The Books at Elena's

You fall asleep sometime after the conversation ends, phone still warm in your hand, the screen dimmed to black on his last message.

When you wake, gray light is pouring through the window and you can't decide whether last night felt like a truce or a trap. Maybe in this house there's no difference.

You read the thread once more before you get out of bed. Then you put the phone face down, as if that will stop you thinking about it.

Breakfast is on the terrace under a striped awning, because the rain has eased to a fine mist that beads on everything. The table is set for two. There is enough food on it for twelve.

Luca is already there, reading something on a tablet, a cup of black espresso at his elbow. He's in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearm, and it's unfair, honestly, how normal he looks. Like a man at breakfast. Not like a man who owns the people who owe him.

He stands when you come out. Actually stands, and pulls out your chair.

"Good morning, Ava."

"Is it?"

"It's morning." He sits. "The rest is up to you."

You eat a piece of toast mostly to have something to do with your hands. The sea is a sheet of hammered pewter below the cliff, and gulls wheel over the rocks. Somewhere inside, Nonna Rosa is singing along to an old radio, badly.

Luca slides something across the tablecloth. A black card, heavy and matte, with your new name embossed on it in silver.

"For whatever you need," he says. "Clothes. Books. Whatever you had in your apartment that you want replaced. Teo will take you."

You look at the card. You don't touch it.

"I have a job," you say. "I have my own money."

"You had a job."

Your toast stops halfway to your mouth. "What does that mean?"

He turns the tablet toward you. It's open on an email, and it's addressed to you, which means he has access to your email, which is a problem you'll scream about later. The sender is Harrow & Pike Accounting. Your boss. The subject line is Regarding your employment.

You read it twice, out of habit now. In light of your recent personal associations, the firm feels it can no longer… reputational risk… effective immediately.

Two years of fourteen-hour tax seasons. Two years of being the one who caught every error. Gone in four sentences because of a name you didn't even want.

"You did this," you say. Your voice is shaking.

"No." He holds your eyes. "I don't need to. The name does it on its own. I'm sorry."

You don't think you've heard him say that before. It throws you off balance enough that you stop yelling before you start.

"I'm studying for the CPA," you say. "I have a section in March. I'm not going to sit in this house for a year with a credit card, waiting for you to need a wife at a party."

"I know." He takes the tablet back. "So I'm offering you a job."

"Doing what? Counting your bullets?"

One corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. The ghost of where a smile would go, if he allowed them.

"Elena's," he says. "On Harbor Street. You know it?"

Everyone knows it. The best Italian restaurant in Port Sorrel, white tablecloths and candlelight and a reservation list three months long. You went once, for your mother's last birthday. Your father saved for six weeks.

"It's named for my mother," Luca says. "It's the family's oldest legitimate business, and its books are a disgrace. My cousin's man has been keeping them, and every quarter the numbers come in a little wrong, and every quarter there's a reason." He lifts his espresso. "I want someone who doesn't know any of the reasons, Ava."

"You want me to audit your family."

"I want you to audit a restaurant." His gray eyes don't blink. "If the restaurant happens to be family, that's not my problem. Teo drives you. You keep your own hours. You report to me and nobody else."

It's a trap, you think. It has to be.

It's also the only door in this whole villa that opens onto something you're actually good at.

"Fine," you say. "But I'm not using your card for lunch."

"Noted," says Luca Moretti, and goes back to his tablet.

Teo drives a black SUV like it's a hearse, slow and smooth. He hums along to oldies on the radio and pretends not to notice when you try to read his texts over his shoulder.

"How long have you worked for him?" you ask.

"Since we were nineteen."

"Is he always like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like a statue that learned to talk."

Teo laughs, a deep rumble that rocks the whole car. "Only with people he's trying not to like."

You don't know what to do with that either.

Elena's is beautiful in daylight. Brick and dark green paint, brass lanterns over the door, a courtyard full of bare lemon trees in pots waiting for spring. Inside, the staff are setting tables for lunch, folding napkins into crisp peaks. A few of them glance at you, then at Teo, then quickly away.

The office is in the back, past the kitchen with its clatter of pans and steam and shouting. It's small, windowless, and smells like old paper. Three gray filing cabinets. A desk buried in receipts. A computer that sounds like it's running on hope.

"Anything you need," Teo says, settling into a chair by the door that groans under him. "I'm right here."

"You're going to sit there all day?"

"Clause seven," he says cheerfully.

You roll your eyes and get to work.

It's a relief, honestly. The numbers don't care who you married. You pull the last three years of ledgers, the supplier invoices, the deposit slips. You make coffee in the tiny machine and drink it cold. You find the rhythm you always find, where the noise of the world goes quiet and there's only the columns, adding up or not adding up.

For the first hour, everything looks fine. Messy. Sloppy. But fine.

Then you get to the wine.

Elena's buys a lot of wine. That's normal. But the same distributor, Bellmare Imports, shows up again and again, invoice after invoice, always paid in full, always in round numbers. You've never seen a wine invoice in round numbers. Wine has tax and freight and breakage. Wine is never round.

You pull the bank statements and line them up against the invoices. Your pen moves faster. Your heart moves faster too.

When you're done, you sit back and look at the number circled at the bottom of your notepad, and you check it three times because you don't want it to be true.

Four hundred thousand dollars. Paid out over three years to a wine company. And according to the cellar inventory, not a single bottle ever came in.

"Teo," you say slowly. "Who signs the checks here?"

Teo's easy smile fades. He looks at the circled number on your notepad, then at your face.

"You should call Luca," he says quietly.

You're reaching for your phone when the office door swings open behind him, and a warm, familiar voice says, "Well, look who's playing accountant."