Chapter 64 What Bruno Says

Chapter 64 What Bruno Says
Aria's POV

The alcove was off the main hall, half hidden behind a column and a large floral arrangement that probably cost more than most people's rent. Small. Quiet. The kind of space that existed in hotels like this specifically for conversations that needed to happen away from rooms full of witnesses.

Bruno had found it without appearing to look for it.

Of course he had.

Aria stood across from her father with the award still warm in her hands and the noise of the gala a low murmur behind the column and thought about how fifteen minutes ago she'd been standing on a stage feeling like herself and now she was here.

"Your mother," Bruno said.

He'd started there without preamble. No easing in. No performance of reluctance. Just the two words, dropped into the quiet like stones.

Aria waited.

"She was extraordinary," he said. "I want you to understand that before anything else. Whatever I tell you, that part is true first."

"Okay."

"She was also someone who found it very difficult to leave things alone when she thought something was wrong." He looked at his hands briefly. Then at her. "Fifteen years ago she found records. In my study. She wasn't looking for them specifically. She was looking for an insurance document and she found the wrong folder."

Aria's chest tightened. "What kind of records?"

"The kind that described certain aspects of my business that she hadn't known about." He said it carefully. Precisely. The language of someone who had decided exactly how much to say and was saying exactly that much and nothing more.

"Criminal aspects," Aria said.

He didn't confirm or deny. Just kept going.

"She was going to go to the police," he said. "She'd decided. She'd found the records on a Thursday and by Saturday she had a meeting arranged with a detective she knew through a friend."

"What did you do?"

"I found out about the meeting." He looked at her steadily. "I went to her first. Before she went to him."

The alcove felt smaller than it had a moment ago.

"I told her everything," Bruno said. "Not what was in the folder. Everything. The full picture. What I was involved in, how long, why." He paused. "I gave her a choice. A real one. Not a threat. A choice."

"What choice?"

"Leave with you. Take you and go. I wouldn't stop her. Couldn't have stopped her." He looked at the floor for a moment. "Or stay. And I would stop. I told her I would step away from everything. Legitimate business only. I would build a different life."

"And she chose to stay."

"She chose to stay." His voice was quiet. "She chose to protect our family. To believe me when I said I could change." A pause. "She was good in a way that made her believe people could be better than they were."

Aria looked at her father.

At the careful construction of what he'd just said. At the words chosen and the words absent and the shape of what existed in the space between them.

"And three years later," she said. "She died in a car accident."

"Yes."

"Did you change?" Not the question she'd meant to ask first. It came out anyway.

Bruno was quiet for a moment. "I tried."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he said. "It's not."

Aria looked at him.

"Is it true," she said. "The accident."

"That's what I'm telling you."

"That's not the same thing."

He met her eyes. Hold them. The direct gaze of someone who had decided this was the line. This specific place. No further.

"Some truths," he said quietly, "are better left as the version that lets people sleep."

"I haven't slept properly in weeks."

"I know." Something crossed his face that she couldn't name. "I'm sorry for that. Genuinely."

She believed sorry. That was the part that made it worse. She believed he was genuinely sorry that she wasn't sleeping and genuinely sorry that she was standing in this alcove hearing things she couldn't unhear and genuinely sorry that the neat contained version of their family had cracked open.

She believed he loved her.

She also believed he was standing two feet away from her and not telling her the truth about her mother's death.

Both things. At the same time.

She was getting used to that with the men in her life.

"The accident," she said again. One more time. Giving him one more chance with it.

Bruno's jaw tightened fractionally. "Your mother chose to stay," he said. "She chose us. She chose you. Whatever else is true, that part is true too."

Not a denial.

Not a confession.

The shape of something she could almost see but couldn't quite touch.

"I have to go back in," she said.

"Aria." His voice stopped her. She turned. "Moretti is going to destroy everything. That's what he came to Rome for. That's what all of this is." He looked at her with an expression she'd seen on his face exactly once before, at her mother's funeral, standing at the graveside. "When it's over, when you're collateral damage in his revenge, remember I tried to tell you."

She looked at her father.

"Goodnight, Papa," she said.

She walked back into the main hall.

The noise of the gala came back around her. Glasses and conversation and the warm ordinary sounds of people celebrating things that mattered.

She stood at the edge of the room for a moment and let herself feel the weight of what had just happened in that alcove.

Not all of it. Not right now. Just enough to know it was there.

Dante appeared beside her.

She hadn't heard him approach, which meant he'd been watching the alcove. Watching for her to come out.

He didn't say anything immediately. Just stood beside her and looked at the room and waited.

"What did he say," he asked.

Aria looked at the room. At the people who'd congratulated her tonight and talked about her work and treated her like the surgeon she was.

"He told me about my mother," she said. "Fifteen years ago she found records in his study. She was going to go to the police." She paused. "He got to her first. Convinced her to stay. Said he'd change."

Dante was very still beside her.

"Three years later she died," Aria said. "In a car accident."

"Did he—"

"He didn't confirm it." She looked at her hands. At the award she was still holding. "He didn't deny it either." She paused. "He said some truths are better left as the version that lets people sleep."

The room moved around them. Someone laughed at something across the hall. A waiter passed with a tray of glasses.

"He's still lying," she said. "But I can see the shape of what he's hiding now." She turned to look at Dante. "It has edges. I couldn't see the edges before. Now I can."

Dante looked at her with the expression she'd been learning to read. The one underneath the controlled version. The one that showed up when something landed on him in a way he hadn't prepared for.

"Aria—"

"Not tonight," she said. "I know you have things to say. I know there are conversations we still need to have." She looked at the award in her hands. "But tonight I won the award I earned and I'm in the dress that's right and I'm in the room where I belong." She looked up at him. "I just need an hour of that before everything else comes back."

He looked at her for a moment.

"Okay," he said.

Just that.

She took a breath.

Took his arm without making it into anything.

And walked back into the gala.