Chapter 5
Nobody had asked Dario if he wanted breakfast. This was not, it turned out, how the Alesci household operated.
The kitchen table was scarred wood, the kind that had absorbed decades of use and showed it without apology. Someone had gouged a fish or a knife into the far corner, and he could guess who.
A Greek newspaper lay open to the crossword, half the clues filled in two different handwritings. A collection of mismatched coffee mugs clustered in the center like a small terracotta settlement.
Dario stared at the walls while Despina moved through the kitchen with focused energy.
Blue, red, and white hand-painted tiles patterned the wall around the counters and sink. Copper pots hung above the stove. A magnetic strip mounted beside the window held knives, and most of them were kitchen knives. Three were not. A fourth, he couldn't even classify.
Well, this is awkward. He wasn't sure what to say or what to do, so he just tried not to gape at everything.
Frederica had gone upstairs scowling, and Tore was at the counter with his coffee, watching Dario's every move.
Dario had been assessed by professionals before. It had never felt quite like this. Most people looked at him and read the surface: the size, the tattoos, the easy smile.
People made their assumptions, and the assumptions were useful. He had built a career on what happened in the gap between what people saw and what was actually there.
Tore Alesci looked at him as though the surface were a document he had already read and set it aside as bullshit. Dario felt unmasked in seconds.
"You've been awake all night," Tore said bluntly.
"Occupational hazard."
"Which occupation? The nightclub or my daughter?"
Dario smiled. "Both. They turned out to be the same job."
Something shifted in the older man's face. He pulled out the chair across from Dario and sat, setting his mug between them, and Dario noticed that Tore's eyes were exactly the same hazel green as his daughter's. The threat behind them was also the same.
"I knew your father. Not well, but we crossed paths a few times. Good man, from what I saw of him," Tore said.
The words landed the way they always did when someone said that about Niccolò, a quick, solid pressure behind the sternum that Dario had never found a way to outrun. He kept his face relaxed. "He was the best of men. Better than we deserved."
Tore nodded and didn't push further. Another point in his favor.
"Eat this while you wait." Despina set down freshly made pita bread, figs, honey, and a plate of soft cheese.
She went back to the stove, and Tore stared at him until Dario reached for the bread. His body had been complaining about hunger for several hours, and he had no arguments left.
Tore glanced up at the ceiling as something clunked upstairs. "You were going to leave this morning. Just drop her off and go."
"That was the plan, yes."
"What changed it?"
Dario chewed, considering. "Your wife pointed a gun at me, and it's worth hanging about just to see the horror on Frederica's face."
Tore studied him for a long moment before he smiled. It rearranged his face entirely, making it warm and sharp at once.
There it is. That is where Spartana gets it.
"She has talked about you," Tore observed before taking another sip of his coffee.
Dario raised an eyebrow and swallowed his mouthful of fig. "Has she now?"
"Not directly." Tore's voice was dry. "Frederica doesn't do things directly when she can do them sideways. There's a way she doesn't mention people when she's thinking about them. They kind of come up. You're one of those."
"You sure it's not because she wants to kill me?" Dario asked, turning this new information over with the same careful attention he gave to things that might be a gift or a grenade. Usually, he couldn't tell until it went off.
Tore chuckled. "If she wanted to kill you, you would be dead."
The sound of footsteps on the stairs saved him from needing to respond. Frederica appeared in the doorway a moment later, freshly showered and with her hair pulled back into a still-wet ponytail.
"Sit," Despina said from the stove, without turning around. "Eat before you start any arguments."
Frederica sat. Despina moved to the table with a heavy pan and served eggs, scrambled with tomato and chives, then refilled Tore's coffee, put a glass of water in front of Frederica without being asked, and set a full mug of coffee in front of Dario.
He thanked her, and she gave him a squinting look like she was still unsure whether to shoot him.
"Your mother cooked for you?" she asked.
"God no," Dario said with a huff of laughter. "She had staff to do that."
Despina made a sound of disapproval. She sat at the head of the table, picked up her fork, and said, "You had better eat extra then."
