Dante
Morning light pours through the kitchen windows, too bright against the mugs on the counter and Cole at the table with his coffee. The routine is still here. My throat tightens before I can stop it. Maya’s tea sits where her hand usually falls, and I have already put a crack through the routine we built around it.
Maya is at the counter. Her spot. Bare feet, Cole's sweatshirt. The laptop in front of her is closed. Her phone is face-down. Her bag waits on the floor beside her feet. She hasn't looked away from me since she walked downstairs twenty minutes ago.
Cole is at the table, both hands around his mug. He hasn't spoken since he sat down. His eyes have been moving between Maya and me, reading the room the way he reads every room, except this morning there is nowhere for him to hide either.
"I saw Marco's text," Maya says.
Cole's fingers tighten around his mug before I can answer.
"Last night. On your phone. On the coffee table. While you were lying on my shoulder with your eyes closed." Her voice doesn't shake. "Consider it handled. David Ashford will be monitored. No further contact with Maya."
She recites it from memory. Of course she does. Maya memorizes everything.
"I saw it too," Cole says from the table, quiet.
None of us moves. Her tea goes cold at the edge of the counter. Cole's coffee sits untouched between his hands. Morning light cuts across the tile between us.
"Did you make the call?" Maya asks.
The question is simple. Five words. My hand finds the counter before I answer.
"I didn't make a call," I say.
"Don't play semantics with me, Dante."
"No call to Marco. No call to anyone. At dinner, I sat across from my father and told him. In person. Face to face. I told him about the 413 calls, the envelope, the dead name. I told him a man was threatening someone I love and the legal system was moving too slowly. And my father picked up his phone at the table and texted Marco before I finished the sentence."
Maya's fingers curl against the counter edge.
"You promised," Maya says. "You stood in this kitchen and you said I won't. Not without your permission. Not behind your back."
"I know what I said."
"You lied."
"Yes."
Maya doesn't blink. Cole’s knuckles stay white around his mug.
"I lied," I say. "I made the promise because you asked me to and I broke it because I couldn't sleep. Because every night I liein that bed and count your breathing through the wall and the count keeps getting longer. Because the legal system gave him good behavior and a release date and he's in this city writing letters to a sealed address while the parole board processes paperwork. I lied because the restraint you asked for is killing me and the alternative, watching you carry this while the system does nothing, was worse than losing your trust."
"You don't get to decide that." Her voice shakes. "You don't get to weigh my trust against my safety and choose for me. That's what he did. My father. He decided what was best for me and the deciding was the violence. The deciding was always the violence, Dante, before the hands. The deciding. And you sat at a dinner table and decided for me without asking."
My hand closes around the edge of the counter. Different words. Same place in my chest.
"I know," I say.
"You know. You knew when you did it. You knew the comparison I'd make. You knew what it would cost. And you did it anyway."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"My uncle Enzo drew the same line I'm drawing. He tried to leave. He said no the way I said no. And the family waited. They waited until Enzo needed them, until someone he loved was threatened, and then they were there. Ready. Patient. And Enzo came back. Every Voss man who tries to leave comes back, Maya. My father told me that at the dinner and he was right. He was right because I'm standing in this kitchen having used his mafia ties exactly the way he knew I would."
Maya's hands are flat on the counter, fingers pressing hard enough to pale at the tips.
