Page 48 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

“When a man was getting frozen out,” I say quietly, “the salt shell stayed on his plate too long. No one broke it. He sat and watched it cool while the table talked. When a man was coming back in, the Don cracked it himself and gave him the first bite. Nothing on paper. Everyone understood both choices.”

She pauses with her fork a breath from the fish.

“Which one is this?” she asks, gaze on me now, not the plate.

“This is me breaking it for you,” I say. “You belong at my table as long as you want it.”

She takes the bite.

She chews.

Her hand finds my knee under the table and stays there like a warm stone.

I call herAngelo miobecause I can't not call her that anymore.

It lands in the space between us and settles like it was looking for a home.

By course seven, we are closer than the booth intended.

Sorbetto al limonein small cups, icy and tart, a clean slate for men who have argued for hours and need their mouths forgiven.

Espresso comes dark and short with a curl of lemon peel at the rim because some older relative swore on saints that it should be.

“Cleansing the palate,” she says, spoon against her teeth. “Starting fresh.”

“Settling accounts,” I say. “You don't leave a table dirty and expect the next year to be good.”

She tips her head, studying me as if I'm a dish she is not sure she will order again, then grins like she knows she will. “You really believe the rituals change the weather.”

“I believe people need a way to agree in public what they have already decided in private,” I say. “The meal gives them cover.”

“You and your cover,” she says, and there is no accusation in it tonight. “Do I count as cover?”

“You count as the reason I bother with the meal at all,” I say, and it's clumsy and true, and she touches my wrist as if to say clumsy is allowed when the rest of you is sharp.

My phone hums a second time.

Then a third.

Rule of three.

I reach under the table and slide it half out of my pocket, thumb across the screen with the same care I use to rack a slide in the dark.

The message blooms white against black.

It's from a number that never jokes and never types twice.

MARCO SANTANGELO IS TALKING TO THE FEDS. YOUR BAKERY GIRL IS IN HIS FILE.

The room narrows to a point.

The color leaves my face before I can tell it not to.

The candle line wavers as if someone opened a door.

Elisa’s hand tightens on my wrist, and I'm already moving through the next three moves while the taste of lemon turns to metal on my tongue.

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