of Caterina every second—how she holds her fork like she holds a line. How she listens more than she speaks and says more than the other men think she does.
Three times she glances at the window, not because she’s nervous—but because she counts windowpanes like I do.
Once she touches the chain at her throat. Once she presses her thumb into her palm like she’s marking a line that isn’t really there.
When her father mentions the convent in a tone that calls it a building and not a future, her mouth tightens a hair and then I see the relief wash over her.
Halfway through, a shadow resolves in the glass. Nico has taken one polite step closer from the bar—the kind of approach a competitor makes when he wants to be recognized and also to remind you he exists.
Roisin smiles at me then tips her glass almost imperceptibly toward Caterina, then offers me a wink. Her sign of approval. Tiernan’s reflection remains calm and unruffled.
“Excuse me,” Caterina says, pushing back her chair. “I have class tomorrow.”
Don Marco rises as she does because respect is muscle memory in men who were raised correctly. I stand, too. I don’t reach for the box or the ring I’m dying to slip onto her finger.
She picks up the box. Closes it with a neat click. Slides it toward me without drama. “I said I’ll consider,” she murmurs, just for me. “You hold this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I don’t look away when she gives me the smallest, most lethal look I’ve ever caught and then tilts her head to Roisin.
“It was nice to meet you,” she tells my sister.
“You too,” Roisin says, meaning it. “Your dress is perfect.”
Caterina’s mouth warms a degree. “Your boots are better.”
Then she leaves without looking at Nico. Art, that. I watch as he swallows the slight with a swallow of whiskey, his gaze following after her with transparent covetousness.
She’s gone, and the air shifts. Rafferty picks up his fork. Don Marco picks up his pride. I pick up the box and slide it into my pocket.
We finish the work—routes assigned by column, the priest transferred with a donation, the vendors sent a reminder that bills are paid in money not Mass cards. At the end, Don Marco offers his hand. I take it. Two old ways shake on a new one.
In the foyer, we pause long enough for the people who need to see us leave together to see it. Outside, the night smells like wet stone and the sugar from the bakery next door. The city listens when power makes arrangements; tonight it hears a promise and decides not to riot.
Tiernan falls in beside me as we cross to the car. Behind us, Rafferty stands under the awning with the consigliere while Roisin tugs her gloves.
