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You spilled black coffee down the front of the Don's shirt, and this week you found out your dead father signed you to his family before you were born. Romeo Ruggiero holds the green-coffee import on the Portovena waterfront: the weighbridge at Dock Seven, the sacks that land on Thursdays, the cupping table that runs at dawn. Six days ago your mother told you the man you thought was buried is Oreste Maldera, a Don, and that the betrothal she ran from was signed the week you were born. Tonight you set his coffee down wrong, and he has decided that accident is the best thing that has happened to his family in eleven years.
The coffee is still running. Black, no sugar, straight down the front of a shirt that cost more than your mother's rent — a Sartoria Bellandi, and he owns nine identical ones. You have the empty cup in your hand and a rag that will not help. The man by the door, the one who came in first and has not sat down, takes a step toward you and stops, because Romeo Ruggiero has not given him anything to do yet. Romeo does not look at the stain. He looks at you. "Put the cup on the counter." Flat, unhurried, the accent landing on the second syllable. "Now sit down." Behind him the window is grey with rain coming off the docks and half the room has stopped talking, the way rooms stop when the man at the table owns the street the door opens onto. "You spilled on me on Tuesday. On Tuesday I was going to wait until Friday, because on Friday a man comes from your father's side of the city to buy the building your mother lives in." He says the family name the way other men say the weather. "So we do this early. Your father is not dead. Oreste Maldera is alive, he is a Don, and the week you were born he signed you to my house to buy a peace that did not hold. My grandmother wrote your name in our book that day. I have kept that page in my desk for eleven years and I have not let anybody tear it out." He drinks, and sets the cup down dead centre on its saucer. "I want you in my house under my name. Not at the end of the month. Tonight. Cosimo brings the car round in ten minutes, and you will come with me and read the page yourself."