Page 46 of Blood Orange Christmas
“Always,” he says, because men like him never say no to politeness. He glances at the painting over my desk and lets his eyes stop there. He knows where to look and when to pretend not to.
I’m through the door and down the hall before the linen napkin settles on his knee. The villa is loud and soft at the same time—voices stacked over marble, shoes on stone, the dishwasher’s hum like a heartbeat—but the corridor behind the pantry carries its own weather. It has the dry smell of shelf wood and sugar dust, lemon peel and flour. It’s also where this house talks to itself when it thinks I’m not listening.
I send three taps to Rocco and two to Camilla without breaking stride. The code lives in my fingers now. Rocco’s reply comes back as a single-long from the ridge—quiet. Camilla sends me the camera grid for the delivery lane and pantry door. Three tiles are live. One is cycling. The corner cam hesitates, the samestutter she showed me after the vineyard tape got erased. We cut the branch this morning. Someone cut something else.
The pantry door is ajar, just the thickness of two fingers, which is the way the men who test you learn to make a lock look honest. I keep moving. I shoulder through like I own the air and don’t mind bruises.
Paolo stands halfway between the lemon spoons and the back door, head bent, talking to a delivery driver who belongs to nobody I pay. I know that jacket. I know the company. They didn’t pull a slot on tonight’s manifest. The driver keeps his hands low, fingers hidden in his gloves. When he lifts his chin and sees me, I watch his eyes go flat and see the decision hit his legs first.
“Don’t,” I say, but he’s already sliding. He jinks left, feints right, knocks his shoulder into the crate stack, and the whole row goes over with the soft rain of wooden slats hitting tile.
Paolo steps back like the mess offended him personally. “Dante?—”
I don’t look at him. I’m moving. The driver squeezes through the service door and hits the delivery lane at a sprint, boots biting into wet gravel, a long stride that tells me he’s run from people who shoot first. The lane funnels him toward the lower yard and the blind corner near the olive press where the camera is supposed to see everything. He’ll try to cut there and vanish into the trees above the ravine. I could chase him. I want to. I also want the reason he made it to my pantry without an escort, and that isn’t in the lane. It’s under my hand.
“Luca,” I call without raising my voice, and he’s already moving, chewing distance like he swallowed it. He’s all shoulders andgrin until it matters, and then he’s a moving door. He slides past me and is out into the lane in four long steps, calling, “Man on your left!” like he’s the savior of joggers. The driver bolts harder. Luca doesn’t rush. He herds. He knows where the corner narrows. He knows where a knee will kiss stone. If the man gets away, it won’t be for free.
Paolo is still here. Good. I want him upright. I want walls.
He gives me the smile he uses to order dessert he won’t eat. “What is this? A misunderstanding. I was checking the wine for the?—”
I drive my fist into his gut, low and clean, and feel the air leave him like a bellows. He folds in half, and I feed him the wall with my left hand flat on the back of his neck so the plaster takes the insult and not his skull. I’m meaner when I’m tired, and I am not sorry.
His breath comes back in a messy laugh that sticks in his throat and hurts coming out. He puts both hands up where I can see them and pretends that’s for me and not for the cameras. “I—cousin?—”
“We aren’t cousins,” I say, leaning in until my nose almost touches his and my voice can’t travel past his ear. “We are a man at his stove and a man whose hands are in the wrong drawer.”
“I was checking the wine,” he says again, smaller. The words smell like old paper and bad stamps.
“In the pantry lane with a driver who shouldn’t be on my property? At a door that leads to the kitchen you’re not allowed to enter unless you want to get turned into soup by the woman you tried to edge out of her life?” My hand slides a fraction, justenough to move his breath into the wall. “You didn’t hear me when I said no?”
He blinks like he’s scouring his memory for version control. “The vendor said—” He wheezes and tries a shrug that bumps his shoulder blade against the plaster. “The cellar. We had a debate. About the Barolo. I felt comfortable taking the conversation where it was quiet. I didn’t want to disturb your chef.”
“My chef.” It does something to me, hearing that. I let it put a chip in my voice and then file the chip down. I keep my hand light and my body heavy the way you do with men who perform fragility when their backs hit vertical. “You want me to believe you were protecting my kitchen by bringing a liar closer to it.”
He gives me a look he used to get away with in Milan—a little amused, a little offended, all of it curated. “You used to like my initiative.”
“I used to like you in rooms where you couldn’t reach my knives.”
He rubs his tongue against the inside of his cheek like he tasted the word and found a shard. “You’re under pressure. I can help. Let me help.”
“I don’t need your help. I need you quiet.” I step back just enough for him to straighten under his own steam. He does it slowly, hand on the wall, chin lifted like he’d like to be tall for a second.
Luca appears at the end of the lane, walking fast, not running, jacket open, palms empty, his body saying he didn’t just chase a rat around my bins. He tips his head once to me. “He took the ravine path,” he says, voice easy, eyes telling me he didn’t waste his legs on a sprint he didn’t have to win. “Slipped at the cornerand gifted me a glove. I’ll print it. He lost something trying to be clever. Small. Paper. Didn’t have hands free to recover it.”
“Don’t put it in your pocket,” I say.
“It’s in a bag,” he says, already holding up Camilla’s little clear sleeve with the zip top. “I saw him meet Paolo when the camera hiccupped. That was a pretty hiccup. Good timing for a branch we cut.” He looks at Paolo like he’s not really worth looking at, then looks back at me. “You want him in or out?”
“In,” I say. “And out.”
Paolo’s smile flickers. “Explain the poetry.”
“You’re going to come with me and apologize to Avvocato Bellini,” I say. “Then you’re going to tell him you’re feeling unwell—stress, family, whatever rats say to excuse themselves. You’re going to promise him a call tomorrow to smooth what you didn’t smooth tonight. Then you’re going to leave my house. You are not on my Christmas Eve guest list. You are not on my Christmas Eve perimeter. Your soldiers report to me through Rocco until they remember their names. If they don’t remember, I will assign them new ones and they will like those less.”
He tries to look hurt and fails because he’s not tired enough to pull it off. “You can’t cut me for a misunderstanding.”
“I’ve cut men for less than an understanding,” I say, and if he’s as smart as he thinks he is, he will hear the Milan in my voice and decide to get good at yes.
