5. Liana
— ? —
Liana
“Is Papa going to be in the front row?” Bianca tugged on my sleeve, her whole body vibrating with the kind of energy only a five-year-old could produce before a big performance. “He promised me, Mama. He said front row.”
“He’ll be there, baby.” I crouched down and smoothed the bow in her hair that kept slipping sideways. “He promised, didn’t he?”
“He promised on his heart.” She pressed her hand to her chest to demonstrate. “That’s the most serious kind of promise. Rina told me.”
“Then he’ll be there.” I kissed her forehead and stood up. “Rina’s never wrong about promises.”
“What if I forget my words, Mama?” She grabbed my hand and squeezed, her little fingers cold with nerves. “What if I get up there and my brain goes empty and everyone stares at me and I just stand there like a statue?”
“You won’t forget your words.” I squeezed back. “You’ve been practicing for weeks. You say those lines in your sleep.”
“I do not.”
“You do. I’ve heard you. Three in the morning, mumbling about butterflies and rainbows.”
She giggled, and some of the tension drained out of her shoulders. “That’s the song part, Mama. Not the words part.”
“Well, you know the song part perfectly.” I bent down to adjust the sash on her dress. “And you know the words part perfectly. And even if you didn’t, you’re a Costa. We don’t freeze.”
“We improvise,” she finished, grinning. “That’s what Papa says.”
“That’s because Papa’s smart sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“When he listens to me, he’s very smart.” I tugged her sash straight and stood back to look at her. “There. Perfect. The most beautiful girl in the whole show.”
“You have to say that because you’re my Mama.”
“I have to say it because it’s true.” I took her hand and grabbed my purse with the other. “Come on. Let’s go show everyone what a Costa can do.”
Dominic had been at breakfast that morning, which was rare enough these days that I had stopped in the kitchen doorway and stared at him for a full five seconds before my brain caught up with my eyes.
He was sitting at the table with coffee and the newspaper, looking almost like a normal husband, almost like the man I had married.
“There’s my star,” he had said when Bianca came running in, and she had climbed into his lap and started telling him about the show in breathless scattered sentences while he nodded along and asked questions in all the right places.
“You’re coming, right, Papa?” She had grabbed his face in both her hands and made him look at her.
“Front row,” he had confirmed, kissing the tip of her nose. “I’ll be the one clapping so loud they can hear me in Boston.”
“That’s very loud, Papa.”
“That’s how proud I am of you.”
She had beamed at him with that pure uncomplicated trust that children have, and something in my chest had twisted, because I remembered when I used to look at him that way too.
“I’ll be there,” he had said to me after Bianca ran off to find her shoes. “I know I’ve been - I know things have been hard lately. But I’ll be there. I promise.”
“Okay.” I had kept my voice neutral.
“I mean it, Liana.” He had crossed the kitchen and put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “This matters. She matters. I’ll be there.”
“I said okay.”
I had wanted to believe him. I had chosen to believe him, the way I always did, the way I couldn’t seem to stop doing no matter how many times he let me down.
And now I was sitting in the school auditorium with an empty seat beside me and the house lights dimming and my daughter about to walk out on stage and look for her father in the front row.
The first group of kids came out, tiny and nervous in matching outfits, and the audience cooed and cameras flashed and the show began. I kept my phone in my lap, checking it every thirty seconds, watching the door out of the corner of my eye.
The first group finished their number and took their bows and shuffled off stage. The second group came out. Still no Dominic.
My phone buzzed.
Running late. Call ran over. Be there soon.
Soon. What did soon mean? Ten minutes? Twenty? Bianca’s group was next. She was going to walk out on that stage any second and look for him and he wasn’t going to be there.
I typed back with shaking fingers. Her group is NEXT. Where are you?
Five minutes. I’m coming.
Five minutes. The second group was already halfway through their song. He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to break his promise to his daughter and I was going to have to watch it happen.
The second group finished. Applause. Parents shifting in their seats as the next group of kids filed out from the wings.
And there was Bianca, in her little dress with her crooked bow, walking to her mark with her hands clasped in front of her. She looked out at the audience with those big blue eyes, scanning the front row, looking for her Papa.
