CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GABE
Victor seats Mina between himself and Ruggiero at dinner.
He calls it tradition. I call it a test and take the chair across from her.
The dining room at Corso House holds twenty-four beneath a ceiling painted with saints who have witnessed worse men than us. My mother sits at one end. Paolo’s chair remains empty at the other.
Mina wears dark green, the first color I have seen on her that is not attached by her aunt. Bianca’s ring is still on the chain.
Victor lifts his wine. “To family.”
Mina touches her glass to his. “Temporary conditions included.”
My mother hides a smile.
Dinner moves through grief and business without admitting either. Ruggiero asks about the funeral home’s finances. Mina gives him the cost of embalming fluid per gallon and watches him regret curiosity.
Victor asks whether the sealed wing contained anything valuable.
“Mold,” she says. “Would you like some?”
“Only if it is properly invoiced.”
My mother interrupts from the head of the table. “Gabriele, did you tell Mina about the peaches?”
“No.”
“What peaches?” Mina asks.
Elena’s smile is the first unguarded expression I have seen on her since Paolo died. “When Gabe was nineteen, he took over a fruit shipment because he believed the driver was stealing. He counted every crate himself.”
“The manifest was wrong.”
“By two crates,” my mother says. “He brought sixty pounds of peaches home at three in the morning.”
Mina looks at me. “What did you do with them?”
“Distributed them.”
“He made jam,” Elena says.
The table goes silent in a different way.
“You made jam,” Mina repeats.
“There were too many peaches.”
“Apparently criminal logistics has a domestic contingency plan.”
Victor smiles, but Ruggiero looks annoyed that the conversation has become human. My mother notices and continues.
“Paolo labeled every jar Gabe’s Evidence. We had them for two years.”
Mina laughs. Not the sharp sound she uses to cut a room. Something warmer.
I would prefer the captains not see how much I want to keep it.
Victor sees anyway.
“Marriage reveals unexpected talents,” he says.
“So does surveillance,” Mina replies. “You learn who remembers a missing medal, who knows about red pencil, who asks about a sealed archive.”
The warmth does not leave her face. That makes the threat more effective.
Victor sets down his wine.
My mother looks between them. She does not know the evidence, but she recognizes a battle at her table.
“No business during dessert,” Elena says.
“Of course,” Victor answers.
Mina picks up her spoon. “I would never disrespect dessert.”
Under the table, her knee touches mine. An accident at first. Neither of us moves away.
“We found older invoices too.”
His knife pauses against the plate.
“Your father’s?”
“My sister’s.”
The room continues eating. Victor does not ask which invoices. Good strategy would leave it there.
“Bianca had an active imagination,” he says.
Mina’s fork settles beside her plate. “You called her noticeable at my wedding. Now imaginative. She improves every time you remember her.”
“She believed numbers meant more than they did.”
“Which numbers?”
Ruggiero drinks too quickly.
Victor smiles. “All accountants believe that.”
He does not know Bianca was not an accountant. She helped with the books but never held the title. Jo did.
Mina sees the error. She looks at me once.
At dessert, Ruggiero’s nephew Carlo corners her near the gallery doors. Twenty-nine, drunk, useful only because his uncle keeps forgiving him.
I hear him before I see his hand.
“Ninety-day wife,” he says. “What happens on day ninety-one?”
Mina steps around him. “You discover a calendar.”
He catches her upper arm.
I am across the room before the nearest guard decides whether to move.
Mina does not need rescue. She has Carlo’s smallest finger bent backward and his wrist turned toward the wall.
“Release me,” she tells him.
“Bitch.”
I take his shoulder and drive him face-first into the paneling.
The room goes quiet.
“You touched my wife after she told you to release her,” I say.
Carlo’s cheek flattens against the wood. “It was a joke.”
“Then explain it.”
“Gabe,” Ruggiero says behind me.
I look at Mina. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“What consequence?”
Carlo stops struggling.
Mina looks from him to Ruggiero. Everyone waits for her to ask for blood or mercy. Both would become a story about female temperament.
“Remove him from funeral transport contracts,” she says. “Permanently. He doesn’t understand consent or chain of custody.”
Ruggiero’s face darkens. Those contracts are worth more than Carlo’s pride and less than his life.
“Done,” I say.
I release Carlo. Felix escorts him out.
