“I said nobody touches him.”
I realized I had expected something much darker.
“The restaurant’s security footage caught him entering through the service corridor,” Dante continued.
“Your manager confirmed he wasn’t scheduled.
Monica confirmed he had complained about losing the shift.
My men saw the syringe leave his hand.”
The witnesses who had made my humiliation feel enormous minutes earlier had become the reason Marco could not simply rewrite what happened.
“What was in it?”
“They’re letting the authorities determine that.”
“But it was meant for you.”
“Yes.”
“And now he knows who I am.”
“Yes.”
Dante did not soften the answer.
Oddly, I appreciated that.
“What happens to me?”
“For tonight, you stay somewhere secure.
Tomorrow, we speak with the investigators.
After that, you decide what you want.”
“You decide nothing?”
“Your father would come back from the dead just to hit me with a wrench if I tried.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Then I cried.
Not dramatically.
Not the way people cry in movies.
One second I was laughing, and the next tears were running down my face while I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes.
Dante looked away and gave me the dignity of pretending not to notice.
I cried for my father.
For the bills.
For all those nights I had thought it was only the two of us against the world.
For the strange realization that somewhere beyond the edge of the life I knew, Dad had once saved a dangerous young man and then spent years refusing to let that favor become my burden.
When I finally lowered my hand, Dante offered me the photograph.
I hesitated.
“You carry this around?”
“For a long time.”
“Why?”
“Because there are not many people who knew exactly what I was becoming and still expected me to become better.”
I looked at the young man in the picture.
He seemed almost nothing like the person beside me.
Almost.
“You were going to propose tonight, weren’t you?” I asked.
Dante glanced at me.
“The ring.”
“Yes.”
“And instead somebody tried to inject you with something in front of half the city.”
“It has complicated the evening.”
I laughed again.
This time he did too.
The next morning, investigators took my statement.
Monica gave hers.
So did the manager and Dante’s guards.
Marco tried to claim there had been a misunderstanding.
That story collapsed quickly.
No chef had sent him to table seven.
He had no reason to be at La Stella.
Multiple witnesses had seen him approach Dante while concealing his hand inside his jacket, and the syringe had been recovered where the guard knocked it loose.
