Page 53 of Blood Orange Christmas
“Open,” Dante says.
Rocco turns the key. The iron sighs like an old man standing. Cold air rolls over us. The dark laughs under its breath. Harrison takes the first step down, flashlight low, beam cutting a path that doesn’t wake the dust too much. It smells like oak, damp stone, and a ghost of iron I don’t like.
Inside, the cellar stretches in tidy lanes—ancient wood racks on one side, new steel on the other, a marriage of then and now that makes accountants happy. Bottles lie like secrets in a hundred perfect beds. Even the silence here has a label.
“Show me,” Dante says.
Rocco moves us to the back where the dessert vintages sleep. The cases are stacked by year, the handwriting on the coversneat and territorial. 2009, 2012, 2016. Red wax kisses each cork top through the slats where light permits it. The top case for the 2012—our chosen year—has a slat pried and reset. If you didn’t know what you love looks like, you’d miss it. I know.
“How many?” Dante asks.
“Six,” Rocco says.
“Who touched this stack today?” I ask.
“No one with a name I’m willing to keep,” Luca says, jaw hard.
Harrison crouches. “No scuffs on the floor,” he notes. “No drag marks. Whoever did it knew to lift, not pull. Gloves. Soft soles. In and out.”
“Or swapped here,” I say, palm on the case wood, feeling for a heartbeat. “Then closed it back up with a replacement.”
Rocco leans in and finds a hairline. “Glue line’s fresh,” he agrees. “Two hours, maybe four.”
Camilla’s voice crackles on Luca’s shoulder radio. “I’ve got a cart log ping nine minutes ago on the upstairs service corridor. Weight change near dry storage.”
The four of us share a look that does not have patience in it.
“Seal this door,” Dante orders Rocco. “No one in. I don’t care if a saint asks.”
We’re moving again, up the servant stairs that don’t like heavy feet, past the pantry where drawers hold treasure in velvet, past the needle-thin landing where service tunnels fork. Upstairs, the dry storage door sits open by a finger’s width. The light inside is on. The saints on this wall are Sicilian and stern. I feel them on my neck like a grandmother’s glance.
Inside, the cases are stacked tidily, like nothing is missing in the world. Bread flours. Canned tomatoes glowing like rubies behind glass. Olive oil in tins that turned a thousand salads into home. And there, on the second shelf from the top, a case of Recioto with the diagonal R crest sits too squarely. The glue line shines the wrong way. The nails are new and proud of it.
“Bastards,” Luca breathes.
Harrison pulls a utility knife from his pocket and hands it to me. “Your eyes,” he says. “Your call.”
Dante’s jaw clicks once, the sound his anger makes when it stands and buttons its coat. He doesn’t tell me not to touch it yet. He’s learning.
I slide the blade under the top slat the way I would under the skin of a stubborn fish. The wood gives with a small sigh. The nails complain and then surrender. We lift together—me on one end, Harrison on the other—and set the slat aside. Six bottles stare up at us, bellies dark and promising. The red wax at their corks is new, too clean, the press imperfect, the crest slightly off center like a counterfeit smile.
“The missing six,” Harrison says.
“Replaced,” I say. “Resealed.”
“Up here,” Luca adds, disgust thick. “So we’d think they lived here all along.”
My chest goes tight. “A tasting,” I say, and the word tastes like fear and salt. “The final toast. They poison the head, the rest drink the echo, and the room becomes a rumor we never live down.”
Dante’s eyes cut to me. They’re not cold. They’re bright and dangerous. “No,” he says. “Not again.”
“I’ll know it if I taste it,” I answer, and I hear the hoarseness in my voice but I don’t walk it back. “Almond. Tin. The same ghost I smelled by the barrels. A single drop from a cork is enough to warn, not enough to hurt. I’ve done this before.” I swallow. “Not this poison. But close.”
“I’m not asking you to put anything in your mouth that might kill you,” he says. It’s not a growl. It’s worse—control held with bleeding knuckles.
“I’m not asking,” I say, and I reach for him because I need him to feel that I’m steady. “I’ll use a porcelain spoon. A tongue touch and a spit. Bread to cut it. Oil to coat. I’ll keep water in case there’s heat to the whisper. I know what I’m doing.”
He looks at Harrison. Harrison’s face is a map of yes and no. He doesn’t like this. Neither do I. But the room beyond this door will fill tomorrow with men who never practice saying please. I think of the message in the bottle.La cena è l’arma. The dinner is the weapon. Then I think of my son’s comic on his chest and the elephant face down like a warning we laughed at. I think of the Moretti patriarch’s careful eyes over soup and of the way younger Morettis watch mouths before they decide where power sits.
