Page 29 of Promised to the Don of Naples
His hand with the cigar paused half a centimeter.
"Excuse me?"
"I heard you, Luca." I walked to the desk and rested both hands on the edge. "I went down the service stairs and put my ear to the wall. I heard you say that Salvatore's coming Friday, that you let him take me to Palermo, that if he suspects anything you lose the hook. That I'm the hook. Always have been."
I waited.
When he spoke, it didn't sound like the Don's voice he'd used at dinner. It was the voice from the vineyard balcony, the low voice from the small hours of the twisted ankle.
"You heard right, but you didn't hear everything."
"Then tell me the rest."
He put out the cigar in the silver ashtray on the desk. He didn't come over to where I was—he stopped on the other side of the desk again, the wood between us, the way he'd been on the night of the confrontation.
"You'd better sit down."
"No."
"Sit, Valentina. Please."
The word "please" threw me off balance more than the rest of the sentence did. He'd never said "please" to me.
I sat down in the leather armchair with my hands in my lap.
He rested his fists on the edge of the desk and looked into my eyes for a long moment.
"When your father promised you to me, two years ago, I didn't accept for the reason he thinks I did."
"What reason does he think?"
"A political pact. The end of the war. Rossi blood turning into Moretti blood, a son who'll inherit two houses, peace in southern Italy," he said dryly. "That's his reason."
"And yours?"
"Mine is simpler, bella. I accepted because as long as you were here, in my house, promised, your father would keep coming, would keep sending word. He'd keep coming and going to see his daughter, and he'd stay close." He stopped. "And I need your father close, Valentina. I've needed it for seven years. Because it's the only way for me to find out what he did, with whom, and when."
"So I'm the bait."
"You're the one thing he can't not come for."
"I'm the bait."
"I didn't say that."
"You said hook. A hook is bait, Luca—it's not a pretty metaphor. It's the thing you sink into a fish's mouth so it can't get free."
He didn't answer.
I stood up and walked to the balcony. I looked out at the bay in the dark, the boat lights, Vesuvius.
"When were you going to tell me?"
"Maybe never."
"Why?"
"Because as long as you didn't know, you were convincing."
