Chapter 31
ANTONELLA
Someone has laid rosemary across the chicken on my plate and wiped the rim clean. Three little potatoes sit beside it, carefully arranged, as though an untidy lunch is the worst thing that could happen here.
I can’t look at the food without feeling sick.
Luca brought me through the courtyard door to a small dining room at the end of a carpeted hall.
Six chairs stand around the table, spaced farther apart than anyone needs.
Dad is beside a dark wooden sideboard. Jonah has chosen the chair nearest the door, where he can watch me without having to turn his head.
My right arm aches from his grip. Keeping it close to my body, I move the plate away with my left hand and drag the tablecloth out of place.
“Eat something,” Dad says.
I look at him until he turns away. He’s offered water twice, apparently waiting for thirst to make me accept a kindness. The glass is beside my elbow, beads sliding down its sides onto a folded napkin.
Eventually, I drink. The cold hurts my teeth, but my mouth has been dry since the shop, and I need another swallow.
The stale tea still coats my tongue, bitter enough that I keep drinking until the taste begins to fade.
I take the water without looking at Dad.
He doesn’t get to make it something I owe him for.
Luca returns with a phone and a thin stack of papers. He puts them near the plate before sitting opposite me. There’s a tiny spot of blood near his cuff. I keep looking at it, unable to stop thinking about Filipp’s hand and how much blood ran from it.
The rosemary smells stronger as the food cools. Luca turns the phone toward me so I can see the camera.
“You’ll explain that you came freely, that your father brought you because you asked him to. Then tell Lebedev to agree to the transfer and stop making trouble for your family.”
“No.”
“It’s a few sentences, Antonella.”
He expects me to ask which sentences. I know how easily I could try to do this small thing correctly, hoping he’d be satisfied enough to let the rest go.
My knees are together beneath the table, my hands trying to stay still in my lap.
I put my clasped hands on the cloth, where he can see how tightly I’m holding them together.
“Your men shot at my friends. I won’t record a lie about it.”
“Your friends work for him.”
“Edith doesn’t.”
The chair creaks as he leans back. I look toward Dad before I can help it, and Luca follows my glance with a small smile.
“Your father understands what’s at stake.”
Dad says nothing. For years, I treated his silences as things I had to fix, whether they followed a difficult dinner or a person I’d failed to impress.
I’d start speaking before I knew what he needed, offering one subject after another until he answered.
Now he’s silent while a man asks me to lie about being taken at gunpoint.
I turn back to Luca. “I said no.”
He reaches across the table and catches my left wrist when I try to draw away. His thumb presses against Evgeny’s ring. I go still as he turns my hand to examine the stone, waiting for him to pull it off.
“Very generous. Did he tell you what he wanted in return?”
I tug once, and Luca releases me so abruptly that my fingers knock the glass. Dad comes over from the sideboard. For a moment, I expect him to object, but he only straightens the napkin beneath the water.
I look at the neat square he’s made. He can see the cloth out of place while leaving everything else exactly as it is. I move my hand away before he can pretend to help me with that too.
Luca slides the papers toward me. The first page is dated July sixth, with Evgeny’s name at the bottom. I recognize the signature from a card we signed for Janice after she spent an afternoon finding food I could bear to eat.
“Read it,” Luca says when I don’t touch the page.
My father’s name is there. Below it are references to payments and properties, with a demand that he withdraw support from the Mancini alliance. Then I find the sentence about the attached correspondence concerning Ruslan Lebedev’s death.
I lift the page. Messages lie beneath it, some short enough to fit on one line. I read them twice before I’m sure I haven’t put the names in the wrong places.
Dad arranged the meeting. He assured Luca that Ruslan would come if my father gave his word it was neutral. In exchange, Luca promised a share of the income after the accounts were transferred. Dad wanted a payment immediately after the killing.
The paper slips between my fingers. I lay it flat before I drop it and press my hands to the table on either side.
I’ve heard Evgeny laugh about his brother, then fall quiet in the middle of remembering him.
I’ve watched him look toward the garden after a story, as though someone should have been there to interrupt his version of it.
Ruslan wore Walter’s apron for twenty minutes and came back with an opinion he thought was his own.
My father invited that man to the place where he died.
“Tell me this isn’t yours.”
Dad looks at Luca before answering. I follow the movement, understanding it before I’m ready to hear him speak.
“You don’t know what was happening. Ruslan wouldn’t make room. Luca could settle it, and the rest of us could work. I had obligations, Antonella.”
“Did you know he would die?”
He draws a breath. His face looks older than it did at the shop, and I hate that I notice. Some part of me still wants him to be a tired man who can sit down and explain this until I understand him again.
“Yes. I knew what the meeting was for.”
I press my forearms to the table as the edge seems to move away from me. The cloth has a tiny pull near the plate, one white thread lifted from the others. I fix my eyes on it until I can breathe without feeling the room tilt.
He sent Ruslan with a promise. Even after hearing him admit it, I want another answer. I want him to be horrified that I believed these papers for a moment, to make me ashamed enough of doubting him that I can apologize and feel relieved.
“Why would you let me come today?”
“Because this has to end. You were going to marry Luca. Everything was arranged before Lebedev interfered.”
The shoes that got wet in Edith’s workroom have dried stiff against my feet. I shift them beneath the table, remembering how I dug my heels into the lane. A foolish part of me has still been waiting for Dad to take me home once he sees how frightened I am.
He can see it. He looks frightened himself, yet he’s brought me all the way here.
