Page 35 of Promised to the Don of Naples
I got home at eleven at night.
My father had gone to a business dinner in Palermo. He wasn't expected back before one in the morning.
I went upstairs and crossed the hallway to my father's office door.
Closed, always closed, but I knew where the spare key was—I'd known since I was twelve, because I'd searched the whole house during the summers my father traveled.
The key was kept under the portrait of Saint Sebastian, on the doorframe, stuck there with a strip of tape yellowed from so much use.
I took the key, unlocked the door, and went in.
My father's office was smaller than Luca's.
Less elegant, more functional. A dark wood desk, three low bookcases, a steel safe behind a Caravaggio painting (not an original—a good copy, but a copy), and a leather armchair worn at the creases.
I went straight to the desk.
Top drawer. Locked—no way to open it without a key. Middle drawer. Open. Bank paperwork, old contracts, nothing new.
Bottom drawer. Open too.
Inside it, an old, stained brown leather folder. I took it out and opened it.
They were letters.
Handwritten letters, on stationery folded in three. The handwriting looked like a woman's. The first had been written in June 2016—seven months after my mother's death. The last, in January of this year.
Twenty-three letters in all.
All signed with the same initial:
B.
And on the last letter, in the bottom corner of the page, two kisses pressed in lipstick. Silver-gray.
Silver-gray.
The color of Bianca's dress, of the bracelet, of the nail polish, of the lipstick...
And just like that, it hit me that Bianca Varga had been my father's lover for seven years.
Before she was Luca's lover.
Or during it.
I heard the garage gate opening downstairs.
I closed the folder and put it back, and left the office. I locked the door and put the key back behind Saint Sebastian, and quickly crossed the hallway.
I reached my room before he came into the house.
I sat down on the bed in the dark. And I thought, with my heart pounding in my ears:
I'm going back to Posillipo on Sunday. And I'm going to look at Bianca Varga differently. Because now I know something not even Luca knows.
CHAPTER 12
"Whoever learns to fish at night no longer fears the dark." —Sicilian proverb
