Page 118 of Disgrace

“Move your ass,” Andino barked at the enforcer.

John finally looked over his shoulder.

Through the front window of the rundown restaurant’s door, he saw Darren kick the vase of flowers. The explosion was beautiful.

Not as big as they had hoped, but enough to blow the windows out.

Enough to knock them to the ground.

John wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that—prone on his back and staring up at a clear early October sky—but the sound of laughter brought him back down to reality.

It took him a minute to realize it was his own laughter.

He was the one laughing.

He finally felt that relief.

It was glorious.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“PASS ME THE bowl of flour, and I’ll show you what to do if it seems like the dough gets a little too sticky,” Siena said.

Greta pushed the bowl across to Siena, while Giulia hoisted herself up on the edge of the counter. The two girls watched silently as Siena added just a tablespoon of flour at a time to the bread dough before she rolled it and kneaded it again and again.

“You have to make sure it mixes all the way through—you don’t want one part of the bread to have too much flour while the other parts don’t have enough. Always make sure you knead it really well after you add any extra in.”

“What would happen if the dough was too wet when it cooked?” Giulia asked.

“Depends, really. It might be too dense—it might not rise high enough. It could still be doughy in spots, and it’ll have that dough-ish taste.”

“You can’t just … cook it for longer?” Greta asked. “Make up for the difference, or something?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. Bread has to be made just so—even the dough has to be the right consistency every time to make it perfect. If you add something, or take something away, you have to account for it somewhere else. If your kitchen is hotter than normal, you need to account for that, too.”

“Ugh,” Greta groaned.

Giulia echoed her sister’s sentiment. “This seems like a lot of work for just bread.”

“Sure, but if you master bread, then the rest is kind of easy at the end of the day. And we Italians do love us some bread.”

“Truth,” Greta said.

“It’s really that particular, though?” Giulia asked. “I feel like I should have been taking notes from the start, or something.”

Siena laughed a little, and gave her half-sister a smile. “The only thing more fickle than a man on this earth, is bread.”

Greta and Giulia passed a grin between one another. Their girlish laughter filled up Siena’s apartment. She took the moment to slow her kneading of the dough, and soak in their happiness. So much had been taken from these two young girls, and she wondered how much they would have to sacrifice before they could finally get their own happily ever after.

She was the one left caring for them a lot of the time. Sure, their useless aunt gave them a home to live in, and beds to sleep in. The woman fed them, and kept them clothed—mostly. That was the extent of their aunt’s involvement in their lives.

She didn’t care for them on a deeper level. They had no woman to go to when they needed a private chat. They had no voice to be their reason, or to give them direction when they needed that, too. They were, essentially, alone.

“Ma tried to teach me how to make bread once,” Greta said.

Siena passed the older of the two girls a look. “How did that turn out?”

“I wasn’t paying attention the way she wanted me to. She got mad. I got mad. We yelled a lot, and she kicked me out of the kitchen. I guess …”