11. Lucia
11
LUCIA
I go through my evening routine on autopilot. As usual, there’s nothing in my refrigerator, so I head to the small restaurant around the corner where I’ve been eating my meals. The proprietor smiles in greeting when I walk in. “The usual? Or would you like to try the special of the day?”
The usual is a plate of pasta, cooked with whatever sauce she has lying around. It’s a quick and cheap meal, but not a particularly good one. “What’s the special of the day?”
“Sepe in Umido,” she responds.
Sepe in Umido is a cuttlefish stew cooked with tomatoes, garlic, and white wine. It’s one of those classically Venetian dishes that you just can’t get anywhere else. I’ve avoided it for the last ten years the way I’ve avoided everything Venetian: the memories just brought too much pain. But now I think of that savory, briny sauce, and my stomach rumbles.
“I’ll have the special.”
Signora Stanescu stops in her tracks. “You want the special?” she repeats. “Not the pasta?”
Her surprise is understandable—for almost a month, she’s been asking me if I want the daily special and for almost a month, I’ve turned her down. I just haven’t cared enough to eat well.
“I figure it’s time for a change,” I reply.
She studies me carefully. “You look different today.”
“Different, how?”
“You look. . . energized. You come here every night, and you always look so sad and lost. Not today. Today, you look alive.” She pats my back. “With your stew, you want bread or polenta?”
* * *
I expect to lie awake for hours, the way I have every single night, but that night, sleep comes easily. I drift off without even realizing it, and the next thing I know, someone is banging on my door.
I crack an eyelid and grope for my phone. It’s seven in the morning. What the hell? That’s far too early for a Sunday. Even the church bells are silent, damn it.
Is it Antonio? What does he want now?
I slide out of bed, put a robe on, and go out to investigate.
When I open it, Valentina is there with Angelica, her face pale and tense. The moment she sees me, she sags against the doorframe in relief. “You’re okay.”
“Umm, yes? Why wouldn’t I be?” I raise an eyebrow at my goddaughter, wondering if she knows what’s going on, and Angelica just shrugs her shoulders. “Come on in.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” she says, spluttering in outrage. She marches in, Angelica at her heels. She looks around my living room, and I expect her to point out I still don’t have any furniture. Instead, she pulls an iPad out of her bag and hands it to her daughter. “Watch something, baby,” she says. “I need to talk to your Aunt Lucia alone.”
I’m mystified. I let her drag me into my bedroom. She shuts the door behind her and whirls around. “Are you okay?” she demands. “Truly okay?”
“ Yes. Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is you and Antonio Moretti at his house yesterday. Ring any bells?” She shakes her head. “I told you to leave the Titian alone, and you didn’t listen to me, did you? You got caught.”
“I did,” I admit sheepishly. It’s a little embarrassing and ego-bruising how easily I’d fallen into Antonio’s trap. My pride is still stinging.
She throws her hands up in the air. “Lucia, do you ever listen to anything I say?” She takes a deep breath in a visible effort to calm herself. “Did he hurt you?”
“What? No.”
She looks me up and down as if to satisfy herself that I’m telling the truth. “Tell me what happened, and don’t leave anything out.”
“Okay.” I sink onto my air mattress and pat my side. She joins me, aiming a disapproving glare at my poor imitation of the bed. “When are you going to get yourself proper furniture? You’ve been here long enough. Or are you going to sleep on an air mattress all five months?”
“And there it is,” I say with a grin. “You must have really been worried about me if you waited this long to nag me about the lack of furniture in this apartment.”
“I’ve been going out of my mind with worry, and you’re making jokes?”
She looks like she wants to murder me. Before she’s forced to commit homicide, I distract her with my story. “When you wouldn’t tell me anything about the painting, I went to Signora Zanotti. She told me the Titian was in Daniel Rossi’s possession.”
“He works for the padrino,” Valentina replies. “It was a trap.”
Padrino. She calls him godfather, and it’s another reminder that the man who rescued me ten years ago isn’t the hero of my dreams. He’s a mob boss who thrives, I’m assuming, on violence and bloodshed.
“Well, I didn’t know that, did I? So, I infiltrated the crew that cleans Rossi’s building?—”
“Without telling me.”
“Are you going to let me finish?” I ask pointedly. “I got into Rossi’s apartment and swapped out the real Titian with the fake I found at the museum. Unfortunately, Antonio intercepted me on my way out.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He told me that Arthur Kirkland was pretty close to catching me, took his painting back, and warned me not to steal in Venice.”
“That’s it?” she asks skeptically.
“Pretty much.” I don’t need to tell Valentina that I wanted him to kiss me. Don’t need to tell her about the electricity between us, the tingle that went through me when we touched.
She frowns. “I heard that you were wearing his coat when you arrived at his house.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “You’re very well informed. Who told you that?”
“Dante was there.”
