She goes still at that. I shouldn’t have said that. I leave it alone.
“What time?” she asks.
“8:00,” I say. “I’ll sit at the corner two-top by the window. Your mother knows which one. No audience.”
Bianca looks down at her hands, then up. “Okay,” she says. “Tonight.”
Francesca makes a noise. Bianca doesn’t turn.
“Good,” I say. “Then we’re done.”
Francesca stands like her joints hurt. “Giovanni,” she says as I get to the door. I turn. She’s not good at asking for things, never has been. “If you— If you decide it’s a no… you keep it respectful.”
“Of course,” I say, then step out without looking back, no matter how much I want to.
Outside, the alley smells like coffee and damp cardboard. I step into it and breathe. Roberto is going to tell me I’ve lost my mind. He won’t be wrong.
What did I just do?
Hired a woman I can’t stop thinking about to stand in my kitchen every day until she’s paid off some number. Invited the storm into my house. Put myself on a schedule I don’t give anyone.
I swallow the stale air like an idiot, then head for the car.
What have I gotten myself into?
Chapter Seven
Bianca
I unlock the door and step into the dark and quiet. The house smells like lemon oil and basil from the pot on the sill. I drop my bag on the chair and stand a second with my hand on the doorknob, head against the wood. The click of the deadbolt is louder than it should be.
I toe off my shoes in the dark like a thief in my own place and pad to the kitchen. The light over the sink buzzes when I flip it. The counter is the same as this morning. The mug I didn’t wash. The bananas going slowly black.
I fill a glass. The water runs cold and tastes like the pipe under the street that’s been there since before I was born.
I’m halfway through the first swallow when there’s a knock. Three quick raps I know by heart.
I don’t bother asking who it is. I open the door.
Mama is on the step with her coat open and her hair falling out of whatever pins she jammed it in with. She steps past me on habit and shucks her heels like a woman coming home to a place that used to be hers.
She points at me like I’m a smoke alarm that won’t shut up. “Are you crazy?”
“I heard you,” I say, moving past her to the counter. The basil on the sill needs water. I give it some. “No, I’m not.”
“You agreed to be his private chef.” She says it like I agreed to rob a bank. “In his house.”
“For a few months.”
“For a few months,” she repeats, disgusted. “Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?”
“Yes,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “I’m not an idiot.”
“You think you’re going to walk into a Conti home and just… cook,” she says, chopping the air with her hand. “You think there aren’t strings in those walls? You think there won’t be people watching you and reporting back and testing you for sport?”
“I think there’s a ledger with a number,” I shoot back. “And cooking in his house knocks that number down faster than we can with envelopes and double shifts and praying the fryer doesn’t die on a Saturday.”
She laughs once, ugly. “So it’s math to you.”
