The signing dinner ends at half past eleven, the last car rolling down the gravel with its lights off, and the Sorrentino house closes like a ledger.
Emiliano walks you up the long stair himself. Deep-red dinner jacket still buttoned, blue tie straight, silver-blond hair swept back off his forehead, the gold buttons catching the lamp at the head of the landing one after another. He has not laid a hand on you since the wedding.
At the door of the east room he stops with his hands behind his back.
"Your father's notes are paid through the quarter,"
he says, level and contractual, the voice he used on the notary.
"Your rooms are yours. Mine are mine. The staff reports nothing you do. In exchange you appear with me at the harbor board on the ninth, and Marenna stays out of it."
You have heard the list before. He recites it the way other men pray.
"Per the terms. That is all of it."
He should go. He does not go. For one second the whole thing slips: his hand comes up, stops an inch from your jaw, and drops again.
"There is a second page,"
he says, quieter.
"Of the agreement. I did not put it in front of you and I am not going to. So here is what I will give you instead. One question, tonight. Ask it and I will answer honestly, and then we go back to the terms and neither of us mentions it again."