Huh. She’s right. I’d been too freaked out yesterday to register it, but the man at the docks in Giudecca was the same man who was with Valentina when she came to pick me up at the airport. “Does he work for the mafia too? Speaking of which, anything you want to tell me about your own employer?”
“Oh, no,” she says flatly. “I’m asking the questions right now, not you.”
“Sheesh, okay. Touchy much? It was no big deal. I was cold, and he was being polite.”
She gives me a disbelieving look. “Lucia, Antonio Moretti is not polite to the people who steal from him. He destroys them. You arrive wearing his coat, he tells Dante he isn’t to be disturbed, and then the two of you spend an hour together. What the hell is going on?”
Argh. Valentina is like a bloodhound. I might as well tell her everything I know because I have questions of my own. From my experience, I know that the only way to get information out of Valentina when she’s in this mood is to give her gossip of equal or greater value.
“We’ve met before. Once, ten years ago. We met the night I buried my parents.”
I tell her the whole story, and she listens in silence. “Wow,” she says when I’m done. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“I have a confession.” I fish the dog-eared business card out of my purse. “I kept his card.”
My best friend clutches her chest dramatically. “Aww, my heart,” she exclaims. “It’s so sweet and sappy; I can’t take it.”
I flip her off. “And this is precisely why I haven’t told you the story.”
She looks unrepentant. “Oh, come on. When I found out you were with the padrino, I assumed the worst. I need this to make up for my panic.”
“I forgive you for waking me up at the crack of dawn,” I say loftily, ignoring her giggles and getting to my feet. “Come on, I’ll make coffee. And while it’s brewing, you can tell me how long you’ve been working for the mafia and why you’ve never told me about it.”
Her smile fades. “It’s a long story.”
“I have all day.”
Over coffee in the kitchen—Angelica happily watches cartoons on the iPad and doesn’t pay us any attention—Valentina fills me in. “I’ve worked for Antonio for the last six years.” She stares into her mug. “Do you remember anything about the old mafia?”
I shake my head. “My parents shielded me from that stuff.” A familiar pang hits my heart. “They hid all the unpleasant things in life from me.”
“Domenico Cartozzi, the former head of the Family, was terrifying. One moment, he’d be laughing, joking with you, and the next minute, he’d explode. He was unpredictable and had a vicious temper, with a mean streak a mile wide. I fell in love with one of his capos when I was twenty-one.” She fiddles with her napkin. “You haven’t asked me about Angelica’s father.”
“I did, once. You shut me down.” An icy suspicion fills me. “Is it Antonio?”
She jerks her head up. “What? Dio, no. I barely knew him in those days, and in any case, he’s not my type. When Roberto first asked me out, I was flattered by the attention. Then I realized what a piece of shit he was. I walked out the first time he hit me, but Domenico decided I should give him a second chance, and everyone knew you couldn’t say no to the padrino. Then I got pregnant.”
I wince. Valentina is my age, so all this stuff was going down shortly after my parents died. I believed—incorrectly—that she knew about my mother’s illness and hid it from me, and I pulled away for a couple of years. And while I was punishing her for my parents’ decisions, she needed a friend more than ever.
Not for the first time, I wish I’d been there for her.
“I knew I would never make it out if I stayed with Roberto. If it wasn’t for Antonio. . .” She takes a deep breath. “He made sure Roberto could never hurt me again. A few years later, he needed a hacker, and he asked me for help. I immediately said yes. I owe him a debt of gratitude I’ll never be able to repay.”
“You’re sure you’re not interested in Antonio?” I don’t even know why I ask her that. She’s already told me once that he’s not her type, and yet, something compels me to bring it up again. It’s like I really, really need to make sure.
Her gaze narrows. “Lucia, I’ve never been interested in Antonio Moretti. Besides, I’ve learned my lesson. Hell will freeze over before I fall for someone in the mafia again. What I want to know is why you care whether I’m interested in him or not.”
That’s a really good question, and it’s one I don’t have an answer for. “I don’t care,” I reply, looking at my coffee so I don’t have to look into her eyes as I lie to her. “I was just curious about your dating life, that’s all.”
“Hmm,” she says, unconvinced. “If you say so. Onto more important things. I looked at your list, and I’ve ruled out four of the seven targets. I don’t have time today, but Angelica has a play date on Wednesday. Want to meet then, pick a painting, and get to work?”
An image of the Madonna at Repose swims in front of my eyes. The piece is unique, not only because of its subject—Mary is rarely depicted as a laughing mother playing with her child—but because so much of Titian’s works has been lost. It rankles me that the painting will never be displayed again.
Consider this your first and only warning. The Titian belongs to me, and it’s going to stay in my possession. I will turn a blind eye to your crimes as long as they occur elsewhere. Just not in my city. Are we clear on that?
“Okay,” I reply reluctantly. “Let’s do that.”