Chapter 8 Cayce
CAYCE
The restaurant is the kind of quiet that costs money—linen heavy as conscience, lamps low enough to soften edges without hiding them. A painting of a ship pretends this room is old money and not rented peace.
It’s neutral ground, the kind you have to pay to keep neutral.
Rafferty is already seated when I arrive.
Don Marco Moretti sits opposite, that calm-cold thing men learn when they’ve buried enough bodies.
His consigliere stays a chair back, silent by training.
Roisin takes the chair to my right, hands folded like she’s praying for patience; Tiernan posts behind me, a respectful ghost. The chair to Don Marco’s left is empty. Waiting.
“Mr. Shannon,” Don Marco says. The corners of his mouth move in what might be a smile if you were too far away to see it for what it really is. Poorly concealed hostility. “I appreciate punctuality.”
I ease into my chair. “I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Good evening.”
Rafferty gives me the look that reminds me—steady hands. I set both palms on the linen for one breath, ground myself to fabric and wood until my bones remember this table isn’t a barn door in Colorado.
“Before we begin,” Don Marco adds, eyes cutting to the empty chair, “I thought I’d have my daughter join us for the first course. As a courtesy to the families.”
A test. A gift. A knife tied with a ribbon.
“We’d be honored,” I say—and I mean it.
He lifts his hand, and she appears as though she’d just been waiting on his signal.
I take her in hungrily, careful to keep my expression neutral.
Black dress to the knee—fitted without being inviting, sleeves to the wrist; a squared neckline leaving her throat bare on purpose.
Hair pinned neatly back, a few rebel strands curling around her face like she shook her head at a mirror and let them win.
Everything about her is prim, careful, and unassuming. What you see is what you get—the good girl, the church girl, Daddy’s girl. And yet her eyes hold secrets. They’re a ledger no one has clearance to read.
Except me, on Halloween night. Satisfaction curls inside me the way a cat curls in around your legs, begging for pets.
She takes the chair without asking and without looking my way a single time.
“Miss Moretti,” Rafferty says, his father-uncle-voice polished and polite. “Thank you for joining us.”
“Certainly, but only for the first course, I’m afraid,” she answers mildly. “I have class in the morning.” The smile she offers him makes me want to take a knife to my uncle’s throat. I only want her to smile at me.
Don Marco doesn’t blink at the saccharine sweetness that rolls off his daughter’s tongue. Roisin almost smiles into her water but she holds back. If all their women are this demure and meek, no wonder Caterina needed a night to escape the expectations they had of her.
The waiter performs the ritual expected of him—menus, specials, bread no one will touch. He fades away after taking a drink order. The silence settles around us in what should be a comforting way.
Don Marco tips his chin my way. “We’ll allow you to get back to campus soon, bambina. I wanted the immediate families to meet, as we’ll be doing some business together. ”
Caterina’s gaze drifts curiously over the table and lands on me.
There it is—the hit of awareness. A flicker of surprise sharp enough to nick, the smallest freeze at the hinge of her jaw, the way her shoulders gather a fraction like she’s catching her balance on a step that wasn’t there.
Not fear. Calculation. Betrayal she leashes fast because she immediately believes that I played her.
She files the name Shannon behind her eyes in a vault, checks her father’s profile, returns to me and sets her chin a half-degree higher—as if we’ve both been hiding in plain sight and I’m the one who owes her the courtesy of admitting it.
I give her a small tip of my chin, feel for the ring box in my pocket, and leave it there. Not yet. Not before business.
Don Marco’s gaze dips to my hand in my pocket, returns to my eyes, and then shifts to the man at his right. “My nephew Nico,” he says by way of introduction.
“We’re acquainted,” I say. I don’t look at Caterina yet. The air shifts when you look at something you want; best to let the room adjust and settle first.
“We’re here for more than optics,” Don Marco goes on. “There is the matter of the Southie storage lots. A priest with a noisy conscience. Two vendors who developed amnesia when the Church coughed.”
Rafferty picks up the thread. “Your man at the docks pulled a container out of rotation without a call,” he says, calm as an invoice. “We’ll need that habit corrected.”
“Your man on Dorchester called on my parish priest,” Don Marco returns, equally calm. “We’ll need that habit corrected.”