Ruggiero comes closer. “You take revenue from my house over a hand on her arm?”
“She gave you the less expensive option.”
He looks at Mina.
“Thank her,” I say.
“Go to hell.”
“Contract suspended at midnight.”
Ruggiero understands. “Thank you, Mrs. Corso.”
Mina smooths the sleeve over the place Carlo held. “Improve your hiring.”
The dinner ends soon after.
My mother catches Mina in the gallery before we leave.
“A moment,” Elena says.
I wait near the front hall. Mina looks at me, then at my mother.
“Private,” Elena clarifies.
I leave the gallery.
The act should not require thought. It does. Victor’s house is not clean. Ruggiero’s nephew just put a hand on her. Every instinct tells me privacy is a gap someone can use.
I stand on the other side of the open doorway, visible but unable to hear.
Felix joins me. “You look ill.”
“I am waiting.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Leave.”
“That sounds more familiar.”
He goes to retrieve the car.
In the gallery, my mother gives Mina a small velvet box. Mina opens it, frowns, and tries to return it. Elena closes her hand around the box and says something that makes Mina look toward me.
When they join me, my mother kisses my cheek.
“Do not ask what I gave her,” she says.
“What did you give her?”
“Predictable.”
She walks away.
Mina puts the box in her bag.
“What is it?”
“A key.”
“To what?”
“Elena’s house.”
“Why?”
“She said every Corso wife should have one door her husband cannot lock.”
My mother has never been subtle when disappointed.
“You can use it,” I say.
“That is the purpose of keys.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
She touches the bag where the key rests. An exit. My mother offered it; Mina accepted it; neither requested my approval.
The fear is immediate and unreasonable. If Mina has another place, she can leave.
The truth beneath it is worse: she could always leave. Paper and surveillance only made leaving more expensive.
“Good,” I say.
Mina watches the effort the word requires.
“You are not good at this,” she says.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“You leave doors open.”
“I work in a building with fire code.”
The answer is a joke. The hand she puts briefly on my arm is not.
Behind us, Victor speaks quietly with Ruggiero in the dining room. Their reflection appears in the gallery mirror. Victor hands him a folded note. Ruggiero reads, tears it once, and puts the pieces in his pocket.
Mina sees it too.
“Did your mother’s gallery always have that mirror?” she asks.
“Since I was a child.”
“Victor forgot.”
“Or wanted us to see.”
“You make suspicion exhausting.”
“You married it.”
“Under protest.”
We leave through the front while Felix sends a staff member to recover anything Ruggiero discards before reaching his car.
The torn note later proves blank.
Victor was testing whether we were watching reflections.
Now he knows we are.
In the car, she watches the city through tinted glass.
“You asked me,” she says.
“What?”
“What consequence I wanted.”
“He touched you.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“You were the injured party.”
“You usually decide.”
“I’m learning.”
She looks at me. “I’m going to regret that answer.”
“Probably.”
At the funeral home, neither of us goes upstairs. Mina unlocks the kitchen and starts coffee. I stand at the counter while she measures grounds.
“Paolo asked for a strike last week,” I say.
She does not turn. “You told me.”
“He wanted Ruggiero’s broker taken. I refused because there was no proof.”
“You think waiting killed him.”
“Yes.”
“So you forced the marriage in forty-eight hours.”
“Yes.”
“Changed my locks.”
“Yes.”
“Tried to schedule my sleep.”
“Negotiated it.”
She pours water into the machine. “You are trying to outrun a decision you made correctly because somebody else used the time badly.”
“Correct decisions have bodies too.”
The coffee begins to drip.
“My father used to say no one regrets haste at a funeral,” she says. “He was wrong. Families regret everything. The tie. The song. The last conversation. Grief is not an audit you can satisfy.”
“You speak as if you have.”
“I work as if I can.”
She turns, and we recognize the same flaw wearing different clothes.
Mina steps between my knees where I lean against the counter. Her hand touches my bruised knuckles, careful over the skin.
“Carlo?” she asks.
“Wall.”
“Before the wedding?”
“Also wall.”
“You should expand your coping mechanisms.”
“I married you.”
“That may be the least healthy one.”
Her thumb moves once across my hand.
I do not touch her. I wait.
She notices that I am waiting and, for reasons I do not understand yet, leaves her hand where it is.