Page 42 of Ricardo

Disgust for a man like Harrison Winthrop. Of course he did not like Dante. A man like Harrison Winthrop would not like a friend he could not charm, impress, or intimidate.

Anger at her parents because if she was going to Dante for help, it means she didn't have anyone else to go to, including them.

Pride for Dante. For stepping up and being a man when someone needed him the most.

“But when I called, Dante answered. No lecture. No punishment for disappearing. No making me explain everything before he decided whether I deserved help.” Her voice shakes. “I needed him, and he was there.”

I look toward Mario’s closed office door for a second, giving myself somewhere else to put my eyes.

I am proud of my son.

I am also aware, with some discomfort, that I envy him.

Dante had a place in her life before I knew her as anything more than Judge O’Brien’s daughter and the red-haired girl who used to follow my son through Naples with a wide, bright smile.

“He did what he should have done,” I say.

“Yes,” she says softly. “But not everyone does.”

I look back at her then.

Her eyes are bright, and she is trying very hard to make them otherwise. The towel is still twisted in her hands. Her coffee sits beside her, just dregs now, cooling on the floor.

“No,” I say. “They do not.”

I let myself look at her for one second longer than I should. The loosened hair. The bare foot tucked under her. The expensive suit creased from sitting on the floor.

She is composed even now, but the effort is visible. Maybe only because I am looking for it. Maybe because she is too tired to hide all of it.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“About what?”

“Your life.”

Her eyes lift to mine.

The question is too broad. Too intimate. I know it the moment I ask, but I do not take it back. She can refuse. She has refused me before, and I have survived.

Barely.

She looks toward Mario’s closed office door, then down at her cup. “I think I am tired of everyone acting like my life is a piece of property they have a stake in.”

“Then you have to teach yourself to stop being sorry for living it. Though I know it is easier said than done.”

“Perfectly reasonable.”

“People in your life, it seems, benefit from you doubting that,” I say.

Her gaze comes back to me.

I meet it.

This is dangerous ground. I know it. She knows it too. We are sitting in my brother’s office suite, late at night, with broken glass in the trash and her shoes on the floor. She is my son’s friend. She is younger than she should be for the way exhaustion sits in her posture. She has just given me more truth than she likely meant to give.

I should stand.

I should take my coffee and leave her with her dignity.