He didn’t argue.He crossed to the sideboard, poured water, handed me a glass.
“Dante said—” My voice cracked.I tried again.“He said my father made sure the bullet landed.”
Silence stretched, delicate as spun sugar and just as easy to break.
“I know what your father told you.I know what mine didn’t.”
“And if it’s true?”
He didn’t flinch.“Then we cut it out.Clean.”
I nodded.The water made a slow circuit through me, found every tremor, and negotiated peace.It didn’t last.
“I have something,” I said, and set the folder on the desk.
His gaze sharpened.“Where did you?—”
“Marco.”
“Of course.”Half a smile, razor-thin.He flipped the flap back.
Inside: photographs.Copies of ledger pages.A typed memorandum with a date that made my stomach go strange:October 3, 1985.The same handwriting I’d seen in my father’s ledger—elegant, precise.A paragraph underlined:Assurance of Continuity.A line aboutalternative bondsif ports proved… intractable.Someone had initialed in the margin.D.M.andG.G..
And then another sheet.A deposit slip.A florist.Casa dei Fiori.Date-stamped the day before Giovanni died.The note line read:cymbidium—white.A number next to it I recognized for no sane reason—my father’s old private line.The room tilted.I put one hand on the desk and my fingers went pale.
He reached for the next photograph.Old—edges foxed, color gone to sepia’s older brother.A table.The same table from last night, but intact.Don Moretti and Giovanni Gallo on either side.A third man blurred at the edge—profile only, silver at the temple catching the flash.Not entirely in frame.My father has always had an uncanny talent for not being fully seen in pictures.It keeps power from sticking to you in the wrong ways.
My throat went raw.“I need to ask him.”So my father played a role in all this?Of course I knew did horrible things, especially in his business, but… something about this was different.
“You will,” Enrico said.“But not tonight.”
“When?”
“When I can keep you between me and a bullet while you hear the answer.”
“And if the answer is yes?”
The look he gave me then had too much tenderness for a room with this much history.“Then I take care of him like a king.Not like a butcher.”
“You’ll kill him.”No question.A statement that hurt to be that honest.
His jaw worked once.Twice.“If I must.”
“I need air.”I need to not cry in front of the man who would burn down a city for me.
He stepped aside.Gave me the path.He has learned that love sometimes looks like letting someone walk out of the room before they drown.Like I was.
The gallery was all reflection and expensive silence.Moonlight turned the marble blue.The black paper crane perched on the sill..I cracked it open.Another line in small print waited on the inside of a wing:
BRING THE PAGE.MIDNIGHT.COME ALONE.
Of course.Of course he’d sayalone.
I folded the crane back up, crisp edges against my fingerprints.The room pressed around me, a kind of velvet suffocation.
“Mia.”Enrico’s voice.Close.Not touching.
I turned.Held up the crane.He read the tiny line without taking it.Then his mouth drew inward, that particular not-smile that always means strategy and pain have shaken hands.“Dante said alone.”