She found me. I smiled and waved.
Her eyes kept moving. Searching. Not finding.
I watched her face flicker. That tiny moment of confusion, of hurt, before she caught herself and smoothed it over. She was five years old and she was already learning to hide her disappointment, and I wanted to set something on fire.
The music started. The kids began their routine. Bianca hit her marks, said her lines, did everything exactly right. But she kept glancing at the empty seat beside me, and every time she did, I felt my heart crack a little wider.
The door at the back of the auditorium opened.
I didn’t turn around. I felt him slide into the seat beside me, felt the warmth of his body, smelled his cologne mixed with the cold air from outside.
“I’m here,” he breathed against my ear. “I made it.”
“You’re late.” I kept my eyes on the stage, my voice barely above a whisper. “She already looked for you and you weren’t here.”
“Stefan called as I was leaving. I thought it would take five minutes. It took forty-”
“You promised her.” My hands were clenched so tight in my lap that my nails were digging into my palms.
“And I’m sitting right here now.”
“After she already searched the crowd for you and didn’t find you.” I finally turned to look at him, and I didn’t bother to hide the fury in my eyes.
“Liana, it was the shipment, I couldn’t just hang up on-”
“Excuse me.” The woman in front of us turned around with a pinched expression. “Some of us are trying to watch our children.”
“Sorry,” Dominic said smoothly, flashing her the smile that made everyone think he was charming instead of dangerous.
I turned back to the stage and said nothing. My whole body was rigid with anger, and sitting next to him felt like sitting next to a stranger.
On stage, Bianca’s eyes swept the audience again. Found the front row. Found her father.
Her entire face transformed.
The uncertainty vanished. The searching stopped. She stood up taller, smiled wider, and threw herself into the rest of her performance with a joy that made my chest ache. She was radiant now, performing for her Papa, giving him everything she had.
She twirled across the stage and almost stumbled but caught herself, and I heard Dominic inhale sharply beside me. She finished the twirl perfectly, beaming out at the audience, at him, and he exhaled and leaned forward in his seat like he was ready to catch her even from twenty feet away.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, more to himself than to me.
I watched her shine for a man who had almost broken her heart today and felt something dark and hot pulse in my chest. She was so happy now.
So proud. And she would never know how close it had been, how close he had come to not showing up at all, how close she had been to spending her whole performance looking for a father who wasn’t there.
The show ended and the kids took their bows and parents stood up and applauded and Bianca came running through the crowd toward us with her arms outstretched.
“Papa!” She launched herself at him and he caught her, lifting her up, swinging her around while she laughed. “You came! You saw me! Did you see when I almost fell but I didn’t?”
“I saw everything, piccola.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “You were the best one up there. Everyone else might as well have stayed home.”
“Mama said I was the most beautiful.”
“Mama was right.” He kissed her cheek. “The most beautiful and the most talented and the most perfect little girl in the whole world.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight, burying her face in his shoulder. “I was scared you weren’t coming. I looked and looked and I couldn’t find you.”
“But I came.” His voice was soft against her hair. “I’ll always come, Bianca. I’ll always be there for you.”
Liar, I thought, and the word tasted bitter in my mouth.
“Can we get ice cream, Papa?” She pulled back to look at him with wide hopeful eyes. “You said if I did good we could get ice cream, and I did good, I did really good, so can we?”
“You did amazing.” He shifted her onto his hip. “Of course we can get ice cream.”
She cheered and kicked her feet and started telling him about which flavor she wanted, and he listened and nodded and laughed in all the right places, and they looked so perfect together. Father and daughter. The picture of happiness.
His free hand found the small of my back as we walked toward the exit. I stiffened and stepped away from his touch without thinking about it.
He noticed. His hand dropped to his side.
We walked to the car in silence while Bianca chattered between us, oblivious to the tension that was thick enough to choke on.
Ice cream was the same. Bianca glowing in the booth beside her father, telling him stories about rehearsals and costume fittings.
I ate my ice cream and smiled when I was supposed to and felt like I was watching them through a pane of glass.
By the time we got home, it was past Bianca’s bedtime and she was crashing hard, the sugar and excitement finally wearing off. I carried her upstairs while Dominic went to his study, because of course he went to his study, because where else would he go.
