Page 45 of Blood Orange Christmas
Luca’s eyes go to the pass, the magnetic strip, the dish pit, the sanitizing sink like he’s running a drill in his head. “You want me to start asking questions with a face that doesn’t look like a question?”
“Not yet,” I say. “We don’t spook our own kitchen. We count. We check. We assume nothing and we label everything. And we watch the doors.”
He nods and slides away, shoulders making a new shape I haven’t seen on him—something that says he’s ready to stop joking for a week if I ask.
I finish the stew because if I stop now, I’ll start breaking things that aren’t mine. I taste the broth again. It’s round and bright, heat sitting right where it should, fennel whispering at the edges, swordfish cooked through but still tender enough that a spoon can convince it to be generous. I ladle some into a small bowl for testing, hit it with the parsley-fennel gremolata and a thread of olive oil, set a piece of garlicked bread on the rim, and hand it to Gabriella. “Tell me if the saints approve,” I say, because we’re both superstitious enough to let the dead decide a few easy things.
She closes her eyes on the first sip like she’s in church. “They’re clapping,” she says, and I let the corner of my mouth lift the half millimeter of victory the kitchen allows.
I take a bowl to the pass and feel the room shift the way it does when a plate says it knows its job. The runners line up, the door swings, the dining room breathes in. The stew lands where it’s supposed to land, in front of the men who like to think of themselves as storms. They eat like bats—fast, silent, and messy when they think no one is watching. The Naples woman tastes like she’ll remember the recipe and name it something else. Corsi doesn’t notice what he likes until the spoon is empty and then he looks around like he meant to do that. The Moretti cousin takes one bite and nods like a man who just realized the kitchen is not a room he can afford to offend.
I’m wiping the pass when the back of my neck prickles. You learn to listen to that. I look up, and the swinging door doesn’t move, but the hairline gap shows a shadow where it shouldn’t be. The pantry is quiet in the wrong way—the deep kind, not the working kind. I hand the ladle to the runner like a baton and walk through without hurry, drying my hands like I’m going to look for towels.
The pantry is a long room of shelves and drawers and secrets. The lemon-handled spoons gleam in their velvet like saints in their niches. The service bells sit in their row like a choir with no hymn. The door to the little staircase that snakes behind the scullery is ajar two fingers and the air coming through it smells like outside—cold metal, diesel, and the breath of the lower yard.
I set the towel down. I move the spoons an inch like a woman who cares too much about straight lines. I listen. Voices, low. Not in the pantry. Beyond. I ease to the little square of window in the back door and look out into the narrow delivery lanethat runs along the side of the house. It’s supposed to be empty right now. Guests have their doors and staff have theirs. This is neither.
Paolo stands with his back to me, profile cut by the security lamp, posture that says talk but body that says don’t. He’s talking to a man in a delivery jacket I don’t recognize. Not our fishmonger. Not the bread man. Not the produce guy from the market who flirts with the dishwashers and jokes with me about tomatoes. This one is short in the shoulders and long in the arms, the kind of build that makes me think of levers and locks. The jacket says a company I know well enough to know it isn’t on the manifest tonight. There’s a clipboard in his hand that looks like a prop.
I don’t hear words. I hear intent. Paolo’s head tilts like he’s giving instructions, not asking. The driver glances at the guest entrance like he expects it to melt. He shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
I take a step back and my heel hits the lower shelf. The lemon spoons give a delicate chime like a warning bell.
Paolo’s head shifts a fraction, attention sliding the way a cat’s does when it decides it heard a mouse in the walls. He doesn’t turn. He reaches into his coat and pulls something out that could be a folded slip or a note or a key. He palms it to the driver with a handshake that looks harmless and isn’t. The driver tucks it into the cuff of his glove like he’s done that since he was born. The whole exchange is neat enough to smell wrong.
I let my breath out slow. My fingers go cold. The missing gyuto buzzes in my head like a mosquito I can’t slap.
“Gabriella,” I say, not loud, not moving my mouth much. She’s behind me before the word finishes, because the kitchen is a choir and she sings the melody. “Look at the roll again,” I murmur, eyes still on the window. “Check the dish pit. Check the drawer next to the flour with the towels no one uses. Count the knives by sound. The lemonwood is gone.”
Her intake of breath is small but sharp. “I’ll find it,” she says, which is exactly the lie we need.
“Don’t look like you’re looking,” I say. “And tell Luca my pantry door sticks.”
She goes, smooth as steam, and the room goes back to pretending it’s a room.
Paolo and the driver break like they heard that too. Paolo claps the man on the shoulder like they just talked weather and walks toward the guest corridor with the loose stride of a man with no enemies in this house. The driver lifts the collar of his jacket and heads toward the lower yard where empty crates stack like a wall. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have been able to get here. The camera at the corner is supposed to be looking. The tape from the vineyard was supposed to be looking too, and we all know what happened to that.
I pull my phone from my apron pocket and type with my thumb because both hands would look like panic. I keep my eyes on the window and my back to the room like a woman counting sugar. The message writes itself. It isn’t a paragraph. It’s a knife.
He’s in the kitchen again. He shouldn’t be.
19
DANTE
Avvocato Bellini sits across from me at the little table in the study eating Serena’s stew like it might tell him a secret if he chews slowly. He’s Moretti’s consigliere by title and temperament—grey suit cut soft, voice softer, a man who has built a long life out of other people’s tempers. He keeps dabbing the corner of his mouth with a linen square, turning the same smile toward me like it’s a reusable napkin.
“Christmas Eve will be gentle,” he says, which is the sort of thing lawyers say when they’re about to ask for a seat you don’t want to give. “My people enjoy your kitchens. Your chapel has an atmosphere. We should celebrate family.”
“My house isn’t a church,” I answer, spooning what’s left of Serena’s swordfish stew into my mouth because I want to be the last man who tastes it before the room empties. The broth sits right in the throat—citrus and fennel and heat that rolls instead of stabs. It is a good bowl. A bowl that does not lie. “But we can honor the season.”
He hums approval, eyes on mine over the rim of his glass. “We appreciate honor. And tradition. They keep men from making mistakes.”
My phone buzzes, two short taps in my pocket. Serena. The screen lights my hand, her message clean and unadorned.He’s in the kitchen again. He shouldn’t be.
Noise drops out of the room for a second, like the air remembered what it owed me. I don’t let my face move. I set the spoon down, lean back as if Bellini and I just solved a puzzle together, and gesture toward his bowl.
“You want another,” I say, getting to my feet before he can answer. “Let me ask the kitchen. You’ll forgive me?”
