Chapter 5: Dinner for the Wolf
Saturday came cold and clear.
Valentina arrived at seven wearing a dark green dress and the pearl earrings I had given her at Christmas.
She kissed me at the door.
She smelled of the perfume she knew I liked.
She had brought wine — a Barolo, expensive, chosen carefully — and she handed it to Marco with a smile that said she had decided to be charming tonight.
Marco smiled back.
He was very good at smiling back.
We ate in the dining room.
Candles.
Good china.
The kind of dinner that, six weeks ago, would have felt like a beginning.
"You seem more relaxed," she said, over the first course.
"I slept well."
"Good." She touched her wine glass.
"You were so tense on Tuesday.
I worried."
"There's nothing to worry about."
She smiled.
"I know.
I just — I care about you, Luca.
I want things to be easy for you."
"They are," I said.
"Easier than they've been in a long time, actually."
That was true.
It was simply true for reasons she did not understand.
Over the second course, I steered the conversation toward business.
Gently.
Naturally.
The way a man talks to the woman he is going to marry about the broad shape of his concerns.
"The Ferrara negotiation is nearly settled," I said.
"We sign the port agreement next month."
Her fork moved.
Continued.
"That's good news."
"It is.
It changes the revenue structure significantly.
My attorney was saying the numbers are better than my father projected when he first drew up the arrangement."
"Your father was a careful man."
"He was.
Though even careful men miss things." I refilled her glass.
"He always said the most dangerous information was the kind that seemed unimportant.
A number here.
A name there.
Small things that only become dangerous when someone assembles them."
She looked at me over the rim of her glass.
"That sounds like something a careful man would say," she said.
"It does." I set the bottle down.
"Valentina."
"Yes."
"If someone ever came to you — anyone — and asked you questions about this house, about my business, about the people I work with — you would tell me."
The candle between us was very still.
No draft.
No movement.
"Of course," she said.
"Immediately."
"Even if they offered you something for the information."
Her chin lifted by a fraction.
"What kind of question is that?"
"An honest one."
"Luca." Her voice dropped.
Soft.
Wounded.
"I'm going to be your wife."
"You are."
"Then why are you asking me this?"
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I reached across and covered her hand with mine, the same way she had covered mine on Tuesday.
"Because I trust you," I said.
"And I needed to hear you say it."
Her hand relaxed under mine.
Her shoulders came down.
"You can always trust me," she said.
I nodded slowly.
"I know."
We finished dinner.
We moved to the sitting room.
She stayed until eleven, and when she left she kissed me at the door again and said she would call tomorrow.
I watched her car until the gate closed.
Then I went upstairs to the study and called Enzo.
"She reported in," Enzo said, before I could speak.
"Forty minutes after she arrived.
Caruso's relay picked up everything from the dining room."
"What did she give him?"
"The Ferrara numbers.
The port agreement timeline.
The attorney's name."
All of it exactly what I had said at the dinner table.
Exactly what I had intended for Caruso to receive.
"Good," I said.
"There's something else." A pause.
"Caruso called her back.
We picked up her end of the call from the device — she was still in the house when she made it.
She stepped into the powder room off the entrance hall."
"What did she say?"
"She said, and I'm reading directly — 'He doesn't know.
He's completely relaxed.
I think Tuesday scared him but he's past it.
The Ferrara deal closes next month.
I'll have the full terms before then.'"
The fire crackled in the marble fireplace.
"And Caruso?" I said.
"We only have her side.
But based on her responses —" Enzo paused again.
"He told her to move faster.
He used the word 'before.' Before something.
She said she understood.
She said she would handle it."
I set the phone down on the desk without ending the call.
I looked at the clock.
The pendulum swung its slow arc.
Before something.
I picked the phone back up.
"Find out what's scheduled in the next thirty days that Caruso would want to move before," I said.
"Already started," Enzo said.
"Luca — there's one more thing."
"Say it."
"The shell company.
Meridian.
We pulled the incorporation records more carefully." He took a breath.
"The second registered officer.
It's not Caruso's nephew."
"Who is it?"
The name Enzo said was one I had not heard in eleven years.
A name I had believed was gone, buried under a different city and a different life, connected to a chapter of my family's history that my father had closed with great pain and greater finality.
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Say that again," I said.
Enzo said it again.
The fire burned low.
The clock ticked.
Outside, the gate camera swept its slow arc over the empty driveway where Valentina's car had been.
May you like
This was no longer about a listening device.
This had never been about a listening device.