It’s an old dance. You point at your own toe and call it theirs.
I let them trade small, sharp politeness, anchor the night in business—two lots designated neutral with cameras we both install and both pretend we don’t; the priest moved to a parish with fewer eyes and more plumbing; the vendors reminded that invoices are a sacrament too.
We stack the bricks that make the facade. Brick by brick, the wall stands.
Only then do I pull the ring box from my pocket and slide it a half inch toward the center of the table. Not to Caterina. To the table. To the room as witness for what is about to happen, and the deal that’s going to be struck.
“That,” Don Marco says, the word flat and heavy, “looks like more than conversation.”
“I intend to take responsibility for what was seen,” I say, steady. “And to turn the spectacle into something the city understands. I intend to claim Miss Moretti publicly.”
A breath moves around the table like the weather changed. Rafferty doesn’t quite sigh. Don Marco looks bewildered. Tiernan’s reflection in the window tips his head, amused and unamused. Roisin watches Caterina instead of me, collecting micro-tells like a magpie hoards spoons.
But Nico. Nico is the one with the most surprising reaction.
His face turns almost puce with rage.
I meet his eyes and then—finally—let mine rest where they’ve wanted to rest since she walked in. On her. On the small hitch of breath she doesn’t let anyone hear. On the controlled set of her mouth—and the flicker at the corner that says curiosity is fighting discipline, and she’s about to bolt.
Her gaze locks on mine, and I’m shaken by what I see in her eyes. A flare. Not fear. Not quite anger. A reckoning. And buried under it—recognition that tastes like smoke and wintergreen and mesh.
“Claim,” Don Marco echoes. “Was seen? What was seen? Who was seen?”
It seems like he’s the only one around the table that doesn’t have a clue what happened between Caterina and me in that confessional, and there’s only one explanation for that.
Nico. The man has obviously suppressed the story that all of Boston is talking about to keep Caterina’s father from hearing about it.
“This is ridiculous.” The man in question begins to sputter. “You’re Irish. No chance in hell you’re going to marry Caterina.” He turns to Don Marco and holds out both hands in supplication. “Caterina was seen entering a confessional with the Irish heir. It was caught on camera. I handled it.”
“No.” I correct him. “You didn’t. You ran and told the dean of St. Brigid’s. You didn’t handle it.”
Like a bad repeat, I watch as Nico pulls a small silver ring from his pocket. “I was going to ask you tonight, uncle. If she marries me, she’ll be protected and—”
“OUT!” Don Marco shouts at the man who thinks he’ll steal what’s mine from me. “My Caterina will not be marrying you, Nico. She’s not marrying anyone, let alone family.”
“I’m not family, though.” Nico’s voice drops, and I swear it’s trembling. “Your family took me in, yes. You’re my uncle in every way that counts. Except one.” He slides the ring he brought across the short distance to his uncle and I’m too busy grinding my teeth to notice much else. “Blood.”
“No.” Don Marco shakes his head. “That’s not happening. I’ll not discuss this with you. Leave, Nico. You can wait at the bar. We’ll discuss the insubordination and hiding something in regards to Caterina from me later.”
Nico practically flees from the room, and all I can think is that this little pussy thought he could handle Caterina?
She may be innocent, but she’s not a pushover.
And the daggers she’s glaring at all of us is proof of that.
I can’t wait to get a moment alone with my Hellcat.
“Caterina?” He turns to his daughter. “Is it true?”
She cats her eyes down and nods with a trembling lower lip. “Yes, Father.”
There’s a long pause, during which he bows his head and clenches his hand into a shaking fist on the white linen tablecloth. The room holds its breath. Finally he lifts his gaze, spearing first me and then his daughter.
“Then, you’ll marry.”
I’m watching her more carefully than I’ve ever watched anyone before, so I clock the tiny shake of her head before she catches herself.
“But…” She trails off, and I can feel the conflict in her body as she tries to figure out her new reality. “The Church.”
“Can be bought off.” Don Marco nods. “Of course, if you want to enter the cloister now, we can make that happen instead.”
“Peace is cheap,” Rafferty says quietly, putting an opinion where one isn’t needed. “War is not. Cayce is going to claim her. The Church can take another innocent.”
