Page 19 of Blood Orange Christmas
“How well do you know his staff?” he says, voice easy, eyes careful.
“Enough to know where the towels live,” I say. I lift my gaze to his face, steady. “Enough to know which side of this door guests shouldn’t be on.”
He weighs me, pockets something invisible, and steps back. He doesn’t bother to close the door. I close it with my hip and feel the prickle run up my arms like a draft that isn’t from the ovens.
I plate, send, wipe my hands, and walk to the anteroom off the library. Dante stands with Harrison. Neither of them is pretending to make small talk. They both look up when I enter.
“One of the Moretti cousins came into the kitchen,” I say. “Nice suit. Polite voice. Wrong questions. How long I’ve worked for you. How well I know your staff.”
Dante’s face doesn’t change, but something behind it sharpens. He looks at Harrison, who tilts the ledger a fraction like a clock hand moving from :28 to :29.
“He didn’t belong on my side of the door,” I add.
“That was not casual,” Dante says. He doesn’t thank me. He arranges pieces I can’t see. “You’re safer here than on the road. They’re testing edges.”
“Testing me,” I say.
He meets my eyes and doesn’t look away. “They know you matter to me,” he says. “That’s the danger.”
Something tight pulls and then lets go. I nod once. “Then we make their test boring. I’ll go back to the stove, keep the pass tight. You watch your doors. We finish the feast, and they leave talking about clams.”
His mouth tips like the beginning of a smile he didn’t plan to spend. Harrison is already gone, the ledger under his arm moving without sound.
I return to the kitchen and tie down the edges. No one through without a tray or a towel. A server reaches for the wrong stack of plates, and I guide her hand to the right one. The oil’s ready before the pan is, so I lift the pan, not the oil. The clams go in when the garlic is a breath this side of golden, not past it.The wine hisses, and the steam smells like home if home were a kitchen that kept its promises.
Between courses, Marco slips back in with a battered book from the market about fish. He climbs onto a stool and watches the shells open. “The stars are cold,” he says, serious. “I told them goodnight.”
“Good,” I say, resting a hand on his shoulder just long enough to feel the weight of him. “That helps them sleep.”
He nods and eats a corner of bread like it’s a job he can do well. Gabriella hovers close enough to be useful and far enough to let him be proud. She mouths “brava” at me when he isn’t looking, and my throat goes tight for a second.
I finish the sea bass with a ribbon of citrus oil and a scatter of fennel fronds. The plates leave in a line. A breath later, a wave of sound returns—approval, forks, the rhythm of talk breaking and re-forming around food. I wipe down, reset, start the fritto misto. The batter is cold, the oil hot, the pieces small and quick. No batch sits. Any plate that lingers dies. We move fast, clean, steady. I send out cloud cream and sugar-dust the last truffles. The dishwasher hums a love song again, a little louder now that he thinks no one important is in the room.
A glass breaks somewhere on the far side and the tone of the room changes. The staff moves toward the sound without panic. I step to the threshold and watch the way the Morettis shift as a group, how the younger ones look to the oldest faces before deciding how much concern to show. Dante stands near the arch, jacket open, hands empty, speaking to Old Man Corsi in a tone that keeps a circle of peace around them. He doesn’t look toward me, which is how I know he has already counted howmany steps it would take to reach this door and who would get there first.
The man who came into the kitchen earlier drifts past with a glass he didn’t pour for himself. His eyes slide across faces like he’s checking for reflections of an answer. He sees me and doesn’t show it. He has learned not to show much. I step back into the heat and finish the tray that will end conversation for five minutes and buy us space.
After midnight, cars pull away in the order that money and caution decide. The villa exhales. Staff stack and wipe and vanish down hallways that smell like soap and copper. I count knives into their sleeves and label what can be saved. I wrap the lemon peels for oil in the morning. I shut the oven door with my hip and turn the pilot to low.
On my way back to the library, the corridor catches a whisper and sends it to me. Two men, soft and quick, practiced at staying small.
“The cook sees too much,” one says, amused like this is an old joke.
“Then make sure she sees less,” the other answers.
I keep walking because stopping would be a confession. The library is a pool of warmer air. The fire has dropped to coals. The lamp on the desk throws a circle of steady light. Marco sleeps on the couch, mouth open, car still parked. His hair curls at the nape where heat and sleep make it damp.
Dante stands at the mantel with his palm on the stone, eyes on the glow. He doesn’t turn when I step in. He doesn’t have to. He knows it’s me.
“Trouble?” he asks, voice quiet.
“Not yet,” I say. “But it’s on the stove.”
He glances at Marco and then at me. “We finish the night,” he says. “Then we decide who doesn’t get invited back.”
I nod. I cross to the couch and sit at the end, close enough to touch the blanket’s edge. My hand rests there. I feel my son’s warmth through the wool and the weight of the choice I keep making. I think of the man in the kitchen doorway and of the whisper in the hall and of the way Dante said danger like he was naming a person we all know.
“Tomorrow,” he says, as if he heard the list in my head, “you cook. He plays. I work. We don’t move unless we must.”
