Page 32 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

A Riccari debt is worth more than money.

It's also a tag you wear whether you want to or not.

“You don’t owe me,” I say, because that is the safest sentence in the room and because I grew up with a woman who paid for other people’s bread in a separate line so nobody would see. “You needed help. I helped. That is called being raised right.”

“In my world, being raised right has a ledger,” he says. “I can't put you in danger and walk away like it was nothing. I have to balance what I bring into this room.”

“Then do that by staying,” I say. “Do that by letting me keep you alive while you figure out how to make your wolf friends stop howling.”

He studies me as if I have said something he has not heard from anybody who wasn’t already on his payroll.

It makes me want to sit up straighter and also lie down again and hide under the blanket.

He reaches for my hand and flips it palm up.

He traces the lines like he is reading.

I'm not a palm person, but the way his finger follows my life line makes me consider becoming one.

“You think this is simple,” he says, but there is no bite in it.

There is only a kind of wonder, like a man who thought he had already eaten the best fig in the world and then someone handed him one from a different tree.

“I think nothing about any of this is simple,” I say. “I think I'm the one who is here right now while the rest of the city sleeps, which makes me the person with the most votes.”

“That is not how voting works,” he says, but he is smiling like it should be.

“It's exactly how it works,” I say. “You know why old ladies run parishes? They show up.”

He squeezes my hand once, not enough to hurt, just enough to tell me he heard me and that he is measuring his choices with a new ruler.

The light creeps higher on the wall.

He tells me more, drip by drip, like a good IV.

He tells me how the nephews and the in-laws and the men who think they are princes have been whispering into phones they think are clean.

He tells me about money moving in ways that make accountants wake up from very boring dreams.

He does not say names and I don't ask.

I already live with enough of those in my head.

I ask the question that will not leave. “Do you regret it?”

He looks at me like he is counting my freckles before he answers. “I regret that what I'm good at is necessary,” he says. “I don't regret keeping the people I swore to safe.”

“Who is that?” I ask. “The old man. The soldiers. The street. The boys who carry the espresso cups. The wives who light candles. Which line do you draw?”

He turns my hand over and presses his mouth to my wrist.

It's not a kiss meant for an audience.

It's quiet and private and makes my bones feel like they belong in this room.

“It changes,” he says against my skin. “I would like to tell you yours is now the only line I draw. That would be a beautiful lie. The truth is that you have moved to the front.”

I let out a breath I did not realize I was still holding since the hospital.