Caterina lifts her hand and sets two fingers on the edge of the box. She doesn’t look at her father, or at Rafferty. She looks at me like she’s measuring whether I’m worth giving her trust to.
She nods and—finally—looks to her father. “I will consider it,” she says, and the way she says I sounds like a quiet revolution announced into a microphone. “After the first course.”
The room exhales. Relief. Regret. Both.
“We’ll meet with the lawyers and draw up the contracts and prenuptial agreements tomorrow,” Don Marco says, reclaiming gravity. “Tonight, we eat and celebrate the joining of our families.”
The server returns, summoned by the sound of knives sheathing.
Plates arrive—creamy risotto and filet so tender a spoon could slice it through.
Conversation pivots to shipping routes, container audits, vendors who forget to send invoices.
I answer when asked. I keep my hands visible.
I don’t posture. I’m aware of Caterina every second—how she holds her fork like she holds a line.
How she listens more than she speaks and says more than the other men think she does.
Three times she glances at the window, not because she’s nervous—but because she counts windowpanes like I do.
Once she touches the chain at her throat. Once she presses her thumb into her palm like she’s marking a line that isn’t really there.
When her father mentions the convent in a tone that calls it a building and not a future, her mouth tightens a hair and then I see the relief wash over her.
Halfway through, a shadow resolves in the glass. Nico has taken one polite step closer from the bar—the kind of approach a competitor makes when he wants to be recognized and also to remind you he exists.
Roisin smiles at me then tips her glass almost imperceptibly toward Caterina, then offers me a wink. Her sign of approval. Tiernan’s reflection remains calm and unruffled.
“Excuse me,” Caterina says, pushing back her chair. “I have class tomorrow.”
Don Marco rises as she does because respect is muscle memory in men who were raised correctly. I stand, too. I don’t reach for the box or the ring I’m dying to slip onto her finger.
She picks up the box. Closes it with a neat click. Slides it toward me without drama. “I said I’ll consider,” she murmurs, just for me. “You hold this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I don’t look away when she gives me the smallest, most lethal look I’ve ever caught and then tilts her head to Roisin.
“It was nice to meet you,” she tells my sister.
“You too,” Roisin says, meaning it. “Your dress is perfect.”
Caterina’s mouth warms a degree. “Your boots are better.”
Then she leaves without looking at Nico. Art, that. I watch as he swallows the slight with a swallow of whiskey, his gaze following after her with transparent covetousness.
She’s gone, and the air shifts. Rafferty picks up his fork. Don Marco picks up his pride. I pick up the box and slide it into my pocket.
We finish the work—routes assigned by column, the priest transferred with a donation, the vendors sent a reminder that bills are paid in money not Mass cards. At the end, Don Marco offers his hand. I take it. Two old ways shake on a new one.
In the foyer, we pause long enough for the people who need to see us leave together to see it. Outside, the night smells like wet stone and the sugar from the bakery next door. The city listens when power makes arrangements; tonight it hears a promise and decides not to riot.
Tiernan falls in beside me as we cross to the car. Behind us, Rafferty stands under the awning with the consigliere while Roisin tugs her gloves.
“You were very,” Tiernan says thoughtfully, “not an asshole.”
“I practiced,” I say.
He grins sideways. “She’ll say yes.”
“She’ll say whatever she wants.” I touch the box in my pocket. “But she’s mine, and even if she argues, she knows it.”
He nods, satisfied in a way that means he expected me to be dumber than I was. We stop at the curb, where the driver pulls up, and doors open like patient mouths.
“Tomorrow,” Rafferty says, joining us, coat collar turned against night. “You need to be on your game. This is going to be a long fuckin’ week and it starts tomorrow with the lawyers.”
I watch a pair of students hurry by, heads ducked, laughter leaking out. Life keeps happening around men who make rooms into rules. It’s sloppy and loud and honest. I make a fist and let it go.
“Tomorrow is for contracts,” I tell Tiernan. “And the first small war—who wins what and claims the most in the end.”
“You bringing a gun?” he asks, unable to help himself.
I think of the ring. Of the black writing on the inside that only those who understand the language can read.
“I’m bringing a pen,” I say, “and the part of me Blackvine didn’t kill.”