Chapter five
241 Words
It had passed. And respect had come. And with it, a kingdom built on fear.
“Mind if I join you, old man?”
The voice, light and teasing, pulled him from the memory. Sofia. She slid into the booth opposite him, unwinding a brightly coloured scarf. She was twenty-eight, an art historian with a PhD and a smile that could disarm a bomb squad. She was also, unknown to the world, his granddaughter. The daughter of Marco and a woman Marco had loved and left, a secret Vittorio had discovered and protected. Sofia knew him as “Victor,” a retired import-export businessman, a lonely, wealthy old man who had taken an interest in her work at the Met. It was the greatest lie he had ever constructed, and the only thing that felt real.
“You’re brooding,” she said, stealing an olive from his plate. “Bad day in the world of retired gentlemen?”
“The world is full of disappointments, cara mia,” he said, the hardness in his voice softening almost against his will.
“My world’s okay. I finally got access to the Venetian manuscript collection I was telling you about. It’s all ledgers and shipping manifests, but the marginalia… the little doodles in the corners tell a different story. Stories of the clerks, their lives, their little rebellions.” Her eyes sparkled. “It’s the cracks where the light gets in, you know?
- Writer
