13. Anthony
— ? —
Anthony
Then - The Year He Came Back
The ballroom is too hot and too loud, and Simon hasn’t let go of my elbow since we walked in.
“You’re going to lose her anyway,” he says under his breath while he pretends to admire the ice sculpture. Some kind of swan, I think, though it’s melting fast under the chandeliers. “At least don’t make her hate you.”
“I’m not going to lose her.”
“You’re going to put her father in prison, Anthony.
” He keeps his voice low, his smile fixed for anyone watching.
We look like two friends having a casual conversation at a charity gala.
We look like we’re discussing the weather, or the wine, or anything except the fact that I’m about to destroy someone’s life.
“That’s not a first date. That’s a crime scene with an open bar. ”
I pull my arm free and take a second glass of champagne off a passing tray. The first one is still half-full in my other hand, but I need something to do with my fingers that isn’t clenching them into fists.
“I just want to see her,” I tell him. “That’s all. I just want to see what she looks like now.”
“Bullshit.” Simon’s smile doesn’t waver, but his eyes go hard. “You’ve been planning this for months. You know what gala she’ll be at, you know what time she’ll arrive, you probably know what she’s going to be wearing. This isn’t curiosity. This is strategy.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I’ve spent weeks preparing for tonight. I have a file on Alessia Sartori that’s thicker than the one on her father - her social media, her schedule, the charity work she does, the restaurants she likes, the friends she keeps.
I know she hates crowds and usually escapes to somewhere quiet after the first hour.
I know she drinks champagne but switches to water after two glasses.
I know she wears her mother’s jasmine perfume on special occasions, though the reports say she’s switched to something lighter for everyday.
I know everything about her except the one thing that matters: whether she’ll ever forgive me.
“I’m going outside,” I tell Simon. “Don’t follow me.”
“Anthony-”
But I’m already moving, weaving through the crowd with my champagne held high, heading for the glass doors that lead to the balcony.
The city is all gold light and wind up here, Manhattan spread out below like a promise or a threat depending on how you look at it.
I lean against the railing and let the cold air cut through the heat of the ballroom.
I tell myself I’ll just wait a few minutes. I tell myself that if she doesn’t come out, I’ll leave. I’ll go back to my apartment and my files and my grief, and I’ll find another way to get close to Domenico Sartori that doesn’t involve using his daughter as a door.
But I know she’ll come. I’ve read her like a file, and I know exactly where she’ll go.
The minutes stretch. The wind picks up, carrying the sounds of traffic from far below, and I stand there with my back to the doors and my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
I think about the vineyard. I think about jasmine and sunset and a girl who laughed like nobody had ever taught her to be careful with it.
I think about the tin box in the back of my closet, the letters I’ve read so many times the folds are soft as cloth.
I think about the night I left, and the look on her face I never saw, and all the years I spent trying not to think about her at all.
The doors open behind me.
The noise of the party swells and falls away, and I hear heels stop dead on the stone. My whole body goes rigid. I don’t turn around. I can’t turn around, because if I do, I’ll have to face what I’m doing, and I’m not ready for that yet.
“Anthony?”
Her voice.
I’d know it anywhere. Even after all these years, even with the lower register that comes with growing up, even with the surprise roughening the edges of it. Alessia. The syllables hit me like a physical blow, and I have to grip the railing to keep my hands from shaking.
I turn around, and every line I rehearsed in the mirror like a lunatic evaporates.
She’s wearing black silk, something elegant and expensive that skims her body like water.
Her hair is longer than I remember, darker, swept up off her neck to show the curve of her throat.
She looks exactly the same and completely different - her cheekbones sharper, her eyes more guarded, her mouth painted a red that would have made sixteen-year-old me forget how to breathe.
It’s making twenty-something me forget how to breathe too.
There’s a smile starting at the corner of her mouth, one she’s fighting hard to kill. I watch her try to suppress it, watch her fail, watch it break through for just a second before her face closes off again.
“Alessia.” My voice breaks on her name. I should be embarrassed by that. I’m not. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
The lie comes so easily it frightens me.
She recovers faster than I do. She lifts her chin - a gesture I remember from the vineyard, from every argument we ever had, from the night her father dragged her away and I let her go - and walks to the railing a careful arm’s length away.
“Are you hiding?” she asks.
“I was looking for air.”
“There’s air inside.”
“It’s better out here.”
“Is it?”
She steps closer. The wind is pulling strands of hair loose from her updo, dark tendrils that frame her face like a painting.
I can smell her perfume now - not jasmine, something lighter, something unfamiliar - and I have no right to feel robbed by that.
I have no right to feel anything about her at all.
“The view is better,” I tell her, and we both know I’m not talking about the skyline.
Her smile breaks through before she can stop it, wide and real and devastating. Then it falls apart just as fast, crumbling into something that looks a lot like grief.
“Did you ever get my letters?”
The question hits me like a punch to the stomach.
I think about the tin box. I think about the twelve letters folded inside it, the paper worn soft from all the times I’ve opened and reread them.
The first one was angry, demanding answers.
The second was confused. The third started to plead.
By the seventh, she was just sad, and by the twelfth, she was saying goodbye.
I’ve carried those letters with me everywhere I’ve ever lived. They’re in my apartment right now, three blocks from here, sitting in the back of my closet like a secret I can’t put down.
“What letters?” I ask.
“I sent you twelve.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she’s furious about it - I can see the anger fighting with the grief, neither one winning. “I sent them to your uncle’s address. Twelve, Anthony.”
“I never got them.”
The lie is acid in my mouth. I watch it land, watch her shoulders sag with something like relief, watch her rewrite the last decade of her life around this new information. He didn’t ignore me. He just didn’t know.
And I let her believe it.
When she starts to cry, I pull her into my chest and let her cry into my shirt.
Her shoulders shake against me, and I can feel the wetness spreading through the fabric, and I hold her like I have any right to hold her at all.
My hand comes up to cup the back of her head, and her hair is silk against my palm, and I’m lying to her with every beat of my treacherous heart.
I read every letter, I want to tell her. I read them so many times I have them memorized. I wrote you back once, a letter I never sent, and I’ve carried it with me ever since. I’ve never stopped thinking about you, not for a single day, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have found a way-
But I don’t say any of it. I just hold her while she cries, and I let the lie settle into my bones and make itself at home.
When she finally steps back, she wipes her face with the heel of her hand and looks at me like she’s made up her mind about something. Her makeup is smudged, mascara tracking down her cheeks, and she’s never looked more beautiful.
“You owe me an explanation,” she says, and her voice is steady now, determined. “And you’re not giving it to me in there. Drive me home.”