Page 56 of Blood Orange Christmas
We do a last check on the upstairs storage—tape over the case slats, signatures on the seams, a little dust from the flour bin rubbed into the glue so the next hand that opens it will have to confess. In the cellar, Rocco has a chair near the door and the kind of book only men who have killed time and regret both can read. He nods to me. I nod back. It means we’ll hold.
On our way past Marco’s room, we stop again. The guard tips his chin. “All quiet.” Inside, the nanny has dozed with a rosary looped around her wrist. Marco has rolled onto his back, one arm thrown wide like he’s holding a flag in a race only he is winning. I set the elephant upright on the pillow, because superstitions still count if they make the air easier to breathe. I kiss my boy’s forehead, and I let the heat of him burn off what’s left of the cellar’s cold.
Dante stands in the doorway a second longer than he means to. I see the way his jaw works, the way his hand flexes like it wants to hold two things at once and can’t, not yet. When he looks at me, I give him what I have—steady, used to heat, unwilling to run. Back in the tasting room, Dante sits, elbows on his knees, hands steepled like a prayer he doesn’t believe in but keeps saying out of habit. He looks at his knuckles like he wants to apologize to them. I reach for his hand and turn it palm up. We have a second for tenderness. “Tomorrow,” I say, “we feed them and we take what they brought to our door and we send it back with interest.”
He nods. “Tomorrow, we make a room clean.”
The house settles. The fire breathes down. Somewhere, a shutter remembers to clap once for luck. In the dark just before our door, Dante’s fingers brush mine again, an old map finding a known road. I lace my hand through his and squeeze.
“X marks the spot,” I tell him.
“Then that’s where we stand,” he says.
22
DANTE
Christmas Eve, Night of the Feast
Christmas Eve starts before the light does. The villa holds its breath, the kind of quiet that asks what you’re made of. I shave by feel, knot the black tie twice because I want the muscle memory, then slide on the jacket that fits like a promise. The cufflinks are old—my grandfather’s lions. I don’t believe in omens, but I like the weight.
Harrison knocks the frame, not the door. Two quick, one slow. “Perimeter’s clean,” he says, already handing me the checklists I wrote in his voice. “Ridge rotates on the hour. Camilla’s on the trunk lines. Rocco has the cellar. The upstairs storage seals are unbroken.”
“Paolo?”
“Where you told him to be,” he says, “which is nowhere near here.”
I nod. My phone is a metronome—messages from men who call tonight “the Eve” like they were born to it. I swipe each oneinto place. Every plan wants a pen. The ones that matter need a spine.
In the nursery, Marco sleeps with one arm flung wide like he’s taking a lane. The nanny sits in her chair, rosary looped around her wrist. The dog—Pippo—is under the bed, tail thumping twice when I enter, then still. I kiss my son’s hair and feel something unclench in my chest. “We do this clean,” I tell myself, and the house listens.
The hall saints raise their hands. I raise mine back. The kitchen door opens under my palm and gives me lemon, butter, heat. Serena is already in motion—hair tied, sleeves rolled, knives set like a small army that knows exactly when to stand down. She lifts her head without stopping her hands. The look she gives me is a line I can walk across.
“You ate?” she asks, sliding a tray of salted cod fillets to the flour like she’s laying down cards.
“Later,” I say.
“Now,” she corrects, and Gabriella is there with a heel of bread and a spoon of yesterday’s saffron rice. I obey, because ignoring Gabriella on a feast day is a short road to disgrace.
“We hold the pass tight,” Serena continues, eyes on the work, voice for me. “No strangers. No helpful cousins. The fritto runs in small batches. Nothing sits. Vongole to the minute. The eel wants patience—it tells you when it releases.”
“Dessert wine?”
“In my sight until your hands take it,” she says. Her chin tips toward the lined shelves where the safe bottles stand information, tags like dog-eared prayers. “The marked glass is where it belongs. The rest are twins.”
I reach, and she meets me halfway. My thumb finds the small crescent scar on her wrist. A night of sleep didn’t erase the heat in my bones from last night, or the vow I whispered against her mouth when Luca’s voice cut the room in half.Don’t keep secrets from me. Not this time.I won’t.
“Lines of sight,” I say. “Honest locks.”
She nods once. “Go play king,” she says, a small smile that puts iron in my spine. “I’ll keep the fire.”
The dining hall gleams the way old money thinks it invented. Beeswax and candlelight turn silver to stars. The table runs almost the length of the room—linen tight as a drum, crystal bright, place cards like tiny flags. The head chair is a quiet throne. The flute at that setting looks like any other unless you kneel and look up under the foot. My X lives there, small and exact. I feel better knowing a secret lives in the room on our side.
Luca crosses to me in a suit that pretends it wasn’t cut for fighting. “West gate’s dressed,” he says. “Side doors on timers. I posted one man at each hinge who owes me his life and likes paying down the debt.”
“Paolo?”
“Nowhere,” he says. “I told you.”
