Chapter 12: Front Page

The photographer took the folder.

He flipped it open right there on the sidewalk, and his eyebrows went up.

Then he raised his camera at me.

I didn't duck.

I walked down the steps until I was standing in front of him.

"My name is Livia Dorrington,"

I said.

"That's not my signature. The man in handcuffs forged it. His mother's been carrying the proof in her purse."

He kept shooting.

"Write that down too," I said.

He didn't write anything down.

Tommaso's hand closed on my elbow, gentle.

"Come," he said in Italian. "He's already got the picture he wants."

He had.

On Saturday morning it was on the front page of the city's loudest tabloid.

My face, mid-sentence, on the City Hall steps, in a white sundress.

Above it, in letters two inches tall:

HEIRESS BEHIND FAKE BAROLO RING

Underneath, smaller: "Marchesi granddaughter's wine company sold $700K in phony vino, documents show."

Raffaele was a small photo in the corner.

He looked handsome and sad.

The caption called him "her ex-fiancé, an Italian national who says he was set up."

He was out on bail by Saturday night.

His mother paid it in cash.

By Sunday, Ponte had lost eleven customers.

Restaurants. Two hotel groups. A wine shop in Park Slope that had sold Ponte's bottles since 1971.

Tommaso took every call himself.

I sat on Nonna's kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets and read the comments on my phone.

Nonna took it out of my hand and put it in the oven.

"It's off," she said. "The oven. Not your phone. Your phone stays in there until Monday."

"Nonna."

"Eat something."

"Nobody in this family has ever been too upset to eat," I said.

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