She Teased Her Brother’s Best Friend, the Mafia Boss She Secretly Loved

PART 2

Rosa called Luca that evening and said three sentences that Sofia would not learn until later but that Gianna would eventually report with the specific satisfaction of someone who had watched a complicated situation resolve: "You sent her away because you thought love was the problem. The problem is that you confused her life with your risk management. You have a week to fix this before I do it for you."

Luca called Nico the next day.

---

The conversation between Luca and Nico was the kind of conversation that men in their world had when they needed to say something real and could not use the language of feelings to say it, which meant they used the language of obligations and terms and agreements, and somewhere inside those terms was the actual thing they were saying.

Luca said: the conditions are these.

Nico said: these conditions are acceptable, and this condition is not.

They went back and forth for an hour.

At the end of it, something had changed.

Not completely. Not in the way that would have satisfied Sofia if she had been present and had the option of objecting to the entire framework of the conversation. But enough that the call to Portugal could happen.

Dario knocked on Sofia's door on a Thursday evening.

"Your brother," he said. "On a clear line."

She took the phone.

"You sent me to Lisbon," she said, before Luca could speak.

"I know," he said.

"Without asking me."

"I know."

"Because you saw me kissing someone and made a unilateral decision about what that meant and what I should do about it."

A pause.

"Yes," Luca said.

"Are you calling to apologize or to give me new instructions?"

Another pause, longer.

"To apologize," he said. "And to tell you to come home."

She said nothing for a moment.

"I want to hear you say why," she said.

"Because I was scared," he said. "Because I told myself I was protecting you and the real answer was I was afraid of what it meant if you were serious about him. Because I treated you like a piece of a situation instead of like my sister who had been careful enough with herself to choose someone worth choosing."

Sofia stood at the window.

Outside, Lisbon did its thing: trams and cobblestones and orange light and the city's specific patience with its own age.

"Nico talked to Mamma," she said.

"Yes."

"And then you talked to him."

"Yes."

"What did you decide between you?"

A pause.

"That I've been running the wrong calculation," Luca said. "The risk isn't him. The risk is what happens to you in the spaces I create by trying to keep you somewhere I can see you."

She thought about the eighty-one days.

About the mornings and the café and the fado and Dario and Enrico's polite immovability.

About the Notes app diary under GROCERY LIST.

"I'm going to need some time," she said.

Luca was quiet.

"To come back," she clarified. "Not because I'm making a point. Because I need a few days to think about coming home on my own terms versus coming home because the situation changed."

"I understand," he said.