The Devil's Chosen

What Sergio Knows

She did not go to Sergio that night.

She lay in the dark for a long time listening to Milan breathe outside her window and she thought about going and she thought about not going and eventually she thought about nothing at all because her body made the decision her mind couldn't and pulled her under into a sleep that was deep and dreamless and merciful.

She went in the morning.

Sergio Leone lived in the Navigli district in an apartment that smelled like coffee and old books and the particular warmth of a place that had been lived in carefully for a long time. He had a small balcony overlooking the canal where he kept three plants that he talked to when he thought nobody was listening. He had a cat named Bruno who was seventeen years old and had the energy of a stone and the personality of a retired general.

Aria had a key. She had always had a key. From the day she moved to Milan three years ago Sergio had pressed it into her hand at the train station and said — for emergencies — and they had both understood that emergency was a word that meant whenever you need to come home.

She let herself in at eight thirty in the morning.

Sergio was in the kitchen in his robe making coffee the way he always made coffee — slowly, deliberately, like the process itself was the point and not just the result. Bruno was on the counter watching him with ancient eyes that had seen too much and cared about very little of it.

He heard her come in. Did not turn around immediately.

You didn't call, he said.

I have a key.

You always call first.

She sat down at the kitchen table. The same table she had done homework at when she visited as a teenager. The same chairs. The same light coming through the same window at the same angle it had been coming through for as long as she could remember.

She looked at the back of his head. At the silver of his hair. At the slight tension in his shoulders that had appeared the moment he heard her come through the door and had not left.

She had not noticed that tension before. She noticed it now.

Sergio, she said.

He poured two cups of coffee. Brought them to the table. Sat down across from her and set one cup in front of her and wrapped both hands around his own and looked at her with eyes that were warm and careful and something else she was only now learning to read.

Something that looked like a man who had been waiting for a particular morning for a very long time and had hoped it would not come and had always known that it would.

Tell me about my parents, she said.

The kitchen was very quiet.

Bruno jumped down from the counter with the slow dignity of something that had decided the room's energy was no longer to his taste and disappeared into the hallway.

Sergio looked at his coffee.

You know about your parents, he said. They —

Were killed, Aria said. Not in an accident. Killed.

The word landed in the kitchen like something physical. She watched it hit him. Watched his hands tighten around his cup. Watched something in his face do something complicated and painful and old.

He did not say — who told you that.

He did not say — that's not true.

He said nothing.

And his silence was the most complete answer he had ever given her.

She breathed.

How long, she said. How long have you known.

He looked up at her then. His eyes were wet. Not crying — not yet — but the kind of wet that was one blink away from it and he knew it and he was fighting it with everything he had.

Aria —

How long, Sergio.

He set his cup down. Carefully. The way you set things down when your hands are not entirely trustworthy.

Since the beginning, he said quietly. I have known since the beginning.

The kitchen clock ticked.

She sat with that. Since the beginning. Fifteen years. She had been nine years old and he had known and he had held her at the funeral and he had cried — genuinely cried, she had never doubted that — and he had known.

Why, she said. Why didn't you tell me.

Because you were nine years old.

I grew up.

Yes. He looked at her. You grew up and every year I told myself — next year. When she is older. When she is stronger. When the time is right. He paused. The time was never right. Because there is no right time to tell someone that the world is more dangerous than they know and that the danger has a face and that face knows yours.

She stared at him.

What face, she said. Whose face.

He shook his head. Not from unwillingness — she could see that. From something closer to fear. The particular fear of a man who has kept a secret so long he is no longer sure what telling it will cost.

There are people, he said slowly, powerful people, who did not want your father doing what he was doing. Your father was — He stopped. Chose his words. Your father was getting close to something. Information. About certain operations. Certain money. Certain names that powerful men preferred to keep buried.

What kind of operations.

The kind, Sergio said quietly, that only one world produces.

The mafia, she said.

He flinched. Even now. Even after everything. The word still made him flinch.

Your father was not in that world, he said quickly. He was — adjacent to it. A journalist. An investigator. He had found something and he was going to expose it and someone decided that was not going to happen.

And our mother.

She was with him. She was always with him. They did everything together. He looked at the table. They died together. I have always been grateful for that. That they were not alone.

Aria sat very still.

She was nine years old in a kitchen that smelled like coffee and old books and she was also thirty four years of grief that had never had a proper shape because it had never had a proper reason and now it had a reason and the reason was worse than the accident had ever been.

She breathed.

In through her nose. Out through her mouth.

Who, she said. Who ordered it.

Sergio was quiet for a long time.

I don't know the name, he said. I have never known the name. I know only that whoever it was — they were connected to a family. A powerful family. Old money. Old blood. Sicilian.

Sicilian.

The word sat in the room between them.

She thought about dark eyes. About a file her dead father had apparently prepared years ago. About a condition written in formal language that pointed to one woman — her — before he ever walked into that bar.

She thought about Dante Ricci standing in the entrance of Romano's auto shop in a suit that cost more than the shop's monthly revenue saying — your parents — and watching her face with the careful attention of someone who already knew what those two words were going to do.

She thought about the fact that he had told her.

He had come to her. He had told her. He had said — I don't have all the answers yet.

Yet.

Sergio was watching her face.

Aria, he said carefully. How do you know this. Who told you it wasn't an accident.

She looked at him.

Someone who might have answers, she said.

His eyes changed. Sharpened in a way she had never seen them sharpen before. What someone. Who have you been talking to. Aria —

She stood up. Picked up her coffee. Drank the last of it standing the way she always did when she was about to leave somewhere.

I'm not going to do anything stupid, she said.

That is not what I asked.

I know. She set the cup down. She looked at him — at the silver hair and the wet eyes and the hands that were still wrapped around his cup like it was the only solid thing in the room. She looked at him for a long moment with fifteen years of love and fifteen years of betrayal sitting side by side in her chest in a way she did not yet know how to hold.

Then she crossed to him. Put her hand on his shoulder. He covered it immediately with his own.

I love you, she said. I know you did what you did because you love me.

He made a sound. Small and broken and old.

But I needed to know, she said. I needed to know and you should have told me.

She squeezed his shoulder once. Then she picked up her jacket and her keys and she walked to the door.

Aria.

She stopped. Did not turn around.

Be careful, he said. Whatever you are doing. Whatever door you have opened. Be very careful.

She thought about iron gates opening inward. About a hallway and a single bulb and dark eyes that did not look away.

She thought about a number saved under a single letter.

D.

I will, she said.

She left.

Outside the canal reflected the morning sky and Milan moved around her in its indifferent beautiful way and she stood on the pavement for a moment with the information sitting inside her chest like something that had changed the shape of the space it occupied.

Her parents had been killed because her father had found something.

The something was connected to a Sicilian family.

And the most dangerous Sicilian in Milan had come to find her before she ever came looking for him.

She pulled out her phone.

Looked at the single letter.

D.

She typed three words.

We need to talk.

She pressed send.

The response came in eleven seconds.

Tonight. Eight o clock. I'll send the address.

She stared at the message.

Then she typed back —

I'll drive myself.

She put her phone in her pocket and walked toward the canal and tried very hard to think about nothing except the sound of the water and the smell of the morning and the simple ordinary fact of being alive on an ordinary day.

She was not entirely successful.