Chapter 7
Tommy crossed himself once, an old habit. Then he was a captain again.
“What do you want?”
Dante put both hands flat on the leather.
“First, nothing to Vincenzo. Not a word, not a look at breakfast. He believes the toast is his. Second, every man on the party detail is replaced quietly, one at a time, between now and tomorrow night. Give them a reason. Say I’m sentimental. Say my father always picked his own men for the anniversary. Anyone who refuses to step aside is one of Vincenzo’s. Pull him off the property. No phone call.”
“Done.”
“Third, the tunnel. Daylight, you alone. Map it. Find the far end. I want it bolted on this side and open on that one. And three of your best in the roses with silencers. Whoever comes through walks into a room he can’t walk back out of.”
“A quiet trap.”
“Fourth.” His jaw tightened. “The witness doesn’t sleep near me. She sleeps in my mother’s old rooms on the third floor. Three thick doors between her and the party. Her mother stays with her. Bruno stays with them. No one goes above the second landing but you, and only if I send you.”
“Understood.”
“If Vincenzo asks about the dog, the dog’s sick upstairs. If anyone asks about the child, she’s with her aunt in Queens.”
“There’s no aunt in Queens.”
“There is now.”
For the first time, Tommy allowed himself a small, dry smile. “Anything else?”
“Yes. If I’m dead before the sixth toast—”
“Boss, don’t.”
“If I am, the mother and daughter leave this house before dawn. Not to any of our people. To a woman named Grace Howell, my mother’s lawyer. The address is in the small blue envelope in my desk. That envelope has sat there six years. Tonight it stops being a precaution.”
Tommy didn’t argue. He stood, took his hat from the chair back, buttoned his coat. At the door, his hand on the bolt, he stopped.
“When it’s done. What happens to the girl?”
Dante turned toward the window. The first true sunlight had come over the hedge and lay on the silver frame on his desk: his mother at twenty-five, laughing in a straw hat at something the photographer had said.
“She stays. Her and her mother. This house owes them a life.”
The morning behaved as if nothing were wrong. That was the terrible part.
Sophie woke in a room she didn’t know. Her nose came out from under the blanket first, then her eyes, round as saucers. The ceiling was three times the height of the cottage’s, with plaster leaves in the corners. The bed had four dark posts. The velvet curtains, pine green, were drawn almost shut, leaving one bright bar of morning across the foot of the bed.
Bruno lay on the rug, amber eyes already open.
“Is this a castle?” she whispered.
His tail thumped once against the floor. It seemed to mean yes.
Elena came in with a silver tray: warm ricotta bread, a tiny pot of honey, a glass mug of hot milk with a spiral of foam. She had folded the napkin into a triangle, because that was how she’d learned to serve breakfast in this house, and even now, on three hours’ sleep, her hands knew no other way.
“Mama, why are we sleeping in the queen’s room?”
Elena poured the milk slowly. She didn’t look at her daughter’s face, because she didn’t trust her own.
“Because you’re being brave, sweetheart. And brave girls get the queen’s room.”
Sophie considered this. It seemed reasonable.
“Am I being brave about the knocking?”
“About the knocking. And everything.”
Two floors below, in the breakfast room facing the eastern hedge, Dante sat across from his uncle. He’d shaved. He wore a charcoal shirt, no tie. In front of him, black coffee and a fan of sliced blood oranges arranged by a cook who had been arranging fans in this house for thirty years.
Vincenzo sat in his usual chair, silver watch catching the window light, *Il Corriere* folded beside his plate. He was discussing seating.
“I’ve put Alano at the end table. He’ll sulk, but he sulks anyway. Genovese on your right, Santini on your left. That way the argument about the docks stays at a low pitch.”
“Fine.”
“And Cavalero’s man isn’t coming.”
“Of course not.”
Dante turned a page of the guest list without looking at it. He named seven of the forty guests aloud, in the order they’d enter. Vincenzo nodded at each. It was a small test: did his uncle’s list still match his own? It did. Which meant Vincenzo had made no last-minute changes. Which meant Vincenzo didn’t think he needed to.
Dante slid a mahogany box across the linen.
“Havana. Delivered Monday.”
Vincenzo’s face softened, and Dante hated the softening, because he had known that face thirty-eight years and it had lied to him for at least seven of them.
“You spoil me.”
“I remember what you like.”
Vincenzo clipped a cigar. From his cardigan he drew a small gold Dupont lighter, worn dull at the corners by decades of a thumb, a single slanted letter engraved on its flank.
*V.*
The wheel struck. A neat blue flame.
Dante watched it. He thought of his father. He thought of a five-year-old beneath a white rose bush. He cut a piece of bread and buttered it evenly, corner to corner.
“You’re quiet this morning, nephew.”
“Nervous about the toast. The sixth is always the hardest.”
Vincenzo laughed, rich and easy. “That’s my brother’s line.”
“I know. He said it to me the week before he died.”
A beat. A very small one. Vincenzo’s laugh cut off at the top and came down again a second later, softer, rearranged.
In the corridor, Elena passed with a tray of dishes. She did not look at the two men. Three years had taught her to walk past a room without seeing into it.
Then Bruno appeared.
He came from the far end of the hall alone, no child at his side, walking with the calm of a creature who has never needed to run. He crossed the breakfast room, passed Dante’s chair, and stopped in front of Vincenzo.
He did not growl. He looked at him. Three long seconds, amber eyes unblinking.
Then he turned and walked out.
May you like
Vincenzo laughed, a shade too quickly. “Old dog’s losing his mind.”
“Bruno,” Dante said, voice even as the fold in his napkin, “never loses anything.”
