Chapter Five
Isabella
The oak-paneled room holding our truce is almost as old as the feud. Windows stretch to the tall ceilings so we can see the river from our seats like a warning. After all, that’s where my late mother and the Moretti Don rest for eternity. They say the current took them together.
Currents don’t take orders. Men do. Morettis say the Valentine Vendetta sent them to their watery graves. However, my family’s blood oath to erase the Morettis isn’t to blame.
The truth never matters. Our word being questioned does. The Valentine Vendetta is the law of my house, Moretti blood for Valentine blood. It’s been that way for one hundred years.
Valentine Week is the city’s yearly ceasefire under the Commission, so money moves, while routes are redrawn, and no one bleeds. I arrive early because heirs don’t rush. That’s what I’m told. It’s my first time at the table.
Men come with me like weather. Always there whether I want them or not. My father’s in a dark suit only he can wear without looking buried in it. The consigliere stands stiff as a board beside him gripping a folder. They’ve already decided what I’ll sign. We’ve rehearsed. This meeting is the show.
Polished Adrian is at my elbow to look like protection. He knows which camera to face and which smile to put on. Today he shows teeth but not intent.
The table’s long enough to stage a war without anyone ever standing. Chandeliers gleam overhead as if someone just scaled the ceilings to polish them. They sparkle like the diamond I wear.
There are rules here. Not written ones. In my world, rules are understood.
Practiced. The head chair belongs to a man who’s never earned it but never lost it.
My father. The right-hand seat belongs to the voice who’ll speak when the head performs dignity.
My fiancé. The place opposite the doors belongs to the heir who must watch anyone who enters. That chair is mine.
It is now since my brother passed early last year, right after the truce.
Passed by the wrong Moretti, that is. Killed by a Moretti.
Word on the street is that my brother fought hard but eventually took a bullet to the heart.
With his face flashing before my eyes, I remind myself there’s no room for my broken heart at this meeting.
No reason to question again why we haven’t moved to avenge our former heir all year.
Our blood oath will have to wait until after Valentine Week.
A runner sets a leather folio in front of me and a pen I didn’t choose, like my brother would have.
Little things were important to him. Like the glass to my right that sits a quarter inch closer to the edge than everyone else’s because someone knows I prefer water I can reach without looking.
I channel my brother as I recall our training to notice what others miss.
I touch the folio with my fingertips and feel the raised seal press into my skin.
The Valentine crest of swirling iron is a confinement if I stare at it long enough.
I don’t dare laugh out loud. A cage with a single rose inside.
The irony isn’t lost on me as Adrian pulls out my chair like a gentleman and bends close enough for me to get a whiff of the cologne he always wears.
I never liked it. When my brother died, I said yes to him for my father’s sake.
“You look beautiful and powerful,” he says.
“I look like the heir,” I say. “That is the point.”
He smiles for the room. “The Commission likes points.”
I’ve never cared what the Commission likes. They like results more. But Adrian has ties to their board. My father, cozying up to them, fashioned my cage.
I sit. Adrian sits. My father, Vittorio Valentine, lowers himself into the head chair and lets the wood receive his weight like something no one’s allowed to touch. The consigliere stacks two folders and a phone, adjusts them until the lines are perfect. I watch the door.
The Morettis come in on time, which means they come in power.
The old man with eyes like river stone. The captain I know by reputation, scar under his jaw, shoulders that remember work.
Two men who’ll blend into wallpaper as needed.
A dozen more who don’t matter except to equal our numbers.
I count hands and pockets. Notice the kind of shoes that tell me who’s willing to run. But nothing’s amiss.
I’m ready to be bored by the rest when the room stills. Their heir is coming. I know him by his place in line though I’ve never attended the truce to see him myself.
Luigi Moretti.
I’ve heard a dozen versions of him. He doesn’t shout, he ends things.
The river prefers men like that. It keeps their secrets.
He moves through rooms like maps and never requires a second glance at the exits.
Men who owe him pay on time. Men who test him stop making appointments. If he smiles, say goodbye.
The Moretti heir walks in alongside the view of the river and for a moment, I see Luca, on the terrace against the sea. The room makes a sound, not with lips or throats. It breathes like a gust of crisp air as I remember.
There’s no linen, only a suit as black as my father’s. No sunshine on his shoulders. But it’s Luca.
I sense it before I truly perceive it. Recognition hits in the ribs first. The island slides under my tongue. The cove. The briny flavor of the ocean and him on my lips. The curve of his mouth when he knows a joke that’ll save us both. The way he asked for my yes, only.
And I gave it, freely.
I didn’t know if I would ever see him again.
I didn’t know that the next time I saw his eyes they’d be across a table built for war.
I didn’t know that my family’s oldest hate has such a handsome face.
Last week, I met a man at the pool on a private island.
I lied about everything except the way I said yes.
And for one day, I belonged to no one but myself.
But that’s a lie, too. I wanted to belong to him.
A whisper skates the table’s underside, carried by a man who wants it to land in my ear.
“Ask him about your brother,” someone says from the Valentine end, one of my father’s old soldiers who collects rumors like medals. “Ask him who pulled the trigger. Moretti’s boy wore the blood.”
My mind catches on the memory of the pale crescent I once traced with a fingertip.
Scar or receipt?
He doesn’t look at me at first, which tells me everything I need to know about what kind of day this is.
He assesses the room, notes the camera above the third window, the mirror that doesn’t reflect quite cleanly because it hides a lens.
He places a palm on the back of the chair he’ll take as if he can feel the spine of the table through the wood. Then his eyes find mine.
I sit where an heir sits. The chair is the crown. The opposite seat. The heir’s view. It hits him. I watch the blade go in. He hides it well. He sits with the quiet that belongs to men who’ve learned to take punches without moving their chins.
“My daughter,” my father says to the Commission man in the center. “Isabella.”
Old John Smith has such an ordinary name, he’s referred to as the Commission man. Old, because his son, who would normally be a junior, goes by John Smith as well. He nods the way a judge nods when he already knows the verdict.
We pass greetings across the wood. They’re never greetings. They’re measurements. A waiter in black pours water and wine. Crystal makes a delicate sound. Adrian places his hand on the back of my chair as if he can claim the wood and the woman in one.
We begin with accounts that have nothing to do with love or blood.
Tonnage. Routes. A change in the toll schedule that’ll shift cash across bridges.
Words move and the real talk surfaces and dives like fish.
The Commission man asks if Valentine Week’s ceasefire will hold.
My father says yes. The Moretti uncle says yes. The truth always rings maybe.
Luigi speaks only once. “Our drivers will hold a slower pace by the east tunnels,” he says. “Yours will not shadow. When the week ends, we go back to interesting.”
The room pretends to laugh. I don’t. I notice his refusal to meet my eyes and feel it like a touch anyway.
A runner bends to my father’s ear. My father’s mouth doesn’t move.
Adrian’s phone buzzes and he mutes it without looking.
The consigliere slides a paper toward me with a square where my name should go and I read it without blinking, the way a woman raised to rule is taught to read a confession while keeping her face beautiful.
The square says a thing that’ll appear reasonable later. A shift of dock authority. A minor grant of access to the Commission. The trap sits in the parentheses with a phrase not there earlier. I’ve seen the contracts a dozen times. I have to alert my father.
I gaze into the reflection that isn't a reflection. I look at the camera by the third window. I gaze upon my left hand, noting the ring that rests weighty and submissive on my flesh. It’s the signal I’m to give if something’s wrong.
And no one notices.
Adrian bends. “Sign,” he says, voice low. “We aren’t here to make art.”
“We aren’t here to make mistakes,” I say, and don’t move the pen.
The Commission man begins his speech about peace being profitable. He always does. My father nods in a respectable rhythm. The Moretti uncle doesn’t blink. Luigi’s attention registers on me like a warm blade sliding along my throat. Not cutting. Measuring.
My eyes meet his. He’s the only man paying any attention to me. For a split second, it’s like we’re alone on the terrace again. I let my face betray me for only one small moment. It’s then, he can tell something’s wrong.