Page 30 of Promised to the Don of Naples
That was when I turned around.
"You're despicable."
"Sì."
"You know you are."
"Sì."
He said it plainly, without defending himself. It was worse than if he'd argued.
I walked back to the desk and stopped in front of him. He stayed leaning on his fists, not moving, the desk between the two of us.
"What changed, that you're telling me now?"
He gave me a long look.
"What changed is that you heard."
"Before that."
"Before?"
"Before I heard, Luca. What changed yesterday, the day before, last week? You weren't telling me anything—I know you weren't. You were going to use me until next Friday and let me go to Palermo with my father without warning me."
He dropped his eyes to the desk.
"The photo changed some things."
"What photo?"
"The photo my great-grandfather captioned."
My breath caught for half a second.
"You knew I'd find it."
"I let Raffaele take you to the blue book on the shelf, Valentina. I told him to take you to the blue book." He raised his eyes. "You think he decided on his own which book to pull from a shelf of four thousand volumes?"
"You used your brother."
"I used the book."
"You used your brother to plant the book. That's different."
"I planted the book a month ago, bella, expecting just any bride. It was you who showed up."
He came around to my side of the desk, very slowly.
He didn't touch me—he stopped a foot and a half away. I caught the smell of the cigar, the smell of the whiskey, and underneath, that smell—different, but good—that I still hadn't been able to name.
"I'm telling you now," he said, low, "because you deserve it. Not because it's strategic. This is wrecking my strategy, but you deserve it, Valentina. And I can't keep doing this to you the way I did the first week."
"Why can't you?"
He didn't answer; he only looked at my mouth, then back up to my eyes.
"You know."
