Page 30 of Blood Orange Christmas
She steps in until her toes touch mine. “I am here now.”
We are a breath apart. The air between us tastes like lemon and amaro and something I should not name. She is angry and alive and so close I can smell the salt at the base of her throat. The words that would win this argument do not exist. I am good atmany things. I am not good at saying please. I do the only thing that feels real.
I catch her wrist and pull her in, not hard, not to hurt, and bury my face in her neck. Her skin is warm. The pulse there is a fast, steady drum. I breathe in and I let myself be a man who wants what he wants without calling it strategy.
“I am tired,” I say into her skin, “of pretending not to want you. Not to love you. Not to hate that you left. Do you even know what I did to get you back?”
She is still. Then her hand comes up to my hair and closes in a grip that says she will not be moved by talk. “Tell me,” she says.
“I shut down a route through Como that made three men rich because it was two streets from your apartment,” I say. “I paid a judge to move a case to a calendar that would keep a cousin busy in another city. I took a name from a man who had ten and I gave it to a woman who wanted to leave a house like this with her hands clean. I turned Milan off because the walls there remembered you and I could not breathe. I did things I will not tell you and things you would not forgive me for.”
She pulls back to look at me. Her eyes are bright and wet and hard. “You did not come knock on my door,” she says.
“No,” I say. “I did not. I was not a man you could open a door to.”
She studies me for a long second, as if she is tasting the word I did not say. Then she rises on her toes and kisses me. It is not pretty. It is not kind. It is raw. Her mouth is hot and sure, and it takes mine like a fight and a truce at once. I take her face in both hands and answer the way a man does when he has stopped lying to himself for the length of a breath.
The sound at the door shifts. Harrison says nothing. The hinge does not squeak. I hear his steps move two paces away and then hear the soft tap that means the corridor is clear for a minute. He is a wall when we need one. I kiss Serena like the minute is all we have.
She breaks the kiss first, breathing hard. “I am not leaving,” she says. “Stop asking.”
“Then we adjust,” I say. “We make the dinner a trap for the man who thinks it is his weapon. We serve from two kitchens. We build a fake pass that takes attention and real plates that move out of sight. We cut the wine list to bottles I can account for and water I pour myself. We put tasters at the door, and they will be men who know they are tasting for their mothers. We change the seating so the loud sit near the ovens. We put the careful where I can see their hands. Luca will watch the door. Rocco will watch the ridge. Camilla will watch the phones. Harrison will watch you.”
“Marco?” she asks.
“He will be in the chapel with Gabriella and two men who can carry him faster than you can run,” I say. “And with a dog who does not leave a child when a door opens.”
She nods once. She hates it. She accepts it. She does not say thank you. I do not ask for it. She steps back to the prep table and puts both palms on the wood as if she is choosing how to cut something down the center. I watch her fingers spread. Flour dusts them. The lemon spoon is in the wrong drawer. I will never forget that.
“Tell me about the message in the bottle,” she says.
“La cena è l’arma,” I answer. “It could be poison. It could be a signal. It could be a fight that starts with a toast. It could be a chef who does not work for me with a knife that does.”
“Not me,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “I tasted your salt bins this morning when you turned your back.”
She almost smiles at that, and for a moment, the room is the room where we speak only the language of heat and time. Then the house creaks and the moment is gone.
I pull my phone and call Camilla. “You have the manifests?”
“On your desk,” she says. “The Barolo came in three weeks ago with a crate of olive oil for show. The driver changed midway. The routing app shows a stop in town. The camera at the gate saw nothing because a branch moved at the right time.”
“Kill that branch,” I say. “Put the camera on a separate line. Anyone touches the lens, they lose the hand they touched it with.” I end the call and look at Serena. “Do not go near the cellar again.”
“I will not,” she says. “I can smell trouble down there.”
“You smell like lemon,” I say. It is a stupid thing to say. It is also true.
“Good,” she says and lifts her chin in a way that has always made me want to take it in my fingers. “It keeps the fish honest.”
There is a knock on the frame. Luca leans in, eyes steady, mouth tipped just enough to look harmless. He holds a sealed envelope with a neat hand-written label. “For you,” he says to me. “No return. Dropped at the gate.”
“Later,” I say.
“Now,” he says softly. “It smells like paper and a funeral.”
I take it. The seal is wax. No crest. Inside is a single card. A time. A place between the vines and the press. A note under the time written in a tight local hand.Il cuoco rimane. Bring the cook.
