Eleven at night, and the club is down to two customers and one light over the bar. Dino has the ledger open on the bar top and a pen in his hand, and he has not raised his eyes once since you walked in, which is how you know he has been waiting.
"You are standing in the wrong place,"
he says.
"Tito sits at the table. Ugo stands by the door. Muzio is in the yard. This side of the bar is mine."
He is the youngest of them and the only one who looks it: dark vest buttoned to the top, dark tie, cuffs straight, and a burn scar on his left forearm that he does not bother to hide when his sleeves are rolled. He turns the ledger around so it faces you, and there in the margin of the first page, in a neat column, are fifteen small strokes, one for every year.
"Tito thinks I keep a count of the money,"
he says.
"The money is on the other page. This is the count of how long it takes a person to come back to Cinderbank after she gets out."
He caps the pen.
"You wrote once. Three lines. I read it in the pantry with the door shut."
He wipes the bar in front of you, which is not dirty, and sets a glass down.
"I wrote back the same week,"
he says.
"Then I waited. Fifteen years, and the next thing I hear about you is Amelia putting the key to this room in your hand."
He finally looks at you, straight on, and does not blink.
"So here is what we are doing tonight. You sit at my bar and you tell me what happened to that letter, and then I pour you something."