CHAPTER 5
"Lies have short legs."
VALENTINA ROSSI
Dinner lasted three hours and had five courses.
I barely ate. Seated to Luca's right, with Bianca three chairs down trying to rebuild her pride with one glass of Barolo after another, with my father across the table pretending I didn't exist ever since the appetizer—I didn't have the stomach for more than two bites of each course.
I drank water and smiled at whoever needed a smile.
And I answered the three questions the consigliere Acquaviva asked me about the convent.
And I waited.
I waited for dessert to turn into coffee. I waited for coffee to turn into grappa. I waited for the men to go off to their cigars in the library, and for Bianca to finally say her goodbyes, claiming a migraine, kissing the air near Luca's face without touching it.
I waited until there was no one left but my father, in the cigar room, talking quietly with Acquaviva, and Luca standing on the balcony off the music room, smoking alone with his back to me.
Without thinking too much, I went to him.
"You promised."
He didn't turn around.
"I know."
"You said you'd answer me when my father was at your table."
"I know."
"He's at your table."
"He's in my library, Valentina." Now he turned, looking at me. "And it's better that he's there when I tell you. Come with me."
He walked off the balcony, but didn't wait for me to follow—he knew I would.
We crossed a side corridor and went up half a flight of stairs. He opened a door with a key he took from the inside pocket of his tuxedo and made me go in first.
It was his office, the one Raffaele had skipped on the tour.
Dark wood. Shelves from floor to ceiling. A big mahogany desk turned toward the window that looked out over the bay. An old map of Italy on the wall. And on the desk, a closed leather folder he'd left there waiting.
He closed the door behind me and locked it.
"Sit."
"I'd rather stand."
"Sit down, Valentina. This isn't something you hear standing up."
I sat in the leather armchair across from the desk.
He didn't take the chair opposite. He stayed standing, coming around the desk, slowly taking off his tuxedo jacket and hanging it over the back of the chair.
He rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to the elbow, and I caught a glimpse of the Latin tattoo on his left forearm—a phrase I didn't have time to read.
"Allora." He leaned against the front of the desk, his eyes fixed on mine. "The photo."
"The photo..."
"It was taken in the summer of ninety-nine, on Capri, at my grandmother's house. I was eighteen and Raffaele was eight. Your brother was twelve."
"How was he on Capri with you?"
"Because your father and my father were partners for twenty years, Valentina," he said slowly.
"The war between the families started in 2019.
Twenty years later. Before that, the Rossis and the Morettis split half of southern Italy in peace.
Your brother spent every summer on Capri with us from the time he was twelve. "
"My father never told me that."
"I know."
"Why the hell did he never tell me?"
"Because, bella, if he'd told you, he'd have had to explain why we stopped being partners, and he can't explain that to you."
"Why not?"
Luca looked at me for a long moment.
"Because he was the one who broke it, Valentina. It wasn't us."
"That's a lie!"
"I can prove it."
"It's a lie."
"I can prove it." He leaned over, opened the leather folder, and took out a thick envelope, setting it on the desk between us.
"It's all here. Contracts broken at your father's initiative between 2017 and 2019.
His letters. Recorded meetings. There's even his email to my father saying, in these exact words: 'The deal with you ends today. Never set foot in Palermo again.'"
"Why?"
"Money. It was always money, Valentina. Your father found a new route in 2017 that he wanted for himself. The Morettis were in the way."
I swallowed hard. I thought about my father in the cigar room, three rooms away.
"And Matteo?" I asked, and my voice came out hoarser than I wanted.
Luca stopped.
"Bella…"
"Who killed Matteo?"
He looked at me, and those black eyes had gone very still.
"It wasn't me."
"Who?"
"Valentina..."
"Who, Luca?!"
He took a deep breath.
"The bullet that killed your brother came from a Moretti family gun.
It did. I won't lie to you. But the trigger wasn't pulled on my order, or my father's, or Raffaele's.
" He stopped, breathing deep. "It was one of our soldiers, who took the order from somewhere else, who took payment from somewhere else.
He vanished three days later and turned up dead on a road outside Salerno the following week. "
"Who gave the order?"
"I don't know yet."
"How do you not know?"
"I know it wasn't me. And I know there's someone inside my own house who ordered it. That person wanted the war between us, because the war served that person somehow, in a way I'm still figuring out. For three years I've been looking for a name, a face, anything."
I stayed silent, feeling my blood boil.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because you have a right to know."
"No. Why now?"
He looked at me, very slowly.
"Because as long as you think it was me, you're dangerous to me. And because until you know the truth about your father, you're dangerous to yourself. I'd rather have you on my side, Valentina. Even knowing the risk."
The words hung in the air between us.
I looked at the envelope on the desk, but I didn't touch it. I didn't need to. I already knew, somewhere inside me, in some small and stubborn place, that he wasn't lying. I'd known since the photo, since the vineyard, since the touch on my elbow.
I got up and went to the window, looking at the bay in the dark.
"If my father had my brother killed," I said, without turning around, "I'll kill him with my own hands."
"I know."
"Before the wedding."
I stayed quiet and heard him coming closer slowly, stopping behind me. He didn't touch me, but I felt him there—the heat of his body, the smell of the cigar, his breathing.
"Valentina, I still don't know if it was him. It could have been his consigliere, an uncle, someone in my own house he's never even met. You can't do anything before we know. Do you understand me?"
I didn't answer.
"Do you understand me?"
I turned, and he was very close. Too close.
"Promise me one thing," I said. "When we know, you let me into the room."
He looked at me, a long look. And then the corner of his mouth went up again. Those two millimeters.
"Brava," he said.
Then he left the office before I could answer, leaving the door open behind him and the envelope on the desk.
I stood at the window longer than I needed to, thinking that I'd walked into that office hating one man.
And that I'd walked out hating the other.