Luca taps the dated page. “Your fiancé has had this for a month. At least. Ask yourself why he didn’t show you.”
July sixth was before the test. Before the first appointment and the little shop where we bought seven pairs of socks. Evgeny had time to put this in my hand during all those days I spent hoping Dad would accept my life with him.
He could have told me my father had promised someone else a safe conversation. I wouldn’t have had to imagine what such a promise might mean. There was proof, and he kept it where I couldn’t see.
The hurt takes the breath I’ve been trying to steady. I bend forward, covering my mouth until the sickness passes. Jonah shifts by the door. Nobody comes closer, and I’m grateful for that much while I wait to be able to sit upright.
Across from me, Luca settles more comfortably in his chair. He seems to think the papers have brought me back to his side. They haven’t made him less frightening. They’ve made the person I’m waiting for harder to reach.
Dad comes around the table. “Now you see why you need your family.”
I stand too quickly. The chair catches in the carpet behind me, leaving barely enough room between its seat and the table.
“You lied to get me here.”
“I brought you somewhere we can protect you.”
“You brought me to the man who killed his brother.”
Luca’s expression changes. Dad raises a hand, asking me to lower my voice as though other diners might hear something embarrassing. I watch until he drops it.
For weeks, I’ve searched for the sentence that would let him understand I can be happy without his permission.
I tried to imagine it firm enough to make him listen, kind enough that he wouldn’t feel abandoned.
Now he’s standing between me and the door after admitting what he did to a man who trusted him.
“I won’t marry Luca or go home with you. When I leave this room, you don’t get to call and ask what I’ve done to you. You’re finished being my father.”
His mouth opens. I brace myself to hear my name the way he said it when I was small. I even want to hear it, which starts the tears before I’ve turned away.
“You’ve become cruel.”
I flinch. My first thought is to tell him how kind I’ve been, to name every dinner I stayed through, every question I didn’t ask because his happiness depended on my silence. I remember calling from Evgeny’s guest room to ask whether he was all right while he worried about the marriage he’d lost.
Even here, I’m trying to prove I’m a daughter worth keeping. The urge frightens me more than the accusation. I could spend the rest of this afternoon giving him reasons to love me, and it wouldn’t change what’s written on the table.
I look at his jacket instead of his face. There’s a mark on the sleeve where I held him in the shop. I was pleased he’d come. I don’t owe him a version of the morning in which walking into his arms was something I did wrong by myself.
Wiping my face, I step behind the chair when he reaches for me. Its high back won’t stop him if he wants to cross the space. Still, I need something between his hand and my body, and I keep it there when Luca’s phone rings.
Luca declines the call and reads a message. The ease leaves his face. He goes to the corner by the sideboard to call back, holding the phone close enough that I can’t hear the answer.
He insists the agreement isn’t finished. Then he tells the other person to wait and turns toward Dad before looking at me. Dad notices. For the first time since the shop, they appear less certain of each other than of what they expect me to do.
Luca returns for the papers. I catch the corner of the dated page before he can take it, needing him to know removing it won’t undo what I’ve seen.
“I’ve read it.”
For a moment, we both hold the sheet. Then he pulls it away, leaving a small tear where my fingers were. I let my hand fall to the chair instead of reaching for the page again.
At a word from Luca, Jonah rises and goes into the hall. The door remains partly open, showing a strip of carpet and the brass edge of another doorway. I can’t see who’s outside. My knees feel unreliable enough that I sit down before they can fail in front of the two men watching me.
Luca places another call and leaves the phone on the table with the speaker on. Evgeny answers before the second ring.
Hearing him hurts. Until now, I haven’t let myself remember how he said goodbye this morning, distracted by the keys he’d left near the bed. I kissed him anyway. I thought I’d have good news to bring him when we met for lunch.
“She’s here,” Luca says. “Listen to her.”
He points at me. My first attempt produces no sound, so I swallow and try again.
“Evgeny.”
“Are you hurt?”
“My arm hurts. I can walk, but I don’t know about anything else.”
“Where are you in the building? Who’s with you?”
The questions come quickly. I try to follow, but Dad is still where I can see him and the papers are beneath Luca’s hand. I need Evgeny to hear why I’m here before the call ends.
“He said he’d stop asking me to marry Luca. I thought I could tell you afterward, when it was over.”
“Antonella, tell me where you are.”
Then he stops. I stare at the little speaker holes while the silence lasts, trying to imagine his face wherever he’s answering from.
“I understand why you went,” he says. “You’re in danger. I’m coming to get you.”
“You knew about Ruslan. Before I knew about the babies.”
My father turns away from the table. Luca stays still, watching me wait for the answer.
“Yes,” Evgeny says.
There’s no explanation attached, no reminder of what I should have done. That lets me hear the admission, although it hurts as much as the date on the page. I press my feet into the stiff leather of my shoes and try to keep listening.
He’s somewhere outside this room. I don’t know how far away, and I can’t picture what will happen after the first moment of seeing him. I want him to come without knowing what I’ll say when he reaches me.
“We’ll talk about everything I withheld when you’re safe,” he says. “I won’t ask you to forget it. Stay with me now.”
I close my eyes. He’s said something ugly about himself because I asked, leaving it there without requiring me to make it easier for him. I want him here so badly that I can’t answer.
Luca picks up the phone before I can try. “Side entrance. Don’t keep her waiting.”
When the call ends, I remain facing the place where the phone was. The chicken has gone cold across the table. Dad doesn’t say another word.