The interrogation started three minutes in, which was roughly when Despina decided everyone had eaten enough to withstand it.
"So," she said, "tell me about the jail, chrysi mou."
Dario's Greek wasn't fluent, but he was okay, and he certainly knew enough endearments to get just about anyone out of their pants.
Despina had just called the scowling assassin on the other side of the table my golden one. He tried not to smirk because it would probably start a fight, and he was enjoying watching Frederica squirm under her mother's gaze.
Frederica chewed through her mouthful of food. "I was going to explain—"
"You were going to lie," Despina corrected. She pointed the fork at Dario. "You. How did she end up in a jail cell in Crete?"
"From what I understand, a man grabbed her in a bar, and she objected with a boot," Dario replied immediately. God only knew what she could do with that fork.
Despina considered this, then gave a small, satisfied nod that told him exactly who Frederica had learned her way of dealing with men from. "Good. The next question."
"Mama," Frederica groaned. "Let me eat first."
"Why were you in Crete and not Rhodes? Were you really going to come so close and not see us?"
Frederica looked at her eggs. "I was coming to visit. I just wanted to have a night off first."
"On a different island."
"Crete is nice."
"You hate Crete. You've told me twice that the bars are full of tourists and the men are too short." Despina looked at Dario because she was good at extracting information from people who were very strongly motivated not to give it. "Why was she really on Crete?"
Dario held up both hands. "Maybe she was in the mood for a short king? I only know that I was in Istanbul when the police called me. The rest is between her and Crete."
Across the table, Frederica looked at him with something that was almost gratitude. It was an expression he had never seen on her face.
Despina made a disapproving sound and picked up her coffee. The interrogation, apparently, was complete.
Tore caught Dario's eye across the table and gave a very small, private nod. He had survived thirty years of marriage to the most perceptive person in any room and clearly had developed a system.
Dario nodded back and thought he might like Tore Alesci.
It was while Despina was clearing the plates and refusing to let Dario help her that Tore leaned forward.
"Let me guess, you came to Rhodes for my files," he declared.
"That was the original plan, yes." Dario glanced across at Frederica. "Actually, she was meant to come and ask you for them. I was just her taxi."
"You want information about Lucius Foscari?
I thought you might come knocking after you asked me about that opal ring.
" He looked at Dario steadily. "I have decades of records.
Everything he acquired, everything he rejected, everything he told me about what he was looking for and what he said he was trying to keep out of the wrong hands. "
"And what will it cost me to get them?" Dario asked, knowing where this conversation was headed. They were all mercenaries at heart.
Tore leaned back in his chair. "You stay in the guest room until you've been through them. They aren't allowed to leave this house. This isn't one afternoon's work, and I won't send you off with half the picture."
From the counter, Despina said, without turning around, "I've already made up the bed in the spare room for you."
Frederica's expression soured, then went blank, as if she knew there was no point in arguing with her parents.
Dario kept his own face very carefully neutral. "I don't want to put anyone out."
"You brought my baby home," Tore said simply. "The least I can do is give you a room to sleep in, and Rhodes hotels are too expensive this time of year."
"Baba," Frederica said. If she had used that tone on Dario, he would have been looking for a weapon or an exit.
Tore blinked at her with an innocent expression. He was aware of exactly how pissed his daughter was and didn't care. "What, my darling?"
Dario looked between them as they stared each other down to see who would break first.
"The guest room is at the end of the hall. Tore will show you. You can sleep, and tonight, maybe we can talk business. Yes?" Despina said from the sink.
"Yes, ah… Thank you. That would be great," Dario replied quickly, because as much as Frederica unnerved him, he was more afraid of upsetting her mother.
Frederica pushed her chair back and stood.
She said something in Greek, directed at her mother, at a volume suggesting she had stopped caring whether Dario understood.
Despina responded with a single word that clearly functioned as a full stop.
Frederica took her water glass and went back upstairs.
The door at the top of the stairs closed with a slam.
"Let me show you the guest room," Tore said, getting to his feet with a smile.
Dario followed him out of the kitchen. The hallway was narrow, bright with morning light, and covered in photographs. He stopped walking without meaning to.