Chapter V: Dinner

“What the fuck are you doing?” Salvatore jumped out of his seat and saved himself from the murky brown liquid soaking his desk and paperwork. The contents dripping by his feet as he looked up at the man beside him. “Marco,” He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath.

The Mafia Boss’s brother who stared at him with bated breath and an ashen complexion.

“I-I-I…”

“Piero, have someone clean this up and bring me the backup copies of all this godforsaken paperwork,” The boss directed his words to the man standing stoic across from him, watching as Salvatore picked up a tissue and grabbed his phone out from the brown pond. “Dammit, I need a new phone. Again.”

“I’ll get right to it, sir,” Piero gave a curt nod, whirling on his heels and made his way out.

The silence in the spacious office had the coffee pot trembling, Marco swallowing the lump burning his throat with his heart thundering in his ear. Heaving a sigh, Salvatore flopped down on his leather office chair, rubbing his temple before looking up at his brother.

“This is the third time today. What has gotten into you?”

Marco’s face turned red as he lowered his gaze, the pot suddenly weighing heavy in his grasp.

When he had arrived at the estate, Salvatore had been eating breakfast in the sunroom when Marco joined him at the table. The two had sat and talked before the younger decided to have a look around at things before the boss’s arrival for the day. But his foot got tangled in the table cloth, forcing him to trip and spill the orange juice at Salvatore’s figure; drenching him from head to toe. The mafia boss sat still in his seat, picking up the napkin beside his plate and wiped his face before walking out of the room that had dropped in temperature.

Then Salvatore had given Marco the task of retrieving a file from an associate of theirs. The heir having been so jumbled and incoherent that the man refused to hand over the file until someone he knew confirmed that Marco was, in fact, from the Regnante Mafia. Tazio had to walk out of a meeting to go and pick up the file at the younger’s inability.

And now, he had spilled coffee all over Salvatore’s desk.

The truth was after Marco had witnessed Sofia’s breakdown, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on anything, finally understanding why that girl got under his skin and why she resorted to taunting him.

Her actions began to make sense to the Regnante heir and the fact that hit hardest was that she reminded him very much of himself.

“Take a week off,” Salvatore waved him away. “Take a week off and deal with whatever it is that has you screwing up so royally. You are the Regnante heir, so you better get your bearings and start acting like it,”

“Yes sir,”

Marco handed the coffee pot to one of the girls that had come in to clean before making his way towards the door, his spine tightening to think that Salvatore would say something more.

He didn’t stop to think about anything as he stepped out of the estate and drove away. He didn’t think while driving to his apartment, and he sure as hell didn’t give it a moment’s notice until he parked his car and sat in the silent interior of the vehicle.

Groaning at himself, he covered his face with his hands and pressed his forehead to the steering wheel, his face burning up with the reality of the situation.

Recomposing himself, he made his way up to the apartment and pushed open the door, standing frozen in the doorway to behold the sight in front of him.

The fire alarm was beeping with their across the hall neighbor, Cristian, stood on a dining chair and struggled to try and turn it off. Meanwhile, the charred smell of something burning came from the stove where a pan had caught fire and Sofia tried to fan it off with a kitchen cloth.

Pressing two fingers to his forehead, Marco moved into the kitchen and pushed Sofia aside while grabbing the cloth in her hand. Taking hold of the handle, he tossed the burning utensil under the tap before turning on the stream of water, the flames hissing at him. Walking towards the boy on the chair, he grabbed the broom against the wall and maneuvered the handle to press the button on the device.

Everything falling silent with the pungent smell of smoke diffusing around the apartment.

“We-well…” Cristian stammered at the sight of Marco, slowly getting off the chair and shuffled on his feet. “We can explain,”    

“I’m waiting,”

“I-I…well…I came to ask Sofia for help with my homework, and it all was going well, but then she asked me if I was hungry and I said that I would like something to eat and she tried cooking, but I had no idea that she doesn’t know how to cook, and I didn’t know that, and then we started to talk to each other and forgot about the food and the food burned and the alarm started ringing and we started screaming and I tried to turn off the alarm and he tried to stop the fire, but it didn’t work and then you walked in.” The thirteen-year-old spoke in one breath, his face flushing as he stared down at his feet.

