The room went silent again.
Alessandro’s gaze sharpened.
“What do you think it was about?”
“I didn’t know,” Sophie said.
“Until tonight.”
She turned the wine list slightly and touched one entry without covering the name.
The château was old and prestigious.
The requested bottle, a 1982 Bordeaux, was listed beneath it.
“My father wrote the same château beside six shipping dates.
None correspond to wine imports.
Three dates match the months when he was assigned to port negotiations in Marseille.”
Alessandro said nothing.
Sophie continued.
“The numbers beside them looked like case references when I was younger.
At university I realized they were formatted like transferred amounts split into smaller payments.”
Camilla rolled her eyes.
“So now the waitress is an accountant.”
“No,” Sophie said calmly.
“I studied political history and languages.”
“In Paris?” Alessandro asked.
“At the Sorbonne.”
Camilla’s face tightened.
Sophie watched the knowledge rearrange everyone’s assumptions at the table.
The cheap shoes were still cheap.
The apron was still frayed.
But suddenly they were no longer proof of stupidity.
They were evidence that something had happened to her.
Alessandro finally picked up the page.
He studied the first column, then the second.
His eyes stopped on a set of initials.
A.M.
Sophie saw his thumb cover them.
That was the moment she understood.
The handwriting did not accuse Alessandro personally.
Some of the entries had been made when he would have been too young to control anything.
But his reaction told her the names and numbers belonged to the Moretti family’s past.
The page was a fragment of a larger record.
And Alessandro knew the record existed.
“Did your father leave anything else?” he asked.
The question was quiet.
Too quiet.
Sophie thought of the boxes in the storage locker she could barely afford.
Old diplomatic correspondence.
Bank notices.
French newspapers.
Photographs.
Three sealed folders she had never opened because her father had written one sentence across them before his death: NOT UNTIL YOU ARE SAFE.
She had spent years believing he meant emotionally safe.
Now she wondered whether he had meant something else entirely.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Alessandro watched her closely enough to know that was not the whole truth.
Camilla pushed back her chair.
“This is ridiculous.
She insults me, waves some garbage at you, and suddenly dinner becomes an interrogation?”
“You insulted her,” Alessandro said.
Camilla blinked.