“Mama, Papa’s going to watch the video, right?” Bianca’s voice was sleepy as I helped her into her pajamas. “He said he would watch it a hundred times.”
“He said that, baby.”
“That’s a lot of times.”
“It is.” I pulled the covers up to her chin and smoothed her hair back from her face. “But you were so good, I bet he watches it a thousand times.”
She smiled, her eyes already closing. “I love Papa.”
“I know you do, baby.”
“Do you love Papa?”
I looked down at my daughter’s sleepy face and felt a crack inside me.
“Of course I do,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not.
I kissed her forehead and turned off the light and stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her breathe, this small perfect person who trusted us completely and had no idea that anything was wrong.
Then I closed her door and went downstairs.
I had spent weeks on this. Nights after Bianca went to sleep, going through records and manifests and shipping logs, doing the work I had always done, the work I was better at than anyone he employed.
The war with Grassi had been bleeding us for months, and I had found the solution.
The thread that would unravel everything if it was pulled at exactly the right moment.
I was proud of it. Foolishly, pathetically proud, the way I used to be years ago when I would drop a solved problem on his desk and watch his whole face change.
I found him in his study with his jacket on and his keys in his hand, about to leave again.
“I need to talk to you,” I said from the doorway.
“Can it wait?” He was checking his phone, not looking at me. “I have to meet Stefan about the-”
“No, it can’t wait.” I walked into the room and held out the folder I had been carrying. “I found something. About Grassi.”
That got his attention. He looked up from his phone, his eyes sharp.
“What about Grassi?”
“I found the thread.” I stepped closer and put the folder on his desk.
“The thing that pulls his whole operation apart. He’s been running the stolen cargo through a shell company that traces back to the Calabrese, but he’s using our authorization codes to do it.
He’s setting you up, Dominic. Building a paper trail that makes it look like you’re dirty. ”
“I know about the frame. You showed me this already. I don’t have time for this right now,” he said, and his voice was cold. “I have to go. We’ll talk when I get back.”
“When you get back.” I laughed again. “You mean tomorrow morning when you crawl into bed at three in the morning and pretend I’m asleep so you don’t have to talk to me?”
“Liana-”
“Or maybe the morning after that, when you’re out the door before I wake up and I don’t see you again until dinner, which you’ll miss because something came up?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
I stepped closer to him. “I’m telling you the truth, which is something I’ve always done, which is something you used to value about me. But I guess that’s changed too.”
He grabbed his keys off the desk. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time for anything anymore. Not for me. Not for Bianca. Not for anyone except Stefan and the men and the war.”
He was walking toward the door now, and I followed him, my anger building with every step.
“You missed half her recital, Dominic.”
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. Didn’t turn around.
“I was there.”
“You were late. I had to watch our daughter learn how to hide her disappointment because her father broke his promise.”
“But I came.” His voice was quiet.
“That’s not the same thing.” I was shaking now. “Showing up late isn’t the same as being there. Making an appearance isn’t the same as keeping your word. You can’t just breeze in halfway through and act like that makes everything okay.”
He turned around, and his face was the mask, the cold blank face of the Don, and I hated it. I hated that he could look at me like that, like I was a problem to be managed instead of the woman he loved.
“I’m doing the best I can,” he said.
“Your best isn’t good enough.”
He flinched, just barely, and then the mask was back in place and he was turning away.
“I have to go.”
He walked out. The door closed behind him.
I stood in his study with the folder he hadn’t taken and the silence he had left behind. I stood there for a long time, staring at the closed door, feeling the crack widen.
And then, from the stairs, a small voice.
“Mama?”
I closed my eyes. Breathed deep. Forced my face into something that looked like calm.
I turned around.
Bianca was standing in the doorway in her pajamas, her blanket dragging on the floor behind her, her plastic crown crooked on her head. She looked sleepy and small and worried in a way that no five-year-old should ever have to look.
“Is Papa coming to the next one?”
I looked at my daughter. At her hopeful face. At the trust in her eyes that I couldn’t bring myself to break.
“We’ll see, baby.”