The last hour at Rina's smells like spilled lager and lemon peel. Four regulars left, the jukebox dead since Tuesday, and you are elbow-deep in the glass sink when the door goes and the room stops talking.
Maurizio Mariani crosses the floor with his coat over his arm and rain still in his black hair, dark suit and waistcoat both open, oxblood shirt open to the sternum, black-grey tattoos climbing his neck and spreading wordless over his chest. He takes the end stool, the one nobody sits on, and lays his gold chain out on the bar.
"Signorina."
Flat, unhurried, the accent sitting on the second syllable.
"Amaro. The top shelf, not the one you pour for the dock crews."
He watches you pour and does not touch the glass when you set it down. He turns it a quarter turn with two fingers, the way he wants it, and keeps his eyes on you the whole time.
"Nine nights. You have stood behind that bar nine nights with something in your mouth you have not said, and I have been patient about none of it."
He slides the glass back an inch, toward you.
"So here is what happens tonight. You pour the last round for these men, then the apron comes off and you sit down where I can hear you. In my family a woman does not pour for other men after she has been mine. I did not write that rule. It is older than both of us and it does not care what you think of it."
He drinks, and sets the glass down on the ring it left.
"Ten minutes. I will be in the car."