Marco’s gaze lifting up to Sofia who looked away.

“Sit there,” He pointed to the couch. “Both of you,”

Dragging their feet behind them the two settled on the edge of the couch while Marco took off his blazer and draped it over the dining chair before going about fixing things.

Washing his hands, he rolled back his sleeves off his wrist and started on cooking. He could hear Sofia and Cristian muttering behind him as he put the noodles into the boiling water and cut up little pieces of sausages.

At the end of twenty minutes, he dished up the plates and brought two to the people on the couch.

“Buon Appetito,” Marco put the plates before them, the two staring down at the food. “Tagliatelle with pancetta, basil, and mozzarella.”

The teen grinned up at him with wide eyes and dug into the pasta. Marco smiling to see him enjoying his food and chuckled before ruffling the boy’s hair.

Grabbing his plate from the kitchen counter, he settled down on the other couch, watching Sofia slowly pick up her plate and twirl the pasta around her fork.

While they ate, Marco asked the child questions about his school and what he did when his dad was at the hospital.

The two had been so busy talking that they never noticed Sofia get up and put her plate in the sink before disappearing behind her bedroom door; leaving Marco to help the teen with the remainder of his homework which the heir was more than willing to provide assistance with.

Seeing him off, he cleaned the rest of the apartment before heading to take a shower. Later ending up on the balcony with a book in his hand and a cool breeze ruffling his damp hair, knowing his mother would kill him if she saw him like this. It wasn’t until a chill had him sneeze when he decided it was better not risk getting murdered at his parent’s hands and made his way inside.

Knocking on Sofia’s door, he waited for her to open it and found her peeking out with bloodshot eyes, raising her eyebrows at the sight of him.

“Come,” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ll teach you how to make a three-course meal,”

“I don’t want to,”

“And I wasn’t asking,” Marco grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her after him into the kitchen.

“What the he-”

“-I won’t hear any bitching from you today,” He silenced her as he looked down at the cookbook laid in front of him. “You endangered Cristian’s life today because of your inability to cook, and that does not mean that you stop cooking it means that you learn how to do it right,” He looked up at her grinding her teeth at the words with her arms crossed over her chest. Tears burning her eyes.

“Go and grab a couple of tomatoes form that cupboard,”

Doing as told, she placed them on the counter, waiting for Marco to say something.

“So I’m teaching you how to make a papa al pomodoro as an appetizer, with chicken pasta in creamy white wine parmesan cheese sauce as the main, and chocolate-filled biscotti for dessert.”

“Who so much?”

“So that you know how to cook with maximum efficiency,” He told her as they washed their hands. “Come,” He urged her forward and showed her how to cut the tomatoes, making her stand in front of him as he held her hands from behind and directed her on how to go about the task. Murmuring tips and instructions into her ear as she nodded with pinched eyebrows, resuming the task when Marco went to marinate the chicken.

They made everything for the soup first and started on the main course halfway through the endeavor. Marco instructing her on what to do and how to do it before leaving her to the task.

While their food was cooking, Marco led her to the dining table and told her how to set up a table.

“So I’ll show you how to do both informal and formal setting,” He stood across her with cutlery, glasses, and plates between them. “Formal first,”

“You have two plates, a service plate beneath a smaller salad plate,” He put them on the space before the chair. “On the right of the plate, you have the dinner knife closest to the plate, followed by the teaspoon and soup spoon with a cup and saucer at the end. On the left side of the plate you have the dinner fork closest to the plate and then the salad fork and a napkin at the end. And on top, there would be the cake fork with the desert spoon. On the upper left corner, there is the bread plate with a butter knife on top. In the formal setting, there are three glasses: one water glass and two wine glasses for red and white wine respectively,” Marco put everything in its place as he told her about it, Sofia watching in fascination as he set it up.

“Now for the informal setting,” Marco moved to the empty space beside him. “It’s much simpler, hence informal.”

“You have a service plate with a napkin on top, with a water glass and wine glass on the top right corner. On the right of the plate, there is the dinner knife, teaspoon, and soup spoon.” He moved things around to show her. “And the dinner knife-”

“-Is closest to the plate,” Sofia finished for him as he nodded.

“On the left of the plate, there is the-”

“-Dinner fork closest to the plate and a salad fork beside it,”

“That’s right,” Marco nodded, impressed that she understood. “And you work-”

“-You work your way in, starting with soup and salad, them moving onto the entrée, before finally having dessert and coffee,”

“So you knew all this?” Marco braced the back of the velvet chair as he looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Not all,” Sofia giggled. “I just knew what a formal setting looked like and how to eat. I didn’t know about the informal setting,”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew? It would have saved us time,” He shook his head, chuckling at himself for not having known better: given that she had been a mafia daughter and trained in proper dinner etiquettes – as he had been – it was obvious that she should know.

“You are much nicer when you’re teaching, so I didn’t stop you.”

Marco raised his eyebrows at the words and watched her cheek flush while she brushed away her hair.

“Let’s dish up?”

They left the chicken pasta on the stove on low heat to keep it warm, while they dished up the soup and ate that in silence. Marco commenting on how it tasted good and that they did a good job on it. By the time they moved onto the entrée and had put the desert into the stove, they both were laughing and cracking jokes with each other. A comfortable air settling between them as they talked like civilized people and got to know about the other’s interests, finding them just as fascinating as they asked the other about them.

By desert, they were talking about Marco’s love for astronomy and Sofia’s passion for mathematics.

“I was a math-wiz,” Sofia chuckled at the memory. “Won countless international competitions and national ones too, I even got a scholarship to study at Princeton and I went there when I was 18.” She had a soft smile over her lips as she began to play around with the desert on her food.

“I found out about mom’s cancer when I graduated. She had been sick for six months and no one told me because my mom wanted me to finish my degree,” Sofia folded her arms over the table and rested her cheek on her forearms, looking at the wall to her left with a soft smile. “I had gotten acceptances for masters at Harvard, but I refused since I didn’t want to leave my mom. She was sick and in the hospital and I spent every minute of every day with her. So I was surprised that I never found out about Mr. Regnante coming to pay her a visit.”

“They forced me to get out when she was dying.” Sofia swallowed the lump in her throat, sitting up as she exhaled shakily, Marco sitting before her with his mouth covered by his stapled fingers. “Next thing I knew, they were declaring the time of death, and things just went downhill from there. It was like she was the keystone keeping it all together,” She let out a humorless chuckle and sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she tried to blink the tears away.

“Here,” Marco stood up and took the plates away. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate,”

Sofia tried to protest, but he just gave her a look over his shoulder.

“I already told you, I won’t hear you bitching today,” He gave her a boyish grin and was taken aback by the gesture.

Marco began to make two mugs of his grandma’s famous hot chocolate as Sofia composed herself at the dining table before moving to the barstool and resting her chin on her folded arms over the marble counter, watching the future Regnante Mafia boss work around the kitchen.

“You’re different,” Sofia muttered to his back as he chuckled.

“I told you, I went after my-”

“I’m saying personality-wise,” She straightened as Marco looked at her from over his shoulder. “You’re nicer than most Regnante’s. Given your surname, I automatically assumed for you to be a pompous arrogant jackass and therefore treated you like one. I’m not really a bitch, I just was to you,”

“But now, that I actually spent time with you, you’re actually quite a decent guy.”

“That’s a bias of yours,” Marco chuckled as he stirred the mixture in the pot. “You knew me as the Regnante heir, not as Marco, you know my brother as the Mafia Boss and not as Salvatore. You know our Mafia personas, but I can assure you that if you were to just see us with our family, our loved ones, you’d find that we’re just as down-to-earth and human-like any other.” He turned around with two mugs in his hand, giving one to her as he came and sat down beside her, both of them sipping the contents in silence.

They didn’t say anything as they drank the sweet beverage, enjoy the warmth of mugs, along with the comfortable presence of the other, their elbows touching.

“Marco?” Sofia spoke softly beside him as he turned to face her with a hum, surprised to find her leaning forward and placing a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you,”

“Well, what for?” He straightened, rubbing the back of his hand against his cheek to get the sensation of her lips to go away as she couldn’t help but smile at his antics.

“For enduring me,”

“Ah, it’s an order from the boss, so…” He trailed as he leaned back, looking at her from the corner of his eyes as their gaze met, her pale blue ones against his light brown as Marco couldn’t help himself from snorting before they both burst into a fit of laughter.