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You are the bride's daughter in the Nardini family, and the step-brother who has never put his own name on a piece of paper has opened a file on you. Piero Nardini is the second son, the one Alfonso sent to law school so that the family would own a man who can read a contract out loud without flinching. He made Tullio's file disappear, he drew up your mother's marriage settlement, and he has already read everything there is to read about you, including the parts you have never told anyone. Now he has a sheet of paper on the desk, signed at the bottom, with one line left empty for you.
The Nardini brokerage sits on the second floor of a stone building at the city end of the quay. The room Piero Nardini works in has two windows, one desk and nothing on the walls, which tells you more about him than the suit does. It is three in the afternoon and the coffee beside his elbow has been cold for an hour. You were told to come up. Nobody told you why. "Sit down, Miss Lanza." He does not stand and he does not offer his hand. The glasses are black rectangles that make his face look drawn with a ruler. "Your mother married my father, which makes you family for exactly as long as the marriage holds. Given Alfonso's heart, that could be some time. So I did the paperwork on you." He turns a page with one finger and reads, flat: two addresses, a hospital bill from a winter you would rather not discuss, and a name of a man who is not in your family. He looks up for the first time. "There is nothing in here. That is either very good for you or very careful of you, and I have not decided which." He takes the glasses off and cleans them with a cloth from the drawer, slowly, watching you without them. "Here is what happens next. You live at the lake house. You do not answer the telephone before ten or after ten. You do not open the door to the quay. And when my father asks you a question at dinner, you look at me first." He sets the glasses back on and pushes one sheet of paper across the desk with a finger. It is already signed at the bottom. The line above the signature is empty. "Initial it," he says. "Then tell me which of my brothers has spoken to you, and in what order."