No Choice

I was on my third glass of wine when he said it.

"You will marry Luca Moretti. Before winter."

I kept my eyes on my glass. Swirled what was left in it, set it down slow, then looked up at him.

"No Papa."

Mama went stiff beside me.

Every time she felt afraid, which was frequently at this table, I could feel it without having to look. She had learned how to shrink herself at the appropriate times over her entire marriage in this house.

I used to wonder how she lived like that. Now I just felt sorry for her and a little angry at her and I hated myself for the angry part so I didn't sit with it long.

Papa didn't react. That was the thing about him that people outside this family never really understood. Carlo Greco didn't raise his voice. He raised nothing.

He just got very quiet and let the quiet do the work for him. I'd grown up with it my whole life and it still got under my skin. I hated that it still got under my skin.

He glanced at me from the other side of the table. Long enough that everyone in the room aside from him started to feel uneasy.

Wax had accumulated at the base of the candles, which had burned low, and the housekeepers at the sideboard had become so motionless that it was obvious they were praying to avoid being noticed.

He eventually reached for his knife and began slicing his steak.

"Three times," he said, real calm, eyes on his plate. "Three times you've told this man no and three times I let it go because you're my daughter and I'm a patient man. Do you have any idea what that cost me Valentina? With the Morettis? The way they looked at me?"

"I didn't ask you to arrange anything with the Morettis—"

"Valentina." Just my name. That was genuinely all it took.

I closed my mouth.

He chewed. Set his knife down.

Touched his mouth with his napkin, folded it, and put it aside. It was all slow and methodical, the act of a man who had never been hurried by anyone in his life and had no intention of beginning.

"This is done now," he said. "The back and forth, your feelings, your no all of it done. Luca Moretti will be the most powerful don in this country in five years. The Greco name and the Moretti name together do you understand what that means for your brothers? For everything I've spent my life building?"

"I understand what it means for your business."

"This family is my business."

"Then maybe that's the problem."

My knee was touched by Mama's hand beneath the table.

Hard. Not comfort a grip. A please stop right now Valentina grip.

I breathed through my nose.

"I don't want him Papa." Quieter this time. "That should count for something."

He looked at me then. Really looked at me. And his expression didn't shift not angry, not sad, nothing that soft just that same measured attention he gave to problems he was already three steps ahead of solving.

"It counts for something to me," he said. "It does not change what happens." He picked his fork back up. Back to his food. Done. "Invite Luca for Sunday dinner. We'll sort the arrangements after."

Fork back up meant the conversation was finished in his head. Door closed. Next topic. I'd learned that at about age seven.

My chair made an ugly noise scraping back.

"Valentina—" Mama reached for my wrist.

"I need to sleep," I said. Couldn't look at her. "Night."

I pulled free and walked out. Down the hall, past the oil paintings of dead Greco men staring down from the walls, through the side door.

I couldn't seem to control the shaking in my hands, so I placed them flat against my thighs and continued walking without giving it any thought.

In the back garden, close to the second hedge, there was a loose stone that had been there since I was around 10 years old.

Nobody ever fixed it. The whole back end of the garden was like that kept beautiful at the front where guests could see and left half wild where nobody came. I'd always preferred the back. It felt more honest.

I left my heels at the door and walked out into the wet grass barefoot and just kept going until the thing sitting on my chest started to ease up a little.

He was already there.

Klaus had his arms folded, leaning against the oak at the far end like he'd settled in a while ago. He probably had. He always had this way of knowing when and where I needed him before I'd worked it out myself.

Standing there in his dark jacket, expression somewhere between easy and alert, eyes finding me straight away across the dark garden.

I told him. Just those two words. Before winter.

He didn't say anything right off. Just looked at me and breathed and I could see him doing what I'd been doing through three glasses of wine running every option, every angle, watching each one fall apart before the next one started.

Klaus Bauer was not what this world considered worth taking seriously. Foot soldier, no title, no family name that opened doors or made men straighten up when he walked in.

He'd grown up two streets from our estate with nothing handed to him and he'd worked his way up through sheer stubbornness to a position that men like my father still looked straight through.

What they missed kept missing, every single time was that he was the sharpest person I knew. He'd had to be. You don't survive in this world with nothing behind your name unless your mind is working twice as hard as everyone else's.

I'd known that about him since we were kids. I'd known a lot of things about him since we were kids.

"We go tonight," he said. "Val I've had a route mapped for months, I know people two provinces over, we take a car and we're gone before anyone—"

"Your mum Klaus."

He stopped.

"Your brothers. You really think my father just lets it go? You've seen what he does to people who embarrass him you've been in this world your whole life; you know exactly what he does."

He looked away. Over at the back wall where the jasmine had gone completely wild, thick and tangled, going wherever it wanted because nobody had ever bothered to cut it back. He'd told me once he liked that wall specifically.

Said over-trimmed gardens made him feel like he was standing inside someone's idea of a life rather than an actual one. I'd thought about that more times than made any sense.

He didn't have a counter. There wasn't one and we both knew it.

We stood there a while not saying much. Cold getting into my feet through the wet grass. At some point he reached over and moved my hair out of my face and his hand rested against my jaw after warm and solid and real and I let myself have that. Just that. Kept my eyes open because if I closed them something in me was going to give way and I didn't have the space for it tonight.

I stepped back after a second.

"I'll figure something out," I told him.

He nodded. That careful nod that meant I hope so and not I know so and we both understood the difference.

By morning I had nothing. Not one idea that held together past the first hole I poked in it.

I gave up on sleep somewhere around five and watched the sky turn grey through my curtains. By seven Rosa had brought coffee which I held with both hands and stared at like it owed me answers. I was still sitting there at my vanity doing nothing useful when the knock came.

"Come in Rosa," I called.

The door opened.

Not Rosa.

Luca Moretti entered my doorway in a way that irritated me right away. It wasn't just his height; there was something about the way he stood, as if the area had already been his before he chose to enter.

While I sat here with yesterday still on my face, the man in the dark suit looked like he had slept for eight hours and completed half of the morning's job.

He glanced at me once.

Robe, bare feet, the full disaster.

There was a slight movement at the corner of his mouth, as if he had anticipated it and wasn't at all shocked.

I wanted to hurl my coffee cup in his direction.

"Nobody let you up here," I said.

"Your father did. We had breakfast." He didn't come further in. Didn't need to. "I wanted to talk before things get confirmed today."

"There's nothing to—"

"We picked Klaus up this morning."

The cup stopped halfway to my mouth.

"He's not hurt." Same voice. Completely flat, like he was reading off a list of minor inconveniences. "Your father wanted the morning kept simple. Klaus stays fine depending on how the next hour goes."

I set the cup down. Very carefully. My hands had gone strange again.

I looked at Luca Moretti standing in my doorway and I understood something I hadn't quite let myself understand before. He wasn't cruel the way some of my father's men were cruel loud and hot and obvious about it. He was the other kind.

The kind that stays completely level while taking apart everything you care about and considers that composure a point of pride.

"Come down for coffee," he said. "Say yes. Everyone goes home."

Somewhere below us my father's voice drifted up. Low and easy. The sounds of a regular morning in a house where nothing was regular.

I was going to say yes. I'd known it the moment he said Klaus's name. That was already decided.

But Luca Moretti standing there in my doorway looking like a man who had just won something.

That part wasn't decided. Not even close.

I'd say yes this morning. I'd smile on Sunday. I'd walk down whatever aisle my father put in front of me.

And I was going to make Luca Moretti regret every single day of it.