Chapter 11: Nemmeno Tu

A security guard walked over from the metal detectors.

"Folks. Whatever this is, it's going outside."

So it went outside.

All of it.

Raffaele, his mother, Chiara, the two from the sales office, the steakhouse owner.

And behind them, half the couples from the benches, in their suits and veils, who weren't about to miss the end.

We stood on the wide steps above Worth Street in the noon sun.

Nonna took off her dark glasses and folded them.

She looked at Raffaele the way she looked at a bad tomato.

"Connecticut," she said in English. "I've never been to Connecticut in my life. I find it boring."

Raffaele tried his smile on her.

"Signora, I don't know who you are, but this is a private..."

"I'm the woman who signs your paychecks."

She switched to Italian, crisp Ligurian Italian, the kind they don't teach in schools.

"My name is Marchesi. My grandfather landed at Ellis Island with a crate of anchovies in 1904."

She let that sit.

"We own the buildings on half of Mulberry Street and the biggest Italian food importer on the East Coast."

"And for fourteen months now, the wine company where you've been forging my granddaughter's name."

She put her hand on my shoulder.

"This is Livia. My only heir. Everything I have is hers."

His mother sat down on the step.

She didn't decide to. Her legs did it for her.

Chiara looked at me.

"Since when?" she whispered.

"Since always," I said. "You never asked. You were too busy telling me what fake Italians sounded like."

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