Page 38 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

Something inside me loosens the way rope does when you slide it off a mooring.

“You left,” she observes, nothing about her giving away the fact that I hurt her in the act of doing so.

“I left because I could not win the fight that was coming by standing beside you,” I answer. “I left because the sirens were for the man in the alley who thought the bakery was a soft place to press. I left because if I had stayed, your name would be in the wrong mouths before the sun cleared the roofline.”

Her eyes flash.

She does not look away.

“You could have said it to my face.”

“I should have,” I say. The apology is not elaborate. It does not need to be.

She sits with it.

The room goes louder around us for a minute with plates and laughter and the clink of glasses.

The kitchen door swings open and closed in a rhythm men on this street count without knowing they are doing it.

I give her time because you don't rush a wound that is deciding whether to close.

“Explain the parts you can,” she says at last.

“The crux of it is simple,” I sigh. “I have a hit on my back because the man I put into the ground has brothers and cousins and men who owe these brothers and cousins favors.

I didn’t want to put you in danger.

“Six weeks before I met you, the Riccari family—for whom I'm consigliere—started thinking about contingency plans without my permission,” I say, because she deserves the line without powder. “There are men who believe the old man has stayed at the table too long. They tested their theory. They lost.”

Elisa watches me, silent, waiting for what I don’t want to say.

“Don Vincent is still holding this town,” she says finally, because even people who don’t gossip know who drives the street.

I nod. “He is. And he still has a grip that hurts. But one of the men who tested him was Vito Santangelo—Marco’s brother. Marco grew up with me under the Riccari flag. His family’s been tied to ours for three generations. We ran jobs together when we were kids. I kept him alive more than once. But Vito wanted the Don gone and the Santangelos at the top. The night it went bad, Vito drew first, and I put him into the ground before he could pull the trigger.”

I glance at her hands, folded in her lap.

“It wasn’t the kind of death you can bury with flowers. Marco still carries his picture in his wallet. Revenge draws circles on a map, and those circles run right through places with your name on the lease.”

Her thumb slides along the rim of her water glass.

“Did you have to kill him?”

“Yes,” I say. I don't dress it in better clothes. “I had to keep orders from turning into chaos. Chaos gets boys with backpacks knifed on side streets because nobody knows who is blessing which traffic. Chaos gets old women with prayer cards shoved when they cross a line they can't see. I'm not sentimental. I'm practical.”

“You sound like a Q and A for a board of directors,” she says.

The sarcasm is a relief.

It's familiar ground.

“I'm talking about keeping a city from eating itself,” I say. “On the nights when it matters, my job is a narrow bridge. I walk it. I don't take passengers unless I trust their footing.”

“Is that what I am?” she asks, quiet again. “A passenger with bad shoes?”

“You are the person who kept me from bleeding out on a slab while two men with badges did arithmetic,” I say. “You are also the person I put in danger by accepting that kindness. This meeting is me owning both truths.”

Mario returns with panelle in a basket and lemon halves wrapped in cheesecloth.