Chapter 12 #3
His brows drew together.
“She was good with numbers. Better than my father gave her credit for.” I looked down at the fry in my hand. “She taught me names of ships and routes. Not because she was preparing me to run anything. She thought it was a game.”
“And you loved it?”
“I loved her.”
The words made the booth feel smaller.
“She let me sit in her office while she worked. I learned how invoices moved. How cargo became money. The first time I forged my father’s signature, I was thirteen.”
Sal’s face remained very still.
“Why?”
“Because he would not authorize repairs for a driver’s family after an accident. The man had worked for us for years. I used Lev’s signature, transferred the money, and changed the paper files before he returned from Moscow.”
“What happened?”
“He noticed.”
My mouth twisted.
“He called me clever. Then he made sure I understood I had used his name, not my own. He said I should be grateful he had not punished me.”
Sal’s gaze darkened.
“I was proud for almost an hour,” I admitted. “Then I felt sick for a week.”
“You were thirteen.”
“Yes. And I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“That does not mean you deserved his cruelty.”
I looked at him.
So many people had treated my competence like evidence that I could absorb anything. Sal never did. He rested one hand on the table, palm up.
I placed mine in it.
“What happened with Rosalia?” I asked softly.
His fingers closed around mine.
He did not pull away.
“She was from an allied family,” he said. “We were engaged for two years. It was a sensible arrangement. I thought affection would become enough.”
“And it didn’t?”
“It did for me.” His mouth tightened. “Then she told me she was marrying someone else.”
I waited.
“I congratulated her in public. I wished her happiness. I meant it.” He looked down at our hands. “But afterward I decided that men like me were not meant to keep soft things.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t hate her?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She made a choice. I made a wound out of it.”
The honesty of that reached me more deeply than a speech would have.
“You’re not making me into Rosalia,” I said.
“No.”
I smiled.
Then Sal’s thumb moved over my knuckles.
“If Gianni disappeared tomorrow,” he asked, “what would you choose?”
“I’d probably get another wolf.”
He laughed.
“I mean it, sweetheart. What would you do?”
The question stopped me.
I looked around the empty diner. The old jukebox. The red booths. The stuffed wolf with his vacant plastic eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. It’s a fair answer.”
“No. I should know.”
“Why?”
“Because freedom should mean something.”
“It does.”
“And I should have a plan.”
“You have spent your life surviving plans other men made for you.” His thumb stroked once over my hand. “Freedom does not require an immediate five-year plan, Lena.”
My breath caught.
Lena.
He had used it before, but not like that. Not in a room where nobody could hear.
A song started on the jukebox.
Old. Slow. A man singing about home in a voice roughened by longing.
Sal stood.
He came around the booth and held out his hand.
“Dance with me.”
I took his hand.
He drew me into the small open space between empty tables. One hand settled at my waist. The other held mine. I put my free hand on his shoulder.
We moved slowly.
I had danced at weddings. At galas. I knew how to follow a man in a ballroom where everyone watched for weakness.
This was different.
His chest was warm beneath my palm. His hand was firm at my waist. He smelled like clean linen and dark cologne and fries.
I stepped on his shoe.
Sal looked down.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Prove it.”
“You are smiling.”
“I am enjoying myself.”
“By assaulting my shoes.”
“Well, they’re very arrogant. Look at the lip on them.”
His laugh brushed my hair.
Then he turned me under his arm, brought me back against him, and held me close enough that I could hear his heart.
For one song, nothing was burning.
For one song, I was not a daughter or a bride or a problem somebody needed to solve.
I was on a date.
I was dancing with the man I wanted.
And he was smiling.
The wolf sat between us on the drive home, staring through the windshield like a tiny grey idiot.
I had buckled him into the back seat. Sal didn’t say a word.
The road shone black beneath the headlights. Lake water flashed through the trees now and then, silver under the moon. For several miles, I watched Sal’s hands on the steering wheel.
Then I said the thing I had been holding since the library.
“Do you regret taking me?”
His hands did not change position.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Mezza Notte is damaged. A guard was shot. Your family is under siege.”
“Yes.”
“And Gianni did it because I’m here.”
“That’s not true.”
I turned toward him. “Sal.”
“He did it because he is Gianni. He did it becuase he wants what we have. What his sister has. He’s a greedy, jealous brute.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.” His jaw tightened. “I regret that I did not anticipate the scale of his preparation. I regret that Tonio’s people were hurt. I regret that I did not see every blade he had hidden.”
The silence gathered.
“But I do not regret rescuing you,” he said. “Not for one second.”
My throat tightened. I looked down at my hands. Sal reached across the console and took one.
“He wants you to believe love is a transaction,” he said. “That if people care for you, every injury around them becomes a debt you owe with your body, your freedom, your compliance.”
The words hit every bruise I had never named.
“I won’t let him do that,” Sal continued. “Not to you.”
“I don’t know how to stop thinking it.”
“You don’t have to stop all at once.” His thumb moved over my knuckles. “You tell me when it happens. We handle it together.”
We reached the safe house ten minutes later.
The guards were discreet. The porch light glowed gold against the dark timber. I should have felt the tightness return when I saw the house.
Instead, I looked at Sal.
“Is the date finished?”
He unbuckled his seat belt.
“Technically, yes.”
“That’s a disappointing word.”
“I know.”
I held Gianni-the-wolf against my chest.
Then I said it.
“I would like Daddy now.”
Sal looked at me for one long second.
“Then come inside, little one.”
He helped me change into soft pajamas. Not because I could not do it myself. Because I wanted him there. He turned away when I changed my underwear and top, then faced me when I asked.
He brought hot chocolate to the sitting room.
Gianni-the-wolf sat beside Olimpo on the rug.
Olimpo sniffed him once, gave a low judgmental sound, then put one giant paw over the wolf’s lopsided body.
“Protection,” Sal said.
“Or a hostage situation.”
“Yeah, either works.”
I sat on the floor between Sal’s feet with my coloring book. This time, I made the Firebird red and gold. Not every feather. I left one wing black.
Sal read from the storybook in his terrible Russian accents. His tsar still sounded like a tired Chicago cop. His wolf sounded suspiciously like Tonio. I corrected him twice and then gave up because I liked hearing him try.
My body settled without falling apart.
Halfway through the story, I leaned back against his shin.
“Sal?”
“Yes, little one?”
“That was my first real date.”
The book went quiet.
His hand came down over my hair. Warm. Heavy. Certain.
“Then I owe you more. And considerably better ones,” he said.
I looked up at him.
“You think you can do better than an arcade and grilled cheese?”
“I know I can.”
I smiled and returned to my firebird.
Behind me, Sal kept reading.
Outside, the war waited.
But inside, the wolf guarded Olimpo, the firebird grew bright beneath my pencil, and I let myself believe there would be another date after this one.