Page 31 of Promised to the Don of Naples
And that was what threw me off balance.
It wasn't him coming closer, much less the smell. It was him saying "you know" as if it were something that had been obvious between the two of us for days, as if it were something we'd already talked through without words since the vineyard, and I could no longer pretend I didn't know.
I took half a step back.
"I'm going to my room. You won't stop me."
"I'm not stopping you from anything."
I walked to the door, put my hand on the knob, but stopped, without turning around:
"Luca... when my father gets here Friday, I'm going to Palermo with him. And I'm coming back."
"I know."
"But not as the hook."
Then I turned.
He was standing on the other side of the desk, the yellow lamplight hitting his face from below, the scar through his eyebrow gleaming, and his black eyes waiting.
"I'm coming back," I said, low, "as the fisherwoman."
He smiled, very slowly.
"Brava."
I left the office.
I went up the service stairs barefoot and reached my room.
I sat down on the bed. And for the first time in ten days, it wasn't anger I felt rising.
It was hunger.
CHAPTER 11
"A fish won't bite the bait it recognizes." —Sicilian fishing proverb
VALENTINA ROSSI
The car left Posillipo at six on Friday morning.
My father had arrived Thursday night. He hadn't had dinner with the family—he asked to be served in his room, claiming he was tired from the trip.
I went down to greet him in the salon for two minutes. I kissed his hand the way you kiss a bishop's hand, and he kissed my forehead.
Then he went back upstairs. That was how father and daughter had greeted each other in our house for fifteen years.
Luca hadn't come down for the goodbye. By choice.
Raffaele came down—he kissed my hand too, without his usual lopsided grin, with a seriousness that unsettled me more than his charm did. He whispered in my ear as he handed my luggage to the driver:
"Be careful in Palermo, cognatina. Your father's house is no longer your home."
"I know."
"No, you don't know yet."
