IT'S COMPLICATED: THE MAFIA'S HEIRS

Chapter 12: The Don

He arrived the next morning.

Not two days from now, not with warning, not with the courtesy of a phone call that would have given me time to prepare myself mentally and emotionally and sartorially, because apparently Don Adriano Vitale operated on a timeline that belonged entirely to him and extended to no one else. One moment the compound was quiet and the next Marco appeared at my bedroom door with an expression that was carefully blank in the way that meant something significant was happening, and said: "He's here."

I had been sitting at the small desk near the window attempting to read something for my thesis, which I had reopened two days ago in an effort to hold onto the version of myself that existed before all of this, the version that had a degree to finish and a future that involved internships and literary journals rather than mafia compounds and dinner with men whose names opened doors and closed throats.

I put the book down.

"How long do I have?" I said.

"Ten minutes," Marco said. "He's in the study with Luca now."

I looked at my reflection in the window. Pregnancy had changed my face in ways I was still getting used to, had softened things and shifted things, and I thought about what Selene had said yesterday in the garden about believing what Luca felt and I straightened my spine and told myself that I was Natalie Hayes, I had survived two pink lines and a mafia compound and Bryan's face breaking in a university hallway, and I was not going to be undone by one old man and his opinions about my value.

I went downstairs.

The dining room had been set for four. Someone had done this while I was upstairs, had arranged the table with a precision that told me this was not the first time the compound had hosted this kind of dinner and probably would not be the last. Four settings. White linen. The kind of quiet effort that made itself invisible by being done before you arrived.

Luca appeared at the end of the hallway.

He looked at me in a way that was assessment and reassurance simultaneously, the way he had looked at me before the doctor's appointment, before Bryan's visit, before every moment where I was about to walk into something he understood better than I did. He crossed the hallway and stopped in front of me and straightened the collar of my top with two fingers, a small precise gesture that was so unexpected it stopped my breath entirely.

"Don't apologise for being here," he said quietly. "Don't explain yourself. Answer what he asks and don't offer anything he doesn't ask for. And if he says something that makes you want to react, look at me first."

"Look at you first." I repeated.

"I'll tell you whether to react."

I stared at him. "With your face?"

"I have a very communicative face."

"You absolutely do not have a communicative face."

Something moved in his eyes that was not quite a smile. "You've learned to read it," he said. "That's enough."

He was right. That was the thing I couldn't argue with, the thing that settled into me as I followed him to the dining room doorway. Somewhere between the dorm hallway and this moment I had learned to read Luca Wolfe, had learned the language of him, the things he said with his silences and his jaw and the particular quality of his stillness in different situations. I had done it without meaning to, the way you learn things that matter without choosing to study them.

Don Adriano Vitale was already seated at the head of the table.

He was older than I had imagined him, which was the first surprise. Not decrepit, not frail, nothing that would have made you underestimate him, but older than the shadow he cast in every conversation about him suggested. Seventies, perhaps. Silver hair, cut close. A dark suit that was immaculate in the way of someone who had spent a lifetime understanding that appearance was its own kind of power. His hands were folded on the table in front of him and his eyes, when they moved to me as I entered the room, were the sharpest thing about him.

Dark eyes. Luca's eyes, I realised with a jolt. The same shape, the same quality of absolute attention. The same capacity to make you feel like you were being read without your permission.

Selene was seated to his right, composed and still, and she looked at me when I entered with an expression that was entirely neutral, which I took as a kind of professional courtesy given what she had said to me yesterday in the garden.

I sat where Luca indicated, across from Selene, and Luca sat at the other end from his father and the table arranged itself around us and for a moment nobody said anything.

Don Adriano looked at me.

He did it the way he probably did everything, which was without hurry and without apology, a thorough and unembarrassed assessment that took in my face and my posture and my stomach and came to conclusions I was not invited to hear. I sat under it and held his gaze and did not look away because I had decided coming down those stairs that not looking away was the one thing I was absolutely going to do regardless of whatever else happened at this table.

