“I know what it took. I know what it destroyed.”
“And it left you with that face,” she says, not unkind. “The one that nearly destroyed us.”
“The men behind Blackvine made a mistake,” I say. “They made it at Blackvine by hurting children. They’ve been making it since I left those walls, and I think they’ve grown too comfortable. I intend to end the habit. Them, the money, the lawyers, the small-time crews they prop up. The vines, roots, branches, little leaves. Every part.”
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. The room remembers how I sound when I mean it.
“And if the girl has family,” Nan says mildly, “that sits at a Blackvine table?”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“It’s always a possibility.”
“Then we need to know,” I say. “I need to make sure.”
“And if she did?” Her eyes test for cracks. “If her father had business with those men and they wrote in his books and took his calls? If she walks your aisle with their name in her pocket without knowing it?”
“Then I ask her to hand me the name,” I say. “And I eliminate the threat.”
“And if she won’t?”
“Then we measure what won’t means,” I say. “But I’m not letting her drown in their water. I’ve spent enough years pulling people from that river.”
“The river wasn’t what took you under,” Nan says. “It was the ice.”
She’s not wrong.
I take a breath that doesn’t show.
CHAPTER BREAK?
“I never thought there would be sun again after Blackvine,” I say. “I thought the weather was set. One night with her, and I saw an end that I hadn’t believed in.”
Nan tilts her head. “Sun is a fair thing to call a girl. But the sun burns, too. Don’t stand there and complain if it warms your bones and shows your shadows.”
“I don’t intend to complain.” I finally drink from the glass she gave me. The whiskey does its job. “I intend to marry her. I intend to keep her safe. I intend to finish what I started with Blackvine. If those two lines cross and something becomes impossible, I’ll make the choice that leaves her breathing.”
“Breathing where?” Nan presses.
Her question is clear. She wants to know if I plan on keeping Caterina.
“With me,” I say.
Giving her this much should burn. It should be like pulling teeth to give Nan the truth of my intentions. But she’s the head of our family. I may be the public face, the man in control. But Nan? No man in my family would dare move against her.
She watches me and then looks at the photographs on the sideboard. She gets up, carries one over, hands it to me like a test. My grandfather, younger than me, hair dark, mouth set. Nan beside him in a white dress with sleeves, chin up, eyes like a woman who agreed to something that should have frightened her and didn’t.
“He promised me,” she says. “He said, ‘I’ll build a table for you and kill before I let anyone flip it.’ He kept that promise. Even when I wanted him to be softer with the boys. I married the man he was, not the man I imagined. Do you understand me?”
“I do.”
“Then don’t sell her a dream of some sweet Italian baker and deliver her a general.” Her voice is soft; the point is not. “Tell her exactly who you are. If she runs, she runs in truth.”
“She won’t run.”I won’t let her.
I don’t tell her that I’ve got a plan to tie Caterina to me in any situation.
“That’s what your grandfather said about me,” Nan says, amused. “And he was right. But he gave me the chance. He slept on the floor that first week with his hand under the bed and the gun on top of it, and when I woke he was already sitting in the chair by the window thinking about boys he had to bury and men he had to threaten to keep our planned kingdom. I married all that, too.”
