The Don’s forbidden witness

Chapter 2

Roman's study smells like old paper and, underneath that, faintly, the lemon polish the housekeeper uses on the desk twice a week whether it needs it or not. He's noticed it his whole life without really noticing it, the way you stop smelling your own house, and it's only now, watching Ava take it in with her nose slightly wrinkled, that he registers it again.

"Sit," he says.

"I'm fine standing."

"That wasn't a request, exactly, but fine. Stand." He drops into the chair behind the desk, more tired than he wants to let on, and there's a run in the leather armrest he keeps meaning to have fixed, a long thin split that catches on his sleeve sometimes. It catches now. He ignores it.

Ava crosses her arms. There's a tremor in her hands she's trying to hide by tucking them into her elbows, and he decides not to mention it.

"You want me to just start talking," she says. "Ten years, and you want it handed over in one sitting."

"I want the truth. However long that takes."

"Belief isn't the same as wanting truth, though, is it. You've believed a version of this for a decade. Convenient, that version. Kept the war going. Kept your men loyal to a story with a villain in it they could actually see."

That lands somewhere he doesn't love. He doesn't answer right away, and in the gap a radiator somewhere down the hall clanks twice, an old pipe complaint that's been going on since before he was born, nobody's ever fixed it.

"I was seventeen," Ava says, and her voice catches, just slightly, on the number, like it still surprises her. "Watched your father die from a closet. I know what I heard. I know it wasn't a Moretti giving orders."

"Then who."

"I don't—" She stops. Starts again. "I don't know who they were. I know what your father said. Right before."

"What did he say."

She doesn't answer that one right away either, and Roman watches her weigh it, watches the muscle work in her jaw, and he thinks, not for the first time tonight, that she's better at this than most men twice her age who've sat across from him under worse pressure than a locked study.

"I don't know if I trust you with it yet."

"Ava, my father's dead. My mother's dead. I built an empire on a story that might not even be true, and you're going to sit there and—"

The door opens without a knock, which only one person in this house does, and Marco steps in, gold ring catching the desk lamp, calm in the particular way that always used to be reassuring and tonight, for reasons Roman can't articulate yet, isn't quite.

"Not now," Roman says.

"It can't wait." Marco's eyes go to Ava, quick, assessing, before landing back on Roman. There's a coffee stain on his collar, small, brown, out of character for a man who irons his own shirts. "Someone's been asking about her. Outside our people."

Ava's arms drop from across her chest.

"Who," Roman says.

"Don't know yet." Marco's voice stays even, but he's twisting that ring around his finger, faster than usual, and Roman's noticed that habit for fifteen years without ever really watching it before tonight. "Whoever it is knew where to look. That's not luck."

"Meaning someone told them."

"Meaning someone told them."

Outside, a dog barks, once, twice, then stops like it lost interest, and Ava's looking between the two men with an expression Roman can't fully read, something between calculation and plain fear, the kind you can't fake convincingly even if you tried.

"I didn't tell anyone I was meeting you tonight," she says. "You showed up outside my shop. I didn't know you were coming."

"I'm not accusing you."

"You're looking at me like—"

"I'm not." Roman stands, and the chair scrapes hard against the floor, ugly and loud. "Marco. Who."

"We should move her. Tonight." Marco isn't answering the question, and Roman notices that too, files it away somewhere he doesn't examine closely yet. "Somewhere off the property."

Ava's watching the two of them like she's watching a conversation happen underneath the one out loud, and maybe she is, Roman thinks, maybe she's better at reading rooms than he's given her credit for in the two hours he's known her.

"Fine," Roman says. "Get the car."

Marco nods once and turns to go, but at the door he pauses, just for a second, long enough that Roman almost asks him what, and then he's gone down the hall, footsteps fading into the house's usual quiet, and Ava is already talking again before Roman's fully turned back around.

"Your friend," she says. "He didn't answer you. About who."

"I noticed."

"You trust him."

"I do." Roman says it the way he'd say his own name, automatic, unquestioned, and only after it's out of his mouth does he hear how it sounds, defensive, maybe, or just tired. "Come on. We need to move.”