Chapter 28
Bellini looked at him.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Vittorio’s been waiting fourteen years for you to find out.” Bellini’s voice dropped. “He’s not going to run. He’s going to call.”
Dante’s phone rang.
He looked down at the screen.
Unknown number.
He answered.
“Hello, nephew.”
The voice was warm. It was the voice of a man at a dinner party, a man with a glass of wine, a man who had kissed a boy on the cheek and asked about school.
Dante said nothing.
“You found my mother’s book,” Vittorio said. “And the letter. She was always better at writing than she was at staying quiet.”
“Where are you?”
“Where I’ve always been.” A pause. “I want to see you. Both of you. There’s a place on the river where your father and I used to go, before he got serious. I’ll text the address. Come alone.”
“No.”
“I didn’t expect you to.” Vittorio laughed, softly. “Bring whoever you like. Bring the whole house. I only want to talk, Dante. I’m the last family you have.”
Dante looked at the phone.
“You’re not my family,” he said.
“Careful,” Vittorio said, and the warmth went out of his voice. “You don’t know what you’ll be when this is done.”
The call ended.
Dante stood in the hospital corridor with the phone in his hand and Allesia watching him from the doorway.
“Well?” she said.
“He wants to meet.”
“And?”
Dante looked at her.
“And I’m going to go,” he said. “And you’re going to stay.”
“No,” Allesia said.
“Allesia—”
“No.”
She stepped out of the doorway, into the corridor, and stood in front of him, and the fluorescent light made her look older and harder than she had looked in the kitchen of his house.
“Yesterday,” she said, “I was told I was fired before anyone asked me anything. This morning, I was told my suitcase was packed before I woke up. This afternoon, a man I’ve never met called me by my father’s name.” She looked up at him. “You do not get to decide for me. Not you. Not him. Nobody.”
Dante looked at her for a long moment.
“Then you’re coming,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It will be dangerous.”
“I know.”
“You might not come back.”
Allesia looked at him.
“Neither might you,” she said.
And there it was.
CHAPTER 11 — THE RIVER
The address was an old boathouse on the south branch of the river, a long low building of dark brick that had been a rowing club in the twenties and a warehouse in the eighties and nothing at all since.