"Natalie Hayes," he said finally. His voice was low and carried the trace of an accent that had been mostly but not entirely smoothed away by years of operating in other people's languages. "My son tells me you study literature."

"I do," I said. "I'm finishing my degree."

"At Velmoor."

"Yes."

He nodded, as if this confirmed something. "Your family is from here originally."

"My parents are..." I paused. "I grew up here, yes."

"Good family," he said. Not a question. Not quite a compliment either. An observation, filed and acknowledged.

Food appeared. Someone brought it, set it down, disappeared. Don Adriano unfolded his napkin and the dinner began, and I understood that the conversation was going to happen inside the meal rather than around it, that this was how he operated, information gathered between bites, assessments made over the course of a meal where your guard was lower because your hands were occupied and your mouth was busy with other things.

He was very good at it. I had to give him that.

He asked about my thesis. Not dismissively, not as small talk, but with the genuine curiosity of someone who had learned long ago that what a person chose to study told you more about them than almost anything else. He asked about my family. He asked, carefully and without any particular inflection, about how I had come to know his son, and I gave him the version that was true without being complete, because Luca had said don't offer anything he doesn't ask for and I was following instructions.

Selene said very little. She ate with the composure of someone who had attended dinners like this her entire life and had long since stopped finding them remarkable. Once or twice she looked at me across the table with an expression I was beginning to be able to read, which was something like: you are doing better than I expected and I am not sure how I feel about that.

Don Adriano asked about the twins.

"When are they due?" he said.

"Eleven weeks," I said. "Give or take."

He looked at my stomach in the direct way he looked at everything. "A boy and a girl."

"Yes."

"Names?" he said.

I glanced at Luca, because this felt like the territory Luca had been navigating carefully since Don Adriano arrived, and Luca looked back at me with the expression that meant: your call, I am here but this one is yours.

"We haven't decided," I said. "We're still discussing it."

Don Adriano looked at me for a moment. Then at Luca. Then back at me. "They will carry the Wolfe name," he said. Not a question. A statement of something he considered already settled.

"They will carry both names," I said. "Hayes and Wolfe."

The table went very quiet.

Selene did not move. Marco, somewhere near the door, was suddenly extremely interested in the wall. Luca's expression did not change but something happened behind it that I would examine later.

Don Adriano looked at me for a long moment. The kind of moment that expanded and contracted around itself, that had more space in it than the seconds it occupied.

"Both names?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "They are mine as much as they are his. Their name will reflect that."

Another long moment. He picked up his glass. Took a sip. Set it down.

"My son," he said, to no one in particular, "has made an interesting choice."

I could not tell from his voice whether that was approval or the opposite. I suspected that was entirely intentional.

The rest of the dinner passed with the particular texture of a performance where everyone knew their lines but wasn't sure yet how the play ended. Don Adriano ate and asked questions and offered nothing of his own position that could be used against him, and I answered and ate and watched Luca's face at the other end of the table and read it the way he had said I would be able to, the small signals that told me when I was on safe ground and when I was close to an edge I couldn't see.

After dessert, Don Adriano stood.

"Luca," he said. "A moment."

Luca rose from the table. Looked at me briefly, a look that said: stay here, I will not be long, do not worry about what you're about to not hear. Then he followed his father out of the dining room.

Selene and I were left alone at the table.

She poured herself more water. Then, without looking at me, said quietly: "Hayes and Wolfe was the right answer."

I looked at her. "Was it?"

"He expected you to fold." She set the jug down. "You didn't." A pause. "He respects that even if he won't say so."

I thought about that. About this man deciding my value based on whether I flinched at a table, and what it said about the world I was now living inside whether I wanted to or not.

From behind the closed study door, Luca's voice. Then Don Adriano's, lower, a register I could not make words out of.

Then silence.

Then Luca's voice again, different this time. Tighter.

I looked at the closed door.

Selene looked at her water glass.

And neither of us said anything about what we both already understood was happening on the other side of it.