Chapter 1 - The Photograph on the Table
The moment Vincent Bellini put his hand against my waist, I knew he expected me to smile.
The restaurant was full of people who had paid hundreds of dollars to pretend they could not see what happened to the women serving them.
A violinist was playing near the wine cabinet.
Someone laughed at the far end of the dining room.
Vincent slid two folded hundred-dollar bills across the white tablecloth and moved his hand again.
I pushed the money back with two fingers.
"I don't get paid to be touched."
His smile remained, but something behind it hardened.
"Careful, Elena."
"Please keep your hands to yourself."
I spoke quietly enough that the couple at the next table could pretend not to hear.
Vincent, unfortunately, had no interest in keeping his humiliation private.
"Marco," he called, without taking his eyes off me.
The maître d' appeared beside the table so quickly I realized he had been watching all along.
Marco looked from Vincent's hand to the bills and then to me.
His expression told me which one of us mattered.
"You're done here," he said.
For a second I couldn't make my mouth work.
Belladonna was not just an expensive Italian restaurant in Chicago.
It was the place where I had earned enough in three difficult years to pay my father's final medical bills and stay in the little apartment above the dry cleaner around the corner.
I had never been late.
I had covered other servers' shifts when their children were sick.
I had swallowed insults from customers who confused the price of a meal with ownership of another person.
"You heard him," Vincent said.
I untied my apron, folded it carefully, and placed it over my arm.
That seemed to irritate him more than tears would have.
"Don't be dramatic."
"I haven't said anything dramatic."
He reached for the bills, then paused as if another idea amused him.
"I own this building. Your rent is due tomorrow."
The table tilted beneath my hand.
Vincent's property company had bought the block six months earlier, including the apartment where I lived and most of the stores whose owners depended on his leases.
He knew my address because my employer and my landlord were connected businesses.
He had just made sure I understood that a boundary I set at work might cost me my home.
I could have walked away.
I should have walked away.
Instead, my fingers closed around the old photograph folded into the inner pocket of my apron.
I had carried it all week, trying to decide whether asking Vincent a question was worth the trouble it might bring.
The photograph was faded and creased, its lower corner softened by twenty-seven years of being touched.
In it, three people stood in front of a narrow brick storefront with a hand-painted sign that read BELLADONNA MARKET.
One was my mother, Marta Reyes.
One was a young man named Gabriel Hale.
The third was Vincent, thirty years younger and smiling as he held my mother's hand.
I placed the photograph beside the bills.
"Then tell me why my mother is standing in front of this building with you."
Vincent stopped breathing normally.
It was only a small change.
His chest tightened, and the fingers around his wineglass went white.
But the man who had enjoyed making me small a moment earlier looked suddenly, unmistakably afraid.
Marco leaned forward to see.
Vincent covered the photograph with his palm.
"Where did you get that?"
"It belonged to her."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting until you answer mine."
He lifted his hand, revealing the picture again.
In the silence, I noticed a detail I had never understood before: a narrow strip of white paper tucked under my mother's elbow.
There were four handwritten words on it.
THIRTY PERCENT. ORIGINAL SIGNED.
Vincent noticed me noticing.
His chair scraped backward.
"Marco, close the private dining room."
"We have guests, Mr. Bellini."
"Now."
The violinist played on.
Somebody near the entrance raised a phone, and Vincent saw it.
He snatched the picture from the table, but I caught the opposite edge.
For a terrifying moment I thought he would tear the last image I owned of my mother.
Then he let go.
"Your mother," he said, his voice low, "was supposed to have destroyed that."
I looked down at the photo, then back at the man who had just threatened both my paycheck and my apartment.
"Why?"
Vincent glanced at the dark windows of the restaurant, as though someone outside might be listening.
"Because Gabriel has been looking for it for twenty-five years."
He wasn't looking at me anymore.
He was looking past me, toward the entrance.
A man in a charcoal coat had come through the revolving door.
May you like
Vincent whispered one word.
"Hide it."
