“Okay.” I step away, take off my coat and drape it over the back of a chair before sitting down. “Make me that cup of coffee.”

She sighs. The table’s too big for this space and she has to maneuver around it. I watch her fill the stove-top espresso machine with water and scoop out two heaping spoons of coffee. She stands with her back to me while the coffee brews. I wonder if she feels awkward but I don’t mind the quiet. I like being here in this house. I like being with her.

When the coffee steams, she switches off the burner, pours two tiny cups of espresso out and sets one in front of me. She then pulls out a chair and sits.

“Thank you,” I say, taking a sip. It’s good. “Lucia DeMarco is my father’s personal vendetta. For the record, I don’t like what he’s doing with her, but in order to punish the DeMarco family for their betrayal, he demanded something precious. The most precious things DeMarco has are his daughters, so…” I pause. “He took one.”

“He just took one?”

I nod.

“People aren’t things.”

I shrug a shoulder.

“He took her for you?” she asks and I know this is what’s got her wound up and I like it.

“Does that bother you?”

“What? No.”

“You sure?” She opens her mouth, but I continue. “On her twenty-first birthday, she’ll belong to my family.”

“That’s not legal. It can’t be.”

I give her a minute to think about that statement.

“But—”

“Shut up, Natalie. Just listen.” Amazingly, she shuts up. “You want me to tell you Lucia DeMarco has nothing to do with me?”

She watches me, answers my question with her own. “What must she be going through? What’s this like for her?”

“That isn’t a question I can answer or even care to consider. There are consequences to actions. A price to be paid. That’s all. And you shouldn’t romanticize it.”

“I’m not romanticizing it but she is locked away in a tower, isn’t she?”

“She’s at an excellent girl’s school getting an excellent education. And I think that’s enough on the DeMarco topic.”

She stands abruptly, takes her cup to the sink. “What happened to your hand?” she asks with her back to me.

I look at it, notice the bruise forming there. “Nothing.”

“Business?”