I Walked Past the Mafia Boss in That Black Dress Again

I woke at 5:43 the next morning because someone was arguing in Ciro Vale's study.

Not loudly.

People did not raise their voices in Ciro's house unless they had already made peace with dying there.

But the old Chicago townhouse had been built in 1912, and the vents carried secrets better than they carried heat.

I sat up in bed.

A man's voice came through the wall.

"Lanza lands at eleven."

Saurin.

Then Ciro, lower.

"He does not come here."

"He requested neutral ground."

"He requested my home. That is not neutral ground."

I pushed the blanket away.

For twelve seconds there was nothing but the hiss of the radiator.

Then Saurin said, "He asked whether Miss Moretti is still living under your roof."

Every muscle in my body went still.

The silence on the other side of the wall became so complete I could hear the small ticking clock on my nightstand.

Ciro finally answered.

"If he says her name again, the meeting is over."

I looked toward the wall as if I could see through plaster.

Four years in Lisbon.

Three weeks back in Chicago.

And now a stranger from the city I had just left knew exactly where I slept.

That was how my Thursday began.

By seven thirty, I was dressed in navy trousers, a cream blouse, and a coat buttoned all the way to my throat.

The black dress remained in my closet.

Not because of Ciro.

That was what I told myself while I stared at it for a full ten seconds before closing the door.

In the kitchen, Brin was stealing strawberries from a bowl and pretending she had not spent the night in one of the guest rooms because the roads were bad.

She glanced at me once.

"No dress?"

"Good morning to you too."

"Coward."

"I am going to work."

"You were going to work yesterday when you spent half the day orbiting his desk like a moon with a neckline."

I reached for coffee.

"Do you know a man named Lanza?"

The strawberry stopped halfway to her mouth.

That was answer enough.

"Which Lanza?" she asked.

"Apparently one important enough for Saurin to be whispering at six in the morning."

Brin set the strawberry down.

"Lea."

I hated when she used that tone.

Brin had known me since we were nineteen. She had seen me drunk, furious, heartbroken, broke, rich again, and once stuck in an elevator in Lisbon with a Portuguese diplomat and a live chicken.

She did not use that tone unless something mattered.

"Tell me."

"There are several Lanzas."

"There are several Morettis too. That has never stopped anyone from being specific."

Her eyes moved toward the kitchen doorway.

No one was there.

"Rafael Lanza," she said quietly. "Forty-one. Shipping, construction, private security, and whatever else people with no public balance sheet call business. His family had territory in New York, Baltimore, and Lisbon."

"Had?"

"Most of the Lisbon operation broke apart four years ago."

My hand tightened around my cup.

"Four years ago."

"Yes."

"When I moved there."

Brin did not answer.

The kitchen door opened.

Ciro walked in.

Gray suit. Black tie. No coat. The kind of face that made rooms behave themselves.

His eyes passed over Brin, then me, then the untouched breakfast on the table.

"Saurin is taking you to the office," he said to me.

I blinked.

"You employ a driver."

"Today you employ Saurin."

"I employ Saurin now? Does he know?"

Ciro poured coffee.

"Do not leave the building without him."

There it was.

Not a request.

Not an explanation.

One of Ciro Vale's commandments, delivered with espresso.

I folded my arms.

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

Brin made a small sound that could have been a cough or a prayer for his survival.

I looked at Ciro.

Seven years of being treated like the competent employee he trusted with his money, his schedules, his legal companies, and every secret except the ones that belonged to me.

I had spent four of those years in Lisbon because he had asked me to open Vale Maritime's European office.

Asked was the polite word.

He had put a plane ticket on my desk and said, "You leave Friday."

I had been twenty-five and in love with him.

I had left Friday.

Now I said, "Rafael Lanza asked about me."

Ciro's cup touched the counter with almost no sound.

Brin suddenly became fascinated by the weather app on her phone.

"Who told you that?" he asked.

"Your walls."

His expression did not change.

"Stay away from Lanza."

"Why does he know my name?"

"Because men like Lanza collect information."

"Men like you collect information. You don't collect random women who work in foreign offices."

Something hard moved behind his eyes.

"Lea."

It was the first time he had called me that since I returned.

Not Miss Moretti.

Not Moretti.

Lea.

One syllable, and suddenly I was twenty-five again, standing in this same kitchen the night before Lisbon, waiting for him to give me one reason not to board the plane.

He had given me none.

I put my coffee down.

"You know what I think?"

"This is usually the part where I fail to stop you."

"I think you knew exactly what you were doing when you sent me away."

His face went blank.

Not confused.

Blank.

That was worse.

"Saurin leaves in ten minutes," he said.

Then he walked out.

Brin waited until his footsteps were gone.

"That," she whispered, "was not the face of an innocent man."

By ten forty, the office felt like a building preparing for a storm no weather service had predicted.

Two extra guards appeared in the lobby.

Saurin locked the east stairwell.

Ciro canceled three meetings and took one phone call in Italian that ended with him saying, "If he is armed, turn him around."

At eleven seventeen, the elevator doors opened.

Rafael Lanza stepped out.

He was taller than I expected, dark-haired, clean-shaven, dressed in a charcoal overcoat that still carried snow on the shoulders. He had the composed face of a man who had survived enough violence to stop advertising that he was dangerous.

Two men stood behind him.

Saurin blocked the corridor.

"Mr. Lanza."

Rafael smiled without warmth.

"Mr. Saurin. Still standing on the right side of your employer. I admire consistency."

Then his gaze moved past him.

And found me.

The smile disappeared.

For one terrible second, I had the sensation of being recognized by someone I had never met.

"Leandra Moretti," he said.

No one called me Leandra.

Not Brin.

Not Ciro.

Not even my mother when she was angry.

I stood.

Ciro's office door opened behind me.

"Lanza."

Rafael looked over my shoulder.

Something old and poisonous entered the air.

"Vale."

Ciro came to stand beside my desk.

Not in front of me.

Beside me.

It should not have mattered.

It did.

Rafael's eyes flicked between us and something almost like understanding touched his face.

"So she came back," he said.

Ciro's voice dropped.

"You have thirty minutes. None of them concern her."

"That is where you're wrong."

Rafael reached inside his coat.

Three guards moved at once.

He stopped, slowly removed a cream envelope, and held it up between two fingers.

My name was written across the front.

Not typed.

Written.

In handwriting I had not seen in eleven years.

My father's.

I forgot how to breathe.

Enzo Moretti had been dead since I was eighteen.

I knew the slope of the M.

I knew the hard slash through the t.

I knew the way he never closed the loop in the L of Leandra.

My chair scraped behind me.

"Where did you get that?"

Rafael did not look away from Ciro.

"Lisbon."

Ciro went still.

Rafael extended the envelope to me.

"Your father gave this to my father twelve years ago with one instruction. If Ciro Vale ever sent you to Portugal, I was to make sure you received it."

My hand did not move.

I looked at Ciro.

He was pale.

Not dramatically.

Just enough that I noticed because I had spent seven years noticing everything about him he thought no one saw.

"Ciro," I said.

He did not answer.

Rafael's voice softened.

"He never told you, did he?"

The office had gone completely silent.

I took the envelope.

The paper was old and thick beneath my fingers.