Page 35 of Broken Trust

But it isn't Dante waiting in my dining room.

It's Mamma, in a black coat with a fur collar, her gloves in one hand, looking around at my tables and my tiles and my candles like she's trying to work out what they'd fetch at auction.

And next to her, in a cream silk dress and heels far too high for the cobblestones, her hair cut short and sleek and big dark sunglasses pushed up on her head at one in the morning, is my sister.

Mia smiles at me with my own face.

“Surprise,” she says. “We saw your lights were still on, so we thought we'd drop by. Aren't you going to offer us a drink?”

20

GIA

All the air goes out of me at once. One minute I'm floating on the best night of my life, and the next I'm standing in my own dining room in a stained apron with a burn on my wrist, staring at the two women who taught me to cry quietly so nobody would hear.

Of course Mia looks wonderful. Paris has been good to her, and her skin is glowing, and there are diamonds in her ears that I'm fairly sure Dante's savings paid for, which means I paid for them too. She peels off her gloves a finger at a time and drapes them over the back of a chair, just like at Mamma's parties when she wanted everyone to notice her hands, and she looks around my restaurant like she's already measuring it for new curtains.

“You really should lock up at night,” she says, as if we'd seen each other last week. “Anybody could walk in off the street.”

I hear Nella come up behind me before I see her, and then she's right there at my shoulder, close enough that I can feel how angry she is without even turning my head.

“It's one in the morning,” she says. “We're closed. Get out.”

“Hello to you too, Nella.” Mia's smile doesn't so much as flicker. “I didn't come to see you.”

Mamma still hasn't said a word. She's wandering along the nearest table, running one gloved finger over the wood like she's checking for dust. She won't find any. I scrubbed every one of those tables myself this afternoon while the bread was proving.

“What do you want, Mia?” I ask.

I'm too tired to be scared of her, and somewhere under all that exhaustion, a small part of me realizes with real surprise that the fear I've carried around my whole life is simply gone.

“I'm here on business.” She pulls out a chair and sits without being asked, crossing her legs so the silk slides over her knee. “Well done, by the way. The whole valley's talking about you. I read all about tonight in the paper on the train.”

“So you came all the way from Paris to congratulate me?”

“Not exactly.” She tips her head, and those diamonds catch the candlelight. “You and Dante are still legally married.”

My stomach drops, because I can already see where she's going with this, and I hate that I can.

“And anything a married couple builds together,” she goes on, smooth as cream, “belongs to both of them. My lawyer was very clear about that. Half of all this.” She waves one manicured hand around my dining room, at the tiles and the tables and the candles guttering in their little glass jars. “And when Dante signed his settlement with me, he agreed to hand over everything he owned. Which, as it turns out, includes his share of your restaurant.”

Nobody says anything. I can hear the dishwasher finishing its cycle out back, and the pipes ticking as they cool, and the old clock over the bar that Benedetti left behind, counting off the seconds like it's got somewhere better to be.

“You're insane,” Nella says.

“I'm informed. There's a difference.”

“I bought this place with my own money.” My voice has started to shake, and I can't stop it. “I sold Nonna's bracelet and the earrings Mamma gave me. I baked muffins for eight months to pay for these tables. Dante never put a single cent into this building, and you know it.”

“Apparently that doesn't matter. The law isn't interested in who paid.” Mia shrugs. “Only whose name is on the marriage certificate.”

Before I can stop myself, I look at Mamma. It's an old habit, one I thought I'd finally broken, that little glance toward her whenever Mia's being cruel, still hoping after all these years that she'll say basta, enough, the way other mothers do.

She lifts her eyes from the table at last and meets mine.

“Your sister has a point, Gianna,” she says. “Legally, she's correct. You can't pretend otherwise just because you don't like it.”

It's the first thing she's said to me in almost a year. Not how are you, not the food smelled wonderful from the square, not even I'm sorry. Just that. The words sink into my chest like cold stones dropped down a well, and I feel each one hit the bottom.