Chapter 6 - SIX MONTHS OF LIES
“Yes.”
The word tasted awful.
Dante stood beside Table Seventeen, waiting.
I forced myself not to look away.
“Before we left Canada, Mom gave me an old La Perla matchbook.”
Stefano watched quietly.
Dante did not.
His entire focus stayed on me.
“She told me if we reached Palermo and she got worse, I should find work here.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“And you never thought that was worth mentioning?”
“I thought she wanted me close to someone.”
“To me.”
“I didn’t know your name.”
“But you recognized my scar.”
“Because she described it.”
That landed.
Dante’s expression became frighteningly blank.
“So that first night—”
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
“But when you saw me, you knew you might be the man she meant.”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe it was coincidence.”
“I was scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of all of this.”
He laughed once.
Cold.
“Convenient.”
I flinched.
Then anger rose.
“Do you think I enjoyed spending my first month in Sicily working double shifts while my mother couldn’t breathe?”
“No.”
“Do you think I crossed an ocean because I wanted to play detective inside your restaurant?”
“No.”
“Then don’t make me into one of the people who betrayed you.”
His face shifted.
A little.
“I didn’t know enough to betray you.”
Silence.
Then Dante nodded once.
“That’s fair.”
Not forgiveness.
But not condemnation either.
We confronted Mom the next morning.
She looked more annoyed than guilty.
“I told you to work at La Perla because I needed to know whether Salvatore’s hiding place still existed.”
“You used me.”
“I gave you a direction.”
“Without telling me there were dangerous men involved.”
Her face softened.
“Yes.”
“That was wrong.”
“Yes.”
The answer stole some of my anger.
Dante stood near the window.
“Where is the final record?”
Mom shook her head.
“I don’t know exactly.”
He looked at her sharply.
“You sent Aria into my restaurant to find something you cannot locate?”
“I knew Salvatore hid it in something ordinary.”
“What?”
“He said Dante would never throw it away because it annoyed him.”
Dante frowned.
“That describes half the restaurant.”
Mom almost smiled.
“Then search the half you hate most.”
We did.
Nothing.
Days became weeks.
Lorenzo disappeared from Palermo.
Giulio vanished before Dante could question him.
Stefano quietly took over several of his father’s business accounts.
Raffaele provided copies of the old magistrate correspondence.
It was enough to prove corruption.
Not murder.
Not the fire.
Not who had changed the evacuation order.
We needed the original.
Mom improved slightly under treatment.
Not cured.
But stronger.
Dante paid the doctor directly until I discovered it and made him let me contribute what I could.
“You earn waitress wages,” he said.
“They’re my wages.”
He looked irritated.
Then accepted them.
That mattered.
I kept working at La Perla.
My choice.
Not his.
Six months passed.
Dante and I became something neither of us named.
He drove me home sometimes.
I brought coffee to his office.
He stopped ordering me to do things.
Mostly.
Once, when I went out in a storm, he said, “You are absolutely not walking home.”
I looked at him.
He closed his eyes.
“Would you please allow my driver to take you home?”
“Better.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
He did not kiss me.
I did not ask him to.
But there were moments.
His hand at the small of my back when a drunk customer stumbled too close.
My fingers fixing his crooked tie before a meeting.
The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Something waited between us.
Neither of us touched it.
Then Mom remembered Table Seventeen’s old reservation box.
Not the table itself.
The wooden card file Salvatore used before the restaurant computerized bookings.
Dante had hated it because his father refused to throw anything away.
Exactly.
It was stored in the back room.
I found it after midnight.
Dust.
Hundreds of handwritten reservation cards.
Names from twenty years ago.
Politicians.
Actors.
Men whose faces I had seen on television.
Then one card with no name.
DECEMBER 18.
TABLE 17.
2:13.
Beneath it, my childhood star.
My pulse jumped.
The card had two layers.
I peeled them apart.
A thin strip of photographic film lay between them.
Microfilm.
The final record.
I stared at it.
Mom had made me promise something three days earlier.
“If you find it, don’t tell Dante until you know what it says.”
“Why?”
“Because blood makes people blind.”
I had hated the answer.
I had promised anyway.
So I put the strip into my apron pocket.
Then the light came on.
Dante stood in the doorway.
My heart stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“Inventory.”
His face changed.
“You’re a bad liar.”
I should have told him.
Instead I put my hand over my pocket.
His eyes followed the movement.
“Aria.”
“Dante.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
That was the lie that ruined everything.
He crossed the room.
I stepped back.
“Show me.”
“No.”
His expression went cold.
“Why?”
“Because Mom asked me to look at it first.”
“You found evidence about my father and planned to hide it from me.”
“Temporarily.”
“That is still hiding it.”
“Yes.”
He reached toward my apron.
I moved away.
His hand stopped.
He did not touch me.
Then he noticed the open reservation card.
The star.
The time.
2:13.
His father’s watch.
Dante went pale.
“What is in your pocket?”
I hesitated.
Too long.
He drew his gun.
The world stopped.
Six months collapsed into the cold circle of metal pressed against my forehead.
Black suit.
Steady hand.
Scar beneath amber light.
Exactly as memory had promised.
“You lied to me from the first night.”
His voice was quiet.
That made it worse.
“Tell me why.”
My heart hammered.
But I met his stare.
“If you wanted me dead,” I whispered, “I’d already be on the floor.”
His jaw tightened.
Then I reached slowly into my apron.
“Before you decide I betrayed you, Dante…”
May you like
I placed the strip of microfilm between two fingers.
“…you should see what your father died trying to show you.”
