Page 13 of Conning the Billionaire
“Same,” he said, “and the tasting board and the eggplant caponata for the table to start. Are those good here?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Everything’s good. The arancini are better, though. The recipe is really authentic.”
“The arancini instead of the caponata,” he told the waiter. “And a Gronicello Negroni for me. Would you like a cocktail?”
He’d pronounced the appetizer and the cocktail with a perfect Italian accent, albeit one as neutral as his American inflection.
“A Borgata Bellini, thanks?” she asked the waiter.
The waiter looked her up and down. “Some ID, if you please?”
“Yeah, sure.” She dug in her purse and handed him her Kylie Miller driver’s license, keeping the front turned away from the man on the other side of the table.
The waiter glanced at the date. “Thank you, ma’am.” He handed it back.
She tucked it back in her purse quickly, but the guy seemed to still be holding out the menu for the waiter to take.
When the waiter left, she asked him, “Do you speak Italian?”
He turned back to her and rested his arms on the table. “So, the arancini are good, you said. That’s an unusual dish. Not a lot of restaurants serve it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a staple of Sicilian cuisine. This restaurant is Sicilian, not just generic Italian for the most part.”
“Just like grandma used to make?” he asked her.
Kylie sat back in the booth. “Why would you ask that?”
“You seem to know a lot about Sicilian cuisine, and you pronounced arancini and Bellini with a Sicilian accent. And your last name is Corleone, of course.”
Oh. Yeah. That. “That’s very perceptive of you.”
“Did your grandmother have an accent?”
“Yeah, and my father. He was born here—well, in Philadelphia—but he had an accent, too, at least a little bit of one. Being full-blooded Sicilian was a big part of his identity.” Because you had to be at least half-Sicilian on your father’s side to be a made man in the Philly Mob.
“Interesting. I am so sorry. It must have been hard on you, losing both your parents so young. Did your extended family take care of you?”
Not a goddamned bit. “Oh, yeah. I was fine, like I said.”
“How long ago did your mother die?”
She wasn’t dead.
That Kylie knew of, anyway.
But she’d left four years before.
No.
Delilah Corleone and Kylie Miller were both twenty-seven.
Math.
“Eleven years since my mom was gone,” she said. “See? It was a long time ago.”
“Right. Well, here’s the arancini.”
A plate of deep-fried balls the size of oranges was set on the table, along with the cheese and salsiccia alla pizzaiola, Sicilian sausage. The guy served her one of the deep-fried globes of arancini on her appetizer plate, and she broke the crust with her fork.
