“I know the first meeting was real.”
He nodded once.
“The others weren’t.”
“Wednesday and Friday morning weren’t.
Tonight at the gallery was.
This is.”
“Good.
We’re finally labeling things correctly.”
A brief silence passed between us.
Then I asked the question I had avoided since Zoe’s office.
“What exactly are you?”
Luca didn’t pretend not to understand.
“The answer isn’t simple.”
“Try.”
He looked around the restaurant, then back at me.
“My family built businesses long before I was born.
Some legal.
Some not.
I inherited responsibility for both.
People call me many things.
Mafia boss is one of them.
It is not a title I expect you to find impressive.”
I appreciated that he didn’t dress it up.
“Have you hurt people?”
His expression hardened—not at me, but at the question itself.
“I’ve made choices I am not proud of.
I’ve also spent years moving what I control toward legitimate businesses.
I won’t give you a clean answer because my life isn’t clean.”
That was not reassurance.
But it was truth.
For the first time, I could choose what to do with him while actually knowing who stood in front of me.
“Why me?”
He looked almost annoyed.
“You really don’t know?”
“Humor me.”
“Because you notice things.
Because you care more about whether a photograph is true than whether it’s beautiful.
Because you argue over free muffins.
Because when I told you I owned restaurants, you asked whether the food was worth the price instead of whether I was important.”
I lowered my camera.
“You learned all that in two conversations?”
“Enough to want a third.”
“So you arranged one.”
“Yes.
Poorly, in retrospect.”
“Extremely poorly.”
“I am beginning to understand that.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Luca smiled, but he didn’t move closer.
That mattered too.
“I’m not promising you anything,” I said.
“I know.”
“And if I ever find out someone is following me—”
“They won’t.”
“If you want to see me, you ask.
You don’t discover my schedule.
