Page 110 of Rosetti Family New York
Her voice is calm, but there's a tightness to it, a sign that she’s holding something inside.
"Why don't you like speaking it?"
Her hand reaches for the wineglass. She takes her time lifting it and holds it close to her lips. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t move, like she's frozen in a moment of indecision.
"It reminds me of anger and violence."
Her confession is so quiet I almost don’t catch it, yet the words hang in the air between us, heavier than they should be.
"Why? Because you learned it from your father?"
She nods, and there's a kind of finality to it. She sets the glass down without drinking.
"Yes."
Her voice is steady but stretched thin, like a tightrope she's walking across. Her fingers clench around the stem before she lets go.
"Everything in my life comes back to him," she says, bitterness creeping into her tone. "The way I speak, the way I think, the way I feel about languages." She tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. "Especially languages."
I sense the door closing, her reluctance to revisit a past that's still too present for her. But something urges me to push a little further, to know her a little more.
“Why is that?” I ask.
"Even now, when I hear it, all I can think about is Baba."
She picks up her napkin, smoothing the edges. I wait, sensing there's more.
It takes a long moment before she speaks again.
"But it wasn't always like that," she says, and beneath her control, I can almost hear a crack.
"It may have been my parent's native tongue, but in our household, it was only spoken in anger." Besiana sets her glass down, looking past me. "Except when Mami was alive," she says softly. "I remember her singing to me in Albanian. A lullaby."
The intimacy of the moment hangs between us. It makes me want to reach across the table and pull her into the safety I've been building, brick by brick. But I don't move. Instead, I ask, "Did she sing often?"
"Every night," she says.
There's a tightness to her words now, like they're holding back more than they say.
"How did she die?"
"An illness," Besiana replies, but there's something off in her response.
It feels practiced, as if she's repeating a story she's not sure she believes. The air between us is heavy, and I feel it pressing in,the weight of what she isn't telling me. I realize then that I would do anything—say anything, be anything—to keep her from ever feeling that weight again.
Our food arrives, but I hardly notice. I can't believe I once thought of her as a business transaction, just a pawn in a strategic move. The thought of her hurting, of her being anything but protected, is like a vise around my chest. I cut into the salmon, my appetite gone.
A waiter stops by, asking if we need anything else. The service is excellent here, attentive without being overbearing. But then he turns to Besiana, addressing her with a slight edge to his voice. "Anything to drink besides wine?"
The tone, the way he looks at her, sends heat rising up my neck. He doesn't deserve his job. Hell, he doesn't deserve his hands. Before I know it, I’ve grabbed his wrist, stabbing a fork through his hand and into the table. He lets out a yelp, eyes wide with shock and pain.
"Dom!" Besiana's voice is sharp, cutting through the red haze of my temper.
I lean in, speaking so only the waiter can hear. "Get a towel. Finish your shift. Then find a new job."
He stumbles away, clutching his hand, leaving the fork behind. The room hums with surprise, the rich pretending they haven’t seen a thing. I turn back to Besiana, expecting her anger, her disappointment. Instead, gratitude flashes in her eyes. It flickers for a moment, then is gone.
"I can look after myself," she says, instead of the thank-you I’m sure she’s thinking.
