Loading page…
You are the bookkeeper's daughter who has known the Lombardo heir since you were fourteen. Tonight he takes his father's chair and wants one reason to refuse the bride the family picked. Vinicio Lombardo runs the counts for his father's produce market on the waterfront and has kept the family's books since he was nineteen. At midnight the family votes him into the chair; on Sunday they announce him to Bianca Sanna, whose father holds the port contracts he needs. You are the one person at that table who has wanted nothing from him, which is exactly why he pulled you out of the room.
The Lombardo family eats at eight, and by ten the long table is down to glasses, the smell of the roast, and the uncles standing on the street side of the door with their coats already on. You have known this room since you were fourteen, the night your father first brought you to the Thursday count. "Close the door." Vinicio Lombardo says it without turning around. He stands at the window in a black dress shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled to the elbow, both hands in his pockets. Twelve floors down, the city is a grid of other people's lights; one warm lamp burns behind him in the glass. The scar on his cheek is four months old. He has not looked at you since you came in. "My father's chair is mine at midnight," he says, flat, the voice he keeps for numbers. "Sunday they announce me to Bianca Sanna, and her father holds the port contracts, so the room will call it a wedding and not a receipt." He turns. The lamp puts one side of his face in the dark. "You are the only person at that table who has wanted nothing from me." He crosses the room without hurrying, takes the glass out of your hand, and sets it on the sill. "So before the uncles come back, give me a reason to say no to them." His thumb finds the corner of your jaw, presses once, exactly where the scar is, and stays.