I'm not alone, I remind myself. Jasper and Shayne are in the front seat. They have my back. Luca's guards are somewhere behind us.
Shayne pulls into the parking lot and finds a spot near the entrance, the engine's hum settling into idle as the streetlights flicker on.
In the rearview mirror I catch one of Luca's sedans pulling up just as Shayne kills the engine. They'll have to figure out where I went.
Jasper glances over his shoulder, his sharp eyes finding mine.
"We'll be right here. You need us, you text one word and we're through the door."
I nod, gather my bag from my lap, and step out into the cold evening air. The wind bites through my coat the moment the car door closes behind me, carrying the scent of rain and exhaust and the distant sweetness of a bakery closing up for the night somewhere down the block. My heels find the sidewalk and I straighten my spine before turning toward the restaurant entrance.
Marchello's is exactly the kind of restaurant my mother would choose. Warm lighting that flatters aging skin. Her words, not mine on the few times we actually spoke in the last year like mother and daughter.
White linen tablecloths that whisper of old money and good breeding. The dining room vibrates with the ambient warmth of a dozen overlapping conversations. Somewhere to my right silverware clinks against porcelain as a woman's laugh rises above the murmur before dissolving back into the pleasant noise of people who have the luxury of ordinary problems.
The scent of garlic and fresh bread and expensive wine drifts through it all, rich and comforting and designed to make every guest feel safe.
A hostess in a black dress greets me with a polished smile and the practiced warmth of someone who has welcomed a thousand faces without remembering a single one.
"I'm meeting my mother. Her name is Carina Marchetti."
The hostess consults her book and nods. "Of course. Mrs. Marchetti is in our private dining room. Right this way."
Private dining room. The words prickle against the back of my neck, a whisper of warning that my desperate heart refuses to hear. My mother chose privacy because she's scared. Because she doesn't want to cry in public or one of my father’s associates to spot her. Makes sense. She's spent a lifetime hiding her pain behind closed doors and old habits die hard even when you're running for your life.
That's what I tell myself as I follow the hostess through the crowded dining room, past tables of laughing couples and business dinners and birthday celebrations, through a narrow corridor lined with oil paintings of Italian landscapes that remind me of the art hanging in my father's study.
The restaurant fades behind me with every step, replaced by a silence that presses against my eardrums with increasing weight.
The hostess stops before a heavy oak door with brass handles polished to a warm gleam. She opens it and steps aside with a gesture that invites me forward.
I step inside, and the world I built from hope and desperation collapses around me.
My mother sits at a long table set for three, her hands folded in her lap, her posture the rigid stillness of a woman who has been arranged like a centerpiece. Her eyes are red from crying, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion, but her face wears the blank mask I've known my entire life, the vacant expression she retreats behind when the alternative is feeling anything at all.
She's not alone.
Enzo Marchetti sits beside her, his silver hair gleaming beneath the soft lighting of a private room designed for intimate conversations between people who trust each other.
His left hand rests on my mother's wrist in a grip that looks gentle from across the table, the kind of casual touch a loving husband might offer his wife in a quiet moment.
But I recognize the tension in my mother's forearm, the almost imperceptible angle of her body pulling away from his while the rest of her stays perfectly, obediently still. That grip is not tender. It is pure restraint.
Luca was right about one thing. The letter and the messages were a play. Just like our marriage. Just like everything else in my life that was supposed to be real.
Behind me, two of his men step into the doorway and close the door with a soft, definitive click that sounds like the tumbler of a lock falling into place.
My mother's eyes lift to mine, and the apology I find there shatters the last fragment of hope I carried through that door.
Enzo releases my mother's wrist. His pale eyes travel over me with the clinical appraisal, lingering on the curve of my belly with an interest that makes my blood turn to ice.
His lips curve into a smile that carries all the warmth of a winter funeral.
"Hello, daughter. We have so much to discuss."
Fourteen